Mr. Spokesly once said in so many words that he disbelieved utterly in
premonition. There was, he said, nothing in it. If there were, he
remarked, we should be different. When pressed, he admitted freely that
if we could read the signs we might get adequate warning of impending
events; but by the time we have gotten the experience we are too old to
bother about the future at all. This, of course, was when the war was
finished and Mr. Spokesly, with the rest of the Merchant Service, had
slipped back into that obscure neglect from which they had temporarily
emerged. The gist of his remarks, therefore, seems to bear out the view
that he had not the faintest notion, when he went ashore that evening in
Saloniki with the gifted and amusing Mr. Bates, that he was on the brink
of a fundamental change in his life. Looking back, he was almost induced
to imagine that it was someone else who came ashore with Mr. Bates, a
sort of distant relation, say, who had borrowed his body for the
evening. And he was inclined to admit that, assuming what the
philosophers say is true--that the only use of knowledge is for the
purpose of action--it would preserve our idealism if our subconscious
adumbrations could only be induced to function in a more emphatic
manner.
The reason for interjecting this sample of Mr. Spokesly's later
mentality is to be rid of any possible ambiguity. If Mr. Spokesly had
been nothing more than Mr. Bates's boon companion his story would not be
worth telling, there being obviously so many other more interesting
people in the world. We have seen that Mr. Spokesly himself was aware of
his real value, and had appealed to the London School of Mnemonics to
elucidate his latent self from the commonplace shell in which he strove.
The London School of Mnemonics responded nobly according to its
doctrines. It supplied him with an astonishing quantity of intellectual
fuel, so to say, but omitted to indicate how it was to be ignited.
Indeed, it is very singular how public and commercial organizations
continually lose sight of the fact that in the spiritual world
spontaneous combustion does not exist. And it is also true that the
stark and secular desires of a man's soul, however powerful they may be
to achieve a multiplicity of base ends, can do nothing for the man
himself unless they are illuminated and shot through by some grand
passion, whether of friendship, religion, or love. Which of these,
depends upon the man. Some fortunate beings are the exponents of all
three. Most of us, and Mr. Spokesly was one, are destined to know very
little of either friendship or religion. So much might have been
postulated. He was under no illusions as to his emotional resources. His
remark that he could fall in love with almost any girl, so long as she
had a bit o' money, was really a very fine declaration of extreme
modesty. The virtuous are less humble. They lay extravagant claims to
the privilege of having an ideal. Mr. Spokesly, as he sat beside Mr.
Bates, who was smiling to himself in the darkness, watched the flashing
lights of the Place de la Liberté grow larger and larger; and, as the
din of the traffic reached his ears, experienced that feeling of
pleasant and passive receptivity which he learned in time to know as the
inevitable precursor of some momentous change.
Not so Mr. Bates, who smiled in the darkness. Mr. Bates was one of those
human beings who manifest the shadowless and unwinking intelligence of
the lower animals. The past, to Mr. Bates, was a period in which he had
done well. The future was a period in which he would do well. Between
these two delectable countries Mr. Bates moved gently along, a slightly
intoxicated optimist. The perils of the sea and of war, the hatred of
man or the wrath of God made no conscious impression upon Mr. Bates at
all. Any of them might crush him at any moment, but he proceeded
steadily upon his predatory way very much as a spider crossing a path
proceeds until some careless but omnipotent passer crushes it beneath
his heel. His attitude towards the gigantic engines of human destiny,
which preoccupy most of us so much, was expressed in the pussy-cat smile
in the darkness--a smile unseen and undesired.
"We'll go into Floka's first," he remarked, as the boat bumped the
marble steps between the kiosks of the Place. He stood up, and his smile
was illuminated by the sizzling glare of the arc lights along the quay,
a smile that was, as we have said, fitted on over his face, and which
bobbed up and down in obedience to the rhythmic undulations of the boat
in the water. They waited for a moment until the Greek had made fast,
and then stepped ashore.
"Why, is that a good place?" enquired Mr. Spokesly.
"Oh, yes. The _best_ place. My friend, he goes there often. By and by,
of course, we'll go along and see the talent. I'll show you, my boy.
Believe me...." They crossed the car lines and walked towards the café
which Mr. Bates's friend honoured. Floka's was full. The little tables
outside were thickly populated with gentlemen engaged in the national
pastime of cigarette-smoking and coffee-drinking, and the grandiose
interior, as severe and lofty and dirty as a Balkan politician, was
thick with smoke and murmurous with conversation and the consumption of
food. Mr. Bates led the way to a far corner where a long thin man, his
frock coat falling away open from a heavily brocaded vest with onyx
buttons, and his scarlet tarboosh on one side of his head, was lolling
on the crimson plush cushions. In one hand he held the stem of an
amber-mouthed _narghileh_. On the table was an empty coffee cup and a
glass of mastic. Across his long thin thighs lay a Greek newspaper. He
was reclining completely inert, gazing moodily across the crowded
restaurant. The alteration in his demeanour when he became aware of Mr.
Bates standing before him was dramatic. It was as though he had suddenly
seen a very funny joke and had been subjected to an electric current of
high voltage at the same time. He sprang to his feet with extraordinary
animation, and his face was contorted from a sombre melancholy to what
seemed to be an almost demoniac joy. It would be a solecism to say he
looked as though a fortune had been left him. No one was at all likely
to leave Mr. Dainopoulos a fortune. No one had ever left anything of
value within his reach without regretting it extremely. It will suffice
to say that his features registered a certain degree of pleasure upon
seeing Mr. Bates.
"Why, my dear friend!" he exclaimed in a sort of muffled scream, and he
wrung the honest hand of Mr. Bates as though that gentleman had only
that moment rescued him from a combination of drowning and bankruptcy.
"And how are you? Sit down if you please. What will you have to drink?
You must be--what you call it?--dry. Ha-ha! Sit down. This is good luck.
Your friend? I am very pleased. Sit down please. Here!" He clapped his
hands with frightful vehemence, and held up a distracted waiter who was
in full flight towards a distant table with a loaded tray. Mr.
Dainopoulos, gently pressing Mr. Bates and Mr. Spokesly into two chairs,
addressed the waiter as Herakles and gave him an order which sounded to
his guests like a loose board being ripped forcibly from a nailed-up
box. Mr. Spokesly, sitting immediately opposite this monster of
hospitality, was not favourably impressed. Mr. Dainopoulos rarely
impressed people favourably at first. The long emaciated face had the
texture of the uppers of an old buckskin shoe. The bloodshot brown eyes
in their reddened sockets seemed in danger of falling into the great
pouches of loose skin below them. The mouth, full of sharp yellow teeth
and open as though about to yawn, had been slit back to the salience of
the jaw at some time and had been sewn up in a sketchy fashion indicated
by a white zig-zag scar like a flash of lightning. As he talked this
scar worked with disconcerting vivacity. Mr. Spokesly turned with relief
to the whiskies and sodas which appeared, borne by the industrious
Herakles.
"And how is business?" asked Mr. Bates, having lifted his glass and set
it down empty. Beyond three or four sherries and bitters and a glass of
gin and vermouth, before coming ashore, he had drunk nothing all day. He
was thirsty. "And how is business?"
A simple question. And yet Mr. Dainopoulos did not render a simple
answer. He regarded Mr. Bates for a moment and then turned his head
cautiously to right and left. Preserving an impressive silence he caught
Mr. Spokesly's eyes and smiled, taking a suck at his _narghileh_. It was
at this juncture that two French naval officers, seated at a distant
table and smoking cigarettes in long ivory holders (to keep the smoke
from their beards), exchanged opinions upon the folly of their British
allies in permitting the officers of ships to come ashore in civilian
attire.
"You are quite sure, of course, that they _are_ officers of a
transport?" said the elder, observing with attention.
"Quite, my commandant. From the _Tanganyika_, arrived to-day. The little
one I know well. The other I observed upon the forecastle as she
anchored."
"But what are they doing in company with _him_?"
The lieutenant raised his shoulders.
"I imagine, my commandant, that they do a little business in hashish.
But in any case it is not what you imagine. The English do not spy."
"But Dainopoulos may use them, eh?"
"Impossible, my commandant. You do not know them. I do. As you are
aware, I was in the Crédit Lyonnais in Lombard Street. If Mr.
Dainopoulos attempted to enlist their services they would batter his
head in with his own _narghileh_. They have no compunction about robbing
their government by peculation, but treachery is not their _métier_. And
our friend knows it quite well."
"Business," observed Mr. Dainopoulos suddenly, "is very bad."
Mr. Bates seemed very amused at this and leaned over the dirty
marble-topped table.
"Count us both in, my friend here and me, for the same as last time. How
about it, eh?"
"Oh!" Mr. Dainopoulos pulled his extended frame up and put his elbows on
the table, his eyes blinking quickly. "Oh, that's all right. Yes,
certainly. But I mean to say business is very bad. You would not believe
me, Mister, but the chances that are going, and all for a little
management, are lost! Incredible! Only this week"--here he lowered his
voice so that Mr. Spokesly, who was listening with undivided attention,
scarcely gathered the words--"only this week, I could have made--ah,
much money--if I had with me an Englishman who knows the business. Ten
thousand drachma, easy as that!" Mr. Dainopoulos snapped his fingers
without a sound and looked depressed.
Mr. Bates did not look depressed. His smile evaporated and he looked
down his nose into his moustache with an expression of ruffled
propriety.
"I must say----" he began, and added, after a pause, "'Course we hadn't
arrived, but I should 'ave thought, seein' we was due here, you might
have counted on me."
Mr. Dainopoulos regarded Mr. Bates as though he were sizing him up for
the first time and found him to amount to an almost negligible quantity.
And then he shook his head.
"No," he murmured in a muffled tone. "That's not what I meant. What I
wanted--too late now, of course--was a Kapitan."
Mr. Bates, touching Mr. Spokesly's foot with his own, emitted a snigger
right in the face of Mr. Dainopoulos.
"And what about it?" he queried, impudently. "My friend here's got a
master's ticket. What's the matter with him? I'm surprised----"
He was. To Mr. Bates it was unpleasant to discover that Mr. Dainopoulos
should doubt his ability to cope with any situation which involved a
financial reward. That gentleman, however, was not exclusively
preoccupied with Mr. Bates and his emotions. He turned immediately to
Mr. Spokesly who sat quietly twisting his glass of whiskey on the marble
table. The pale, prominent, and bloodshot brown eyes examined Mr.
Spokesly with passionless attention. Mr. Dainopoulos had filled many
posts in his career. Quite apart from his participation in what he
discreetly alluded to as "the wars," he had rendered some slight
assistance to the builders of the Panama Canal as stoker on an
excavator, he had worked in a felt-hat factory in Newark, New Jersey; he
had been a waiter in a Greek café near Franklin Square, New York; he had
held the position of clerk in the warehouse of a Turkish tobacco
importer in London; and he had also been an assistant purser in one of
the Roumanian Lloyd mail steamers which used to run from Costanza to
Alexandria. He was one of those people who, as the saying is, "could
write a book," which means they can do or have done almost everything
except write a book. Such people are rarely of a literary turn. Mr.
Dainopoulos certainly was not. But he had one faculty which, if literary
people only knew it, is of use even in literature. He could size a man
up. By a natural turn of judgment, so necessary to success in his
business as a "general merchant and exporter" coupled with ceaseless
practice, he had acquired a skill in sizing up which seemed as
effortless and intuitive as the driving of a fine golfer or the
wrist-work of a professional billiard player. The London School of
Mnemonics could teach Mr. Dainopoulos nothing about practical
psychology. He might even have given them some useful hints. In the
present instance he was not at a loss. He waited, however, for Mr.
Spokesly to make some comment.
"That's right enough," said the latter, leaning forward and smiling.
"But I'd have to know a little more of the game, you understand? There's
a war on, you know. Can't be too careful."
"True," assented Mr. Dainopoulos reflectively and keeping his prominent
eyes fixed upon Mr. Spokesly. "You do not wish, then, to take a chance?"
