“Captain of football my last year.”
“But, I say, it can’t be! Dressed like that, I mean.”
“It is.”
“Good heavens!”
“Good Lord!”
These two were men who had, in the matter of costume, a high standard.
Themselves snappy and conscientious dressers, they judged their fellows
hardly. Yet even an indulgent critic would have found it difficult not
to shake his head over the spectacle presented by Sam Shotter as he
walked the Strand that night.
The fact is it is not easy for a young man of adventurous and
inquisitive disposition to remain dapper throughout a voyage on a tramp
steamer. The _Araminta_, which had arrived at Millwall Dock that
afternoon, had taken fourteen days to cross the Atlantic, and during
those fourteen days Sam had entered rather fully into the many-sided
life of the ship. He had spent much time in an oily engine room; he had
helped the bos’n with a job of painting; he had accompanied the chief
engineer on his rambles through the coal bunkers; and on more than one
occasion had endeared himself to languid firemen by taking their shovels
and doing a little amateur stoking. One cannot do these things and be
foppish.
Nevertheless, it would have surprised him greatly had he known that his
appearance was being adversely criticised, for he was in that happy
frame of mind when men forget they have an appearance. He had dined
well, having as his guest his old friend Hash Todhunter. He had seen a
motion picture of squashy sex appeal. And now, having put Hash on an
eastbound tram, he was filled with that pleasant sense of well-being and
content which comes on those rare occasions when the world is just about
right. So far from being abashed by the shabbiness of his exterior Sam
found himself experiencing, as he strolled along the Strand, a
gratifying illusion of having bought the place. He felt like the young
squire returned from his travels and revisiting the old village.
Nor, though he was by nature a gregarious young man and fond of human
society, did the fact that he was alone depress him. Much as he liked
Hash Todhunter, he had not been sorry to part from him. Usually an
entertaining companion, Hash had been a little tedious to-night, owing
to a tendency to confine the conversation to the subject of a dog
belonging to a publican friend of his which was running in a whippet
race at Hackney Marshes next morning. Hash had, it seemed, betted his
entire savings on this animal, and not content with this, had pestered
Sam to lend him all his remaining cash to add to the investment. And
though Sam had found no difficulty in remaining firm, it is always a
bore to have to keep saying no.
The two exquisites looked at each other apprehensively.
“Shift ho, before he touches us, what?” said the first.
“Shift absolutely ho,” assented the second.
It was too late. The companion of their boyhood had come up, and after
starting to pass had paused, peering at them from under that dreadful
hat, which seemed to cut them like a knife, in the manner of one trying
to identify half-remembered faces.
“Bates and Tresidder!” he exclaimed at length. “By Jove!”
“Hullo,” said the first exquisite.
“Hullo!” said the second.
“Well, well!” said Sam.
There followed one of those awkward silences which so often occur at
these meetings of old schoolmates. The two exquisites were wondering
dismally when the inevitable touch would come, and Sam had just
recollected that these were two blighters whom, when _in statu
pupillari_, he had particularly disliked. Nevertheless, etiquette
demanded that a certain modicum of conversation be made.
“What have you been doing with yourselves?” asked Sam. “You look very
festive.”
“Been dining,” said the first exquisite.
“Old Wrykynian dinner,” said the second.
“Oh, yes, of course. It always was at this time of year, wasn’t it? Lots
of the lads there, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Good dinner?”
“Goodish,” said the first exquisite.
“Not baddish,” said the second.
“Rotten speeches, though.”
“Awful!”
“Can’t think where they dig these blokes up.”
“No.”
“That man Braddock.”
“Frightful.”
“Don’t tell me the old Bradder actually made a speech!” said Sam,
pleased. “Was he very bad?”
“Worst of the lot.”
“Absolutely!”
“That story about the Irishman.”
“Foul!”
“And all that rot about the dear old school.”
“Ghastly!”
“If you ask me,” said the first exquisite severely, “my opinion is that
he was as tight as an owl.”
“Stewed to the eyebrows,” said the second.
“I watched him during dinner and he was mopping up the stuff like a
vacuum cleaner.”
There was a silence.
“Well,” said the first exquisite uncomfortably, “we must be pushing on.”
“Dashing off,” said the second exquisite.
“Got to go to supper at the Angry Cheese.”
“The where?” asked Sam.
“Angry Cheese. New night-club in Panton Street. See you sometime, what?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sam.
Another silence was about to congeal, when a taxi crawled up and the two
exquisites leaped joyously in.
“Awful, a fellow going right under like that,” said the first.
“Ghastly,” said the second.
“Lucky we got away.”
“Yes.”
“He was shaping for a touch,” said the first exquisite.
“Trembling on his lips,” said the second.
Sam walked on. Although the Messrs. Bates and Tresidder had never been
favourites of his, they belonged to what Mr. Braddock would have
called--and, indeed, had called no fewer than eleven times in his speech
that night--the dear old school; and the meeting with them had left him
pleasantly stimulated. The feeling of being a _seigneur_ revisiting his
estates after long absence grew as he threaded his way through the
crowd. He eyed the passers-by in a jolly, Laughing Cavalier sort of way,
wishing he knew them well enough to slap them on the back. And when he
reached the corner of Wellington Street and came upon a disheveled
vocalist singing mournfully in the gutter, he could not but feel it a
personal affront that this sort of thing should be going on in his
domain. He was conscious of a sensation of being individually
responsible for this poor fellow’s reduced condition, and the situation
seemed to him to call for largess.
On setting out that night Sam had divided his money into two portions.
His baggