While Clementina, in her own fashion, was shattering an idyll to pieces,
Quixtus under the tutelage of Billiter pursued the most distasteful
occupation in which he had ever engaged. Had some Rhadamanthine Arbiter
of his Destiny compelled him, under penalty of death, to choose between
horse-racing and laborious practice as a solicitor, he would
unhesitatingly have chosen the latter. Course and stand and paddock and
ring, the whole machinery of the sport, wearied him to exasperation.
Just as there are some men to whom, as the saying goes, music is the
most expensive form of noise, so are there others to whom the racing of
horses is merely the most extravagantly cumbersome form of gambling. Why
train valuable animals, they ask; to run round a field, when the same
end could be attained by making little leaden horses gyrate mechanically
round a disk, at a millionth part of the cost? Of the delight of
studying pedigree, of following form, of catching the precious trickles
of information that percolate through the litter of stables, of backing
their judgment thus misguided they have no notion. They cannot even feel
a thrill of excitement at the sight of the far-off specks of galloping
horses. They wonder at the futility of it all as the quadrupeds scrabble
down the straight. An automobile, they plead, can go ten times as fast.
That such purblind folk exist is sad; but after all they are God’s
creatures, just the same as jockeys and professional tipsters.
At first there was one feature of the race-course which fascinated
Quixtus—the ring. Then he imagined he had come into contact with
incarnate evil. Those coarse animal faces, swollen with the effort of
bawling the odds, those hard greedy eyes bulging from purple cheeks,
those voices raucous, inhuman, suggested to his mild fancy a peculiarly
depraved corner of Tophet. But what practical evil resulted from this
Masque of Hades was not quite apparent. Nobody seemed any the worse. The
bookmaker smiled widely on those who won, and those who lost smiled on
the world with undaunted cheerfulness. So, in the course of time,
Quixtus began to regard the bookmakers with feelings of disappointment,
which gave place after a while to indifference, and eventually to
weariness and irritation.
Even Old Joe Jenks, thick-necked, fishy-eyed villain, to whom Billiter
personally introduced him, proved himself, in all his dealings, to be a
scrupulously honest man. The turf, in spite of its depressing ugliness,
appeared but a manœuvring ground for the dull virtues. Where was its
wickedness? He complained, at length, to Billiter.
Billiter seemed for the moment to be in a bad humour. He tugged at his
heavy moustache.
“I don’t see what fault you can find with racing. You’re making a very
good thing out of it.”
Which was true. Fortune, who had played him such scurvy tricks, was now
turning on him her sunniest smile. He was winning prodigiously,
fantastically. Billiter selected the horses which he was to back, he
backed them to the amount advised by Billiter, and in most instances the
horses won.
“If you think the mere gaining of money gives me any pleasure, my dear
Billiter,” said he, “you’re very much mistaken. I have sufficient means
of my own to satisfy my modest requirements, and to accept large sums of
money from your friend, Mr. Jenks, is humiliating and repulsive.”
“If that’s the matter, you can turn them over to me,” said Billiter, “I
don’t get much out of the business.”
They were walking about the paddock, between the races. Quixtus halted
and regarded his morose companion with cold inquiry.
“You gave me to understand that you were betting on the same horses as I
was.”
Billiter cursed himself for an incautious fool.
“Only now and then,” said he, “and for small stakes. How can I afford to
plunge like you?”
“What is the dismal quadruped I am betting on for this next race?” asked
Quixtus looking at his card.
“Punchinello. Forty-five to one. Dead cert.”
“Then,” said Quixtus, “here are five pounds. Put them on Punchinello and
if he wins you will have two hundred and twenty-five.”
Billiter left him, made his way out of the paddock to that part of the
race-course where the outside bookmakers have their habitation. Old Joe
Jenks in the flaming check suit and a white hat adorned with his name
and quality stood on a stool shouting the odds, taking bets and giving
directions to the clerk at his side. Business for a moment was slack.
“Another fiver for the governor on Punchinello,” said Billiter.
Old Joe Jenks jumped from his stool and took Billiter aside.
“Look here, old friend,” said he, “chuck it. Come off it. I’m not
playing any more. I poured a couple of quarts of champagne over your
head because you told me you had got hold of a mug, and instead of the
mug you bring up a ruddy miracle who backs every wrong ‘un at a hundred
to one—and romps in. And thinking you straight, Mr. Billiter, sir, I’ve
stretched out the odds—to oblige you. And you’ve damn well landed me.
It’s getting monotonous. See? I’m tired.”
“It’s not my fault, Joe,” said Billiter, humbly. “Look. Just an extra
fiver on Punchinello. He’s got no earthly—you know that as well as I
do.”
“Do I?” growled the bookmaker angrily, convinced that Billiter was
over-reaching him. “How do I know what you know? You want to have it
both ways, do you? Well you won’t get it out of me.”
“I swear to God, Joe,” said Billiter, earnestly, “that I’m straight. So
little did I expect him to win that I’ve not asked a penny commission.”
“Then ask it now, and be hanged to you,” cried the angry bookmaker, and
leaping back to his stool, he resumed his brazen-throated trade.
Billiter kept his five-pound note, unwilling to risk it with another
bookmaker on the laughing-stock of a Punchinello, and sauntered away
moodily. He was a most injured man. Old Joe Jenks doubted his good
faith. Now, was there a single horse selected for his patron to back
upon which any student of racing outside a lunatic asylum would have
staked money? Not one. He could lay his hand on his honest heart and
swear it. And had he staked a penny on his selections? No. He could
swear to that, too. He had not (fool that he was) asked Quixtus for a
commission. Through his honourable dealing he was a poor man. The
thought was bitter. He had run straight with Jenks. It was not his fault
if the devil had got into the horses so that every shocking outsider,
backed by Quixtus, revealed ultra-equine capacities. What could a horse
do against the superhorse? Nothing. What could Billiter himself do?
Nothing. Except have a drink. In the circumstances it was the only thing
to do. He went into the bar of the grand stand and ordered a whisky and
soda. It sizzled gratefully down a throat burning with a sense of wrong.
His moral tone restored, he determined to live in poverty no more for
the sake of a quixotic principle, and, proceeding to a ready-money
bookmaker of his acquaintance, pulled out his five-pound note and backed
Rosemary, a certain winner (such was his private and infallible
information) at eight to one. This duty to himself accomplished, he went
to the grand stand to view the race, leaving Quixtus to do that which
seemed best to him.
The bell rang, the course was cleared, the numbers put up; the horses
cantered gaily past. At the sight of Rosemary, a shiny bay in beautiful
condition, Billiter’s heart warmed; at the sight of Punchinello, a
scraggy crock who had never won a race in his inglorious life, Billiter
sniffed scornfully. If Old Joe Jenks was such a fool as to refuse a free
gift of two pounds ten—they had agreed to halve the spoils—the folly
thereof lay entirely on Old Joe Jenks’s head.
The start was made. For a long time the horses ran in a bunch. Then
Rosemary crept ahead. Billiter’s moustache beneath the levelled
field-glasses betrayed a happy smile. Rosemary increased her lead. At
the turn into the straight, something happened. She swerved and lost her
stride. Three others dashed by, among them the despised Punchinello.
They passed the post in a flash, Punchinello first. Billiter murmured
things at which the world, had it heard them, would have grown pale, and
again sought the bar. Emerging thence he went in quest of his patron. He
had not far to go. Quixtus sat on a wooden chair at the back of the
grand stand reading a vellum covered _Elzevir_ duodecimo edition of
Saint Augustine’s Confessions. When Billiter approached he rose and
thrust the volume into the tail pocket of his frock-coat.
“Was that a race?” he asked.
“Race. Of course it was. _The_ race. Didn’t you see it?”
“Thank goodness, no,” said Quixtus. “Did any horse win?”
The sodden and simple wit of Billiter rose like a salmon at this gaudy
fly of irony. He lost his temper.
“Your damned, spavined, bow-legged, mule-be-gotten crock of a
Punchinello won.”
Quixtus regarded him mildly; but a transient gleam of light flickered in
his china-blue eyes.
“Then, my dear Billiter,” said he, “I have won nine hundred pounds,
which, in view of my opinion of the turf, based on experience, I think I
shall hand over to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to be
earmarked for the conversion of the Mahommedans in Mecca. As for you,
Billiter, you have won two hundred and twenty-five pounds”—Billiter
quivered with sub-aspirate anathema—“which ought to satisfy the
momentary cupidity of any man. Let us go. The more I see of it the more
am I convinced that the race-course is no place for me. It is too good.”