"Oh, a _chance_!" Mr. Spokesly achieved a certain irony as he emphasized
the last word. "Your ideas of a chance and mine might be different.
S'pose we have another drink."
The watchful Herakles came near as Mr. Spokesly lifted his hand, and
took the order.
The fact was--and it may be presumed that Mr. Dainopoulos perceived it
sufficiently well to make allowance for it--that Mr. Spokesly, as he sat
beside Archy Bates and listened to the conversation, had experienced a
sudden access of caution. Archy was not drunk, and as far as was humanly
known, never would be really drunk; but he was sufficiently saturated to
raise a certain distrust in the mind of a perfectly sober man. It may
even be said that while Mr. Spokesly had no clear intention of deserting
his chum Archy, he was beginning to wish that Archy were not
indispensable in any scheme that might be proposed. And the occasional
looks that various British and French officers cast in their direction
made Mr. Spokesly uneasy. He suddenly realized the other aspect of
making money in a shady fashion: that one has to do business with shady
people. Mr. Dainopoulos, for example, looked extremely shady. Archy
Bates, his long, sharp nose buried in a fresh whiskey and soda, his hat
pushed back revealing the oiled graying hair parted in the middle and
slicked back above his ears with their purple veins; Archy, picking
dreamily among the pieces of fish and beetroot which had been served on
little dishes with the drinks, looked extraordinarily like a rat picking
at garbage. All very well, Mr. Spokesly reflected, to buy hashish and
sell it in Egypt at four or five hundred per cent. profit, so long as
the business could be transacted in a gentlemanly manner. But this new
development--he did not see his way clear to accepting Mr. Dainopoulos
as an employer. He was not fastidious--he had worked for a Chinese ship
owner--but the officers at the other tables, in their inconceivably
correct uniforms and polished harness, made him uneasy. Mr. Spokesly
knew perfectly well that these people did not consider him as one of
themselves. Even amid the noise and chaffering of a Saloniki café,
rubbing shoulders with the uniforms of French, Greek, Serbian, Russian,
and Italian officers, these men of his own race, he knew, never forgot
the abyss that separates the seafaring man from themselves, the social
_crevasse_ which even Armageddon was powerless to abolish. Nevertheless,
he felt he could never abandon for ever the possibility of entering,
some day, the magic circle. It is this peculiarity of the English
temperament which so often paralyses its victim at the very moment when
he needs to be in possession of all his faculties, when the chance,
perhaps of a lifetime, suddenly appears at his elbow.
But Mr. Dainopoulos, as has been said, could size a man up. He was
intuitively aware that he had made no great impression upon Mr.
Spokesly. And he had a special desire, now that chance had thrown them
together, to engage the interest of a skilled navigator. He had received
an offer which might result in a very large profit indeed. The business
to which he had been referring, a mere matter of running a small cargo
of canned goods down to a certain island and transferring it to an
Austrian submarine, was a trifle. One could do that every day, right
under the noses and beards of a dozen French naval officers. This was a
much bigger affair. It involved the sale, at huge profit, of one of his
little steamers which he had purchased for a song from the French early
in the war, but it also involved the safe conduct of the vessel into an
enemy port. His friends in Anatolia might compensate him ultimately for
the destruction of his ship by an Allied warship and the crew could look
out for themselves; but if the captain lost her by grounding, it would
be a disaster of the first magnitude. All this passed through the nimble
mind of Mr. Dainopoulos while Mr. Spokesly waited for further light on
the nature of the service required. He saw the difficulty and, knowing
the English character, he took his measure accordingly. He smiled.
"You come to my house and have some supper?" he remarked. "My wife would
be pleased, I'm sure."
Mr. Spokesly looked at Archy Bates. That gentleman was no longer paying
attention. In his own peculiar fashion he had arrived at some sort of
intuitive recognition of the fact that Mr. Dainopoulos had no intention
of letting him in on this affair. Well, that was all right, Mr. Bates
reflected in one of those appallingly clear and coherent moments which
suddenly open in the mentality of dipsomaniacs. That was all right. They
were making a lot of money. Big risk for him, by Jove! but he was
willing to shoulder it. By Jove! That last time in Port Said, when the
police rushed into his cabin not five minutes after the laundryman, who
also took his rake-off, had carried the stuff ashore in a boat-load of
dirty sheets. It was a near thing. Two hundred quid he had netted over
that, paid in Turkish gold. And they had found the bit of burlap in
which it had been wrapped. He saw the chief of police now, standing
there, in his bright red fez, and white uniform, legs apart, holding the
thing to his nose. Hashish, by Jove! A close call! "What's this?" Mr.
Bates jumped and made the table shake. Mr. Spokesly was speaking. For a
moment he had forgotten where he was. Little beads of sweat stood out on
his forehead. He smiled with relief.
"Shall we go?" repeated Mr. Spokesly. Somewhat to his surprise, Mr.
Bates shook his head. He was still smiling with relief, for that brief
moment, during which his consciousness had slipped back a couple of
months, as it were, and reënacted the scene in his cabin, had been very
real. Five years in an Egyptian penitentiary missed by five minutes and
a quick-witted explanation! While he shook his head and smiled into Mr.
Spokesly's face he was thinking that he would take twice as much this
time, and he knew where to hide it. Moreover, and he smiled more like a
cat than ever, the millions of lines round his eyes deepening, he
reflected that if Mr. Spokesly went in on this there was practically no
risk at all. Nothing easier than to say----Eh, what? No! He was going
along to the Amphitryon, to see a little friend of his. See them later.
Aw--ri!
It was a notable feature of Mr. Bates's temperamental failing that it
never affected his legs. In earlier years, as a saloon waiter, he had
often astounded his shipmates by getting as drunk as a lord before
dinner, and yet going down the long dining saloon of a great liner, a
plate of soup in each hand, and depositing them in front of passengers
in evening dress, without ever an accident. Perhaps his demeanour was a
shade more deliberate, his attention a trifle more abstracted, on these
occasions; that was all. And now, as he rose and went towards the door
of Floka's, after a dignified farewell to Mr. Dainopoulos, although an
occasional wandering eye fastened upon him for a moment, Mr. Bates never
betrayed himself. He paused courteously at the door while a major with
his brigadier in tow passed in, monocles reflecting the light in a blind
white glare so that they resembled Cyclops, and then he walked out
gently himself, and was immediately lost in the noise and bustle of the
Place.
Mr. Dainopoulos looked at Mr. Spokesly and thrust a thumb into the
armhole of his coat.
"Your friend," he began in a low mutter, "him and me we do big
business--you understand?--but all the same he drink too much highball.
No good, eh?"
"Well," said Mr. Spokesly, "he's his own master, and he can please
himself about that. To tell the truth, though, if there's anything
in--what you were speaking of, I'd just as soon he wasn't in it. You see
what I mean?" Mr. Dainopoulos nodded and drew at his _narghileh_. "He's
a friend of mine, and very good friend, too, but we got to draw a line
somewhere." Again Mr. Dainopoulos nodded as he leaned across the table.
"And another thing!" he remarked in his muffled tones, and he held the
mouthpiece of the _narghileh_ just in front of his lips as though it
were a speaking tube and he was engaged in conversation with someone at
the other end. He even cast his eyes down, and seemed to abandon Mr.
Spokesly entirely. "And another thing. Mr. Bates, he very fond--you
know--very fond of the _mademoiselles_. That's all right. If you like
them, very good. But Mr. Bates, he comes all the time to me. Want
me--you understand? Now, I do no business in that line, none at all. I
don't like it. Plenty men tell you, 'Oh, yes, you come with me.' You
understand? But me, I got my family to think about. _Now_ you
understand?"
"It is not respectable," added Mr. Dainopoulos in a deep tone, and
relapsed into silence and the _narghileh_.
Mr. Spokesly did not reply. Even when they had left the café and were
being driven along the _quai_ in the direction of the White Tower, on
their left the dazzle and noise of _cafés-chantant_ and cinemas, on
their right the intense darkness of the Gulf, he did no more than
acquiesce in what Mr. Dainopoulos was saying. For to tell the truth, Mr.
Spokesly was making certain readjustments within himself. Neither Mr.