Billiter glanced at him with wrathful suspicion. Was he speaking in
childish simplicity or in mordant sarcasm? The grave, unsmiling face,
the expressionless blue eyes gave him no clue.
Thus, however, ended Quixtus’s career on the Turf. To stand about
wearily in all weathers in order to witness what, to his fastidious mind
was merely a dull and vulgar spectacle, was an act of self-sacrifice
from which he derived no compensating thrill. The injured Billiter
having patched up a peace with Old Joe Jenks, convincing him of his own
ingenuousness and of the inevitable change in his patron’s luck, in vain
persuaded Quixtus to resume his investigations. He offered to introduce
him to a fraternity of so-called commission agents and touts, in whose
company he could saturate himself with vileness.
“I have no taste for disgusting society,” said Quixtus.
“Then I don’t know what the deuce you do want,” exclaimed Billiter in a
fume.
“You can’t touch pitch without being defiled.”
“I thought that was just what you were trying to be.”
“In one way, yes,” replied Quixtus, musingly; “But I loathe touching the
pitch.”
In spite of his confessed belief in the altruistic purity of the turf,
he regarded as unspeakable defilement the cheques which he had received
from Old Joe Jenks. He had kept them in his drawer, and the more he
looked at them the more did the bestial face of Old Joe Jenks obtrude
itself before his eyes, and the more repugnant did it become to his now
abnormal fastidiousness to pay them into his own banking account. To
destroy them, as was his first impulse, merely signified a benefit
conferred on the odious Jenks, who would be only too glad to repocket
his filthy money. What should he do? At last a malignant idea occurred
to his morbidly and curiously working mind. He would cast all this pitch
and defilement upon another’s head. Some one else should shiver with the
disgust of it. But who? The inspiration came from Tartarus. He endorsed
the cheques to the value of nearly two thousand pounds, and paid them
into the banking account of his nephew Tommy Burgrave.
He would be as diabolically and defiledly wicked as you please, but the
intermediary pitch he would not touch.
That was his attitude towards all the suggestions for wickedness laid
before him by his three counsellors. They, for their part, although they
recognised great advantage in fostering the gloomy humour of their mad
patron, began to be weary in evil-doing. After they had taxed their
invention for an attractive scheme of villainy, they found that it
either came within the tabooed category of crime or, by its lack of
refinement, failed to commend itself to the sensitive scholar. They were
at their wits’ end. The only one to whose proposal Quixtus turned an
attentive ear was Huckaby, who had suggested the heart-breaking
expedition through the fashionable resorts of Europe. And, to the credit
of Huckaby, be it here mentioned that, beyond certain fantastical and
mocking suggestions, such as the devastation of old women’s wards in
workhouses by means of an anonymous Christmas gifts of nitroglycerine
plum-puddings, this was the only serious proposal he submitted. Anxious,
however, lest the idea should lose its attraction, he urged Quixtus to
start immediately. It is not every day that a down-at-heel wastrel has
the opportunity of luxurious foreign travel, to say nothing of the
humorous object of this particular excursion. But Quixtus, very
sensibly, pointed out to his eager follower that the fashionable resorts
of Europe, save the great capitals, are empty during the months of May
and June, and that it would be much better to postpone their journey
until August filled them with the thousand women waiting to have their
hearts broken.
Vandermeer, unemployed since his embassy to Tommy Burgrave, unsuccessful
in his suggestions and envious of Billiter and Huckaby, at last hit upon
an ingenious idea. He brought Quixtus a dirty letter. It ran:
“Dear Mr. Vandermeer,—You, who were an old friend of my husband’s in
our better days and know how valiantly I have struggled to keep the home
together, can’t you help me now? I am ill in bed, my children are
starving. The little ones are lying now even too weak to cry out for
bread. It would break a wolf’s heart to see them. If you can’t help me,
for I know how things are with you, can’t you bring my case before your
rich friend, Mr. Quixtus, of whose kindness and generosity you have so
often spoken? . . .
“Yours sincerely,
“Emily Wellgood.”
It bore the address “2, Transiter Street, Clerkenwell Road, N.W.”
“What do you bring me this for?” asked Quixtus as soon as he had read
it.
“I am satisfying my own conscience as far as Mrs. Wellgood is
concerned,” replied Vandermeer, “and at the same time giving you an
opportunity of being wicked. It’s a genuine case. You can let them die
of starvation.”
Quixtus leaned back in his chair and gave the matter his consideration.
Vandermeer had interrupted him in the midst of a paper which he was
writing to controvert a new theory as to the juxtaposition of the
palæolithic and neolithic tombs at Solutré, and he required time to
fetch back his mind from the quaternary age to the present day. The
prospect of a whole family perishing of hunger by an act; as it were, of
his will, pleased his fancy.
“Very good. Very good, Vandermeer. Let them starve,” said he. “Let them
starve,” he murmured to himself, as he took up his pen.
Vandermeer, hanging about, hinted at payment for the service rendered.
Quixtus met his crafty eyes with equal cunning.
“You would be too soft-hearted—you would give them some of the money.
Wait till some of them are dead.” He rolled the last words delectably
round his tongue. “And now, my dear Vandermeer, I’m very busy. Many
thanks and good-bye.”
Vandermeer left reluctantly and Quixtus resumed his work.
“The bizygomatic transverse diameter,” he wrote, putting down the
beginning of the sentence that was in his head when Vandermeer was
announced. He paused. He had lost the thread of his ideas. It was a
subtle argument depending on the comparative measurements of newly
discovered skulls. He threw down his pen impatiently, and in mild and
gentlemanly language anathematised Vandermeer. He attacked the
bizygomatic transverse diameter again; but the starving family occupied
his thoughts. Presently he abandoned work for the morning and gave
himself up to the relish of his wickedness. It had a delicious flavour.
Practically he was slaying mother and babes, while he stood outside the
ordinary repulsive and sordid circumstances of murder. Vandermeer should
have his reward. After lunch, he felt impelled to visit them. A force
stronger than a strong inclination to return to his paper led him out of
the front-door and into a taxi-cab summoned from the neighbouring rank.
He promised himself the thrill of gloating over the sufferings of his
victims. Besides, the letter contained a challenge. “It would break a
wolf’s heart to see them.” He would show the writer that his heart was
harder than any wolf’s. Instinctively his hand sought the waistcoat
pocket in which he kept his loose gold. Yes; there were three
sovereigns. He smiled. It would be the finished craft of devildom to lay
them out on a table before the woman’s hungering and ravished eyes and
then, with a merciless chuckle, to pocket them again and walk out of the
house.
“I will _not_ be a fool,” he asserted, as the taxi-cab entered the
Clerkenwell Road.
The taxi-cab driver signed that he wished to communicate with his fare.
Quixtus leaned forward over the door.
“Do you know where Transiter Street is, Sir?”
Quixtus did not. Does any easy London gentleman know the mean streets in
the purlieus of Clerkenwell? But, oddly enough, a milkman of the
locality knew not Transiter Street either. Nor did a policeman on duty.
Nor did a postman. Perplexed, Quixtus drove to the nearest District Post
Office and made inquiries. There was no such street in Clerkenwell at
all. He consulted the Post Office London Directory. There was no such
street as Transiter Street in London.
Quixtus drove home in an angry mood. Once more he had been deceived.
Vandermeer had invented the emaciated family for the sake of the fee.
Did the earth hold a more abandoned villain? He grimly set about
devising some punishment for his disingenuous counsellor. Nothing
adequate occurred to him till some days afterwards when Vandermeer sent
him another forged letter announcing the demise, in horrible torment, of
the youngest child. He took up his pen and wrote as follows:
“My Dear Vandermeer,—I am sending Mrs. Wellgood the burial expenses. I
have also enclosed a cheque for yourself. Will you kindly go to
Transiter Street and claim it. For the present I have no further need of
you.
“Yours sincerely,
“Ephraim Quixtus.”
He posted the letter himself on his way to lunch at the club where
Wonnacott remarked on his high good humour.
Since the discontinuance of the Tuesday dinners (for they were not
resumed after the establishment of the new relations), Huckaby,
Billiter, and Vandermeer had contracted the habit of meeting once a week
in the bar-parlour of a quiet tavern for a companionable fuddle. There
they exchanged views on religion and alcohol, and related unveracious
(and uncredited) anecdotes of their former high estate. Jealous of each
other, however, they spoke little of Quixtus, and then only in general
terms. The poor gentleman was still distraught. It was a sad case,
causing them to wag their heads sorrowfully and order another round of
whisky.