Bates nor Mr. Dainopoulos was of vital importance to the growth of his
soul, yet they come in here. They were backgrounds on which were
silhouetted combinations novel to him. He had to find room in his mind
for the conception of a shady person who cultivated the domestic
virtues. Mr. Spokesly might be a man of inferior calibre, easily swayed
by the prospect of easy money, but his mind swung naturally to the
equilibriums of respectability. "All that," as he called it, "was a
thing o' the past." He was tired of the shabby and meretricious byways
he had frequented, in moderation, for so long. With more knowledge of
introspection he would have known this as one of the signs of coming
change. Coming events are very often a glorified reincarnation of dead
desires. Dreams come true. Fortunate men recognize them in time.
"Your family?" said Mr. Spokesly, and the man beside him turned towards
him and said:
"When I say 'family' I mean 'my wife.'"
Mr. Spokesly had no definite image in his mind of the domestic
arrangements of a man like Mr. Dainopoulos. The scarlet tarboosh on that
gentleman's head leaned the Englishman's fancy to a harem. In any case,
the Island Race imagine that every Levantine who wears a fez is a Turk,
that every Turk is a polygamist, and finally that polygamy implies a
score or two of wives locked up in cupboards. But the tone in which Mr.
Dainopoulos uttered the word "wife" precluded anything of this sort. It
was a tone which Mr. Spokesly immediately comprehended. It was the tone
in which Englishmen refer to their most valued possession and their
embodied ideals. There is no mistaking it. There is nothing like it in
the world. It is a tone implying an authorized and expurgated edition of
the speaker's emotional odyssey.
"And so," he went on, "you can see how I don't want to get mixed up in
any of these here places." And he opened his hand towards the subdued
glare of the cafés and dance halls. Mr. Spokesly saw. He saw also, in
imagination, Archy Bates sitting, hand to moustache, amid the
chalk-faced hetairai of Saloniki, second-rate harpies who had had their
day on the Parisian _trottoirs_, and who had been shipped by a
benevolent government to assuage the ennui of the _Armée d'Orient_. He
saw them from time to time with his physical eyes, too, as they came to
the doors of their refuges and, setting off to visit confederates, flung
a glance of shrewd appraisal towards the passing vehicle.
"Yes," he muttered. "I see, Mr.--Mr.----"
"Dainopoulos," said that gentleman.
"Mr. Dainopoulos, I'm no saint, y'understand, but all the same--well, a
man wants something, y'understand? Besides," added Mr. Spokesly, "'twixt
you an' me an' the stern-post, I'm engaged."
"You don't tell me!" exclaimed Mr. Dainopoulos in that peculiarly
gratifying fashion which seemed to imply that this was the first
betrothal announced since the Fall of Constantinople. "You don't
tell--and I bet you what you like she's English, eh?"
"Yes, she's English all right," said Mr. Spokesly, feeling somewhat
embarrassed by his friend's triumphant cordiality. "Pretty safe bet,
that," he added as the carriage stopped in front of a black, solid
wooden gate in a high yellow wall.
"Safe enough?" laughed Mr. Dainopoulos, not quite seizing the point
intended. "Why, sure! Englishwomen are the best of all. I ought to know.
Ha-ha!" and he slapped Mr. Spokesly's knee while his other hand sought
the price of the ride. Mr. Spokesly failed to appreciate this approval
of Englishwomen. A suspicion shot through his mind. He looked at the
dark gate in the yellow wall. What, precisely, did this man mean by that
last remark? Was all this talk of family and so forth a blind? Was he,
Mr. Spokesly, on the brink of an adventure? It must be confessed that he
would not have objected to that; but his gorge rose in spite of him at
the reference to Englishwomen.
"I don't quite understand," he remarked in a low tone. "How do you
happen to know so much about 'em?"
Mr. Dainopoulos laughed again and handed the fare to the driver. He
stepped out, held a bunch of keys to the light of the carriage lamp, and
selected one. Then he beckoned to Mr. Spokesly to alight.
"I'll tell you, Mister," he said, as he stooped, inserted the key,
turned it, and pushed open the gate. "Because I married one myself."