But one evening of depression, Quixtus having for some time refused
their ministrations, and pockets having become woefully empty, they
talked with greater freedom of their respective dealings with their
patron. Vandermeer related the practical joke he had played upon him;
Billiter described his astounding luck, and his crazy reason for
retiring from the turf; and Huckaby, by way of illustrating the
unbalanced state of Quixtus’s mind, confided to them the project of
breaking a woman’s heart.
“What are you going to get out of it?” asked Vandermeer brutally, for
the first time breaking through the pretence that they were three
devoted friends banded together to protect the poor mad gentleman’s
interests.
Huckaby raised a protesting hand. “My dear Van!”
“Oh, drop it,” cried Vandermeer. “You make me tired.” He repeated the
question.
“Simply amusement. What else?” said Huckaby.
They wrangled foolishly for a while. At last Billiter, who had remained
silent, brought his fist down, with a bang, on the table.
“I’ve got an idea,” said he. “Have you any particular woman in view?”
“Lord, no,” said Huckaby.
“I can put you on to one,” said Billiter. “No need to go abroad. She’s
here in London.”
Huckaby called him uncomplimentary names. The Continental trip, as far
as he was concerned, was the essence of the suggestion; the capture of
the wild goose a remote consideration.
“Besides, old man,” said he, “this is my show.”
Billiter looked glum. After all, the idea was of no great value.
Vandermeer’s cunning brain began to work. He asked Billiter for a
description of the lady.
“She’s the widow of an old pal of mine,” replied Billiter. “Lady and all
that sort of thing. Her husband, poor old chap, came to grief—Dragoon
Guards—in the running for a title—went it too hot, you know—died
leaving her with nothing at all. She has pulled through, somehow—lives
in devilish good style, dresses expensively, and has the cleverness to
hang on to her social position. Damned nice woman—but as for her heart,
you could go at it with a pickaxe without risk of breaking it. I thought
she would just suit the case.”
“Where does the money come from to live in good style and dress
expensively?” asked Huckaby.
“Billiter thinks it might just as well come from Quixtus as from any one
else. Don’t you, Billiter?”
Billiter nodded sagaciously and gulped down some whisky and water.
“And then we’d all stand in,” cried Vandermeer.
“That may be all very well in its way,” said Huckaby, “but I’m not going
to give up my one chance of getting abroad.”
“Go abroad then,” retorted Vandermeer. “If the lady is of the kind I
take her to be, she won’t mind crossing the Channel when she knows
there’s a golden feathered coot in Boulogne just dying to moult in her
hand.”
“You are crude and vulgar in your ideas, Van,” said Huckaby. “Gentlemen
of Quixtus’s position no more go to Boulogne for a holiday than they
frequent Ramsgate boarding-houses. And they don’t give large sums of
money to expensively dressed ladies with conjecturable means of
support.”
“He’s such a fool that he would never guess anything,” argued
Vandermeer.
“Hold on,” said Billiter, “you’re on the wrong tack altogether. I told
you she was a lady.” His manner changed subtly, the moribund instinct of
birth crackling suddening into a tiny flame. “I don’t know if you two
quite realise what that means, but to Quixtus it would mean everything.”
“I’m a sometime Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge——” began
Huckaby, ruffled.
“Then you must have met a lady connected with somebody in your damned
Academy,” said Billiter, who had been sent down from Oxford.
“The University of Cambridge isn’t an Academy,” said Huckaby, waxing
quarrelsome.
“And a woman who subsists on gifts from her gentlemen friends can’t be a
real lady,” said Vandermeer.
“Oh go to blazes, both of you!” cried Billiter, angrily.
He clapped on his hat and rose. But as he had been sitting in the corner
of the divan, between Huckaby and Vandermeer, with the table in front of
him, a dignified exit was impracticable. Indeed, he was immediately
plumped down again on his seat by a tug on each side of his coat, and
adjured in the vernacular not to stray from the paths of wisdom.
“What’s the use of quarrelling?” asked Huckaby. “She’s a lady if you say
so.”
“Of course, old man,” Vandermeer agreed. “Have a drink?”
Billiter being mollified, and the refinement of the Dragoon Guardsman’s
widow being accepted as indisputable, a long and confidential conference
took place, the conspirators speaking in whispers, with heads close
together, although they happened to be alone in the saloon-bar. It was
the first time they had contemplated concerted action, the first time
they had discussed anything of real interest; so, for the first time
they forgot to get fuddled. The plot was simple. Billiter was to
approach Mrs. Fontaine (at last he disclosed the lady’s identity) with
all the delicacy such a mission demanded, and lay the proposal before
her. If she fell in with it she would hold herself in readiness to
repair to whatever Continental resort might be indicated, and then
having made herself known to Huckaby, would be introduced by him to
Quixtus. The rest would follow, as the night the day.
“The part I don’t like about it,” objected Vandermeer, “is not only
letting a fourth into our own private concern, but giving her the lion’s
share. We’re not a syndicate of philanthropists.”
“I’m by way of thinking it won’t be our concern much longer,” replied
Billiter.
“And nobody asked you to come in,” said Huckaby. “You can stand out if
you like.”
An ugly look overspread Vandermeer’s foxy face.
“Oh can I? You see what happens if you try that game on.”
“Besides,” continued Billiter, disregarding the snarl, “it will be to
our advantage. Which of us is going to touch our demented friend for a
hundred pounds? We didn’t do it in former days; much less now. But I’ll
back Mrs. Fontaine to get at least three thousand out of him. Thirty per
cent, is our commission without which we don’t play, and that gives us
three hundred each. I could do with three hundred myself very nicely.”
“How are we to know what she gets?”
“That’s easily managed,” said Huckaby, pulling his ragged beard. “She’ll
make her returns to Billiter and I’ll undertake to get the figures out
of Quixtus.”
“But where do I come in?” asked Vandermeer. “How shall I know if you two
are playing straight?”
“You’ll have your damned head punched in a minute,” said Billiter,
looking fierce. “To hear you one would think we were a set of crooks.”
“If we aren’t, what the devil are we, then?” muttered Vandermeer
bitterly.
But Billiter had turned his broad back on him and did not catch the
words, whereby possibly he escaped a broken head. Billiter was sometimes
sensitive on the point of honour. He had sunk to lower depths of
meanness and petty villainy than the other two in whom the moral sense
still lingered. He would acknowledge himself to be a “wrong ‘un” because
that vague term connoted in his mind merely a gentleman of broken
fortune who was put to shifts (such as his disastrous bargain with Old
Joe Jenks and the present conspiracy) for his living; but a crook was a
common thief or swindler, a member of the criminal classes, of a
confraternity to which he, Billiter, deemed it impossible that he could
belong, especially during a period like the present, when he found
himself, after many years of dingy linen, apparelled in the gorgeous
raiment of his gentlemanly days. He had sunk below the line of
self-realisation. But the others had not. Vandermeer, who hitherto had
merely snapped like a jackal at passing food to satisfy his hunger, did
not deceive himself as to what he had become. Cynical, he felt no
remorse. On the other hand, Huckaby, who went to bed that night sober,
had a bad attack of conscience during the small hours and woke up next
morning with a headache. Whereupon he upbraided himself for his folly;
first, in confiding to his companions the project of his whimsical
adventure; secondly, in allowing it to drift into such a despicable
entanglement; thirdly, in associating himself with a scarlet crustacean
of Billiter’s claw-power; and fourthly, in not getting drunk.
Huckaby was nearer Quixtus than the others in education and point of
view. Though willing to accept any alms thrown to him he was not
rapacious; he had not regarded his mad and wealthy patron entirely as a
pigeon to be plucked; and beneath all the corruption of his nature there
burnt a spark of affection for the kindly man who had befriended him and
whose trust he had betrayed. He spent most of the ineffectual day in
shaping a resolution to withdraw from the discreditable compact. But by
the last post in the evening he received a laconic postcard from
Billiter: “_The Fountain plays_.”
The sapped will-power gave way before the march of practical events.
With a shrug he accepted the message as a decree of destiny, and
wandered forth into congenial haunts, where, in one respect at least, he
did not repeat the folly of the previous evening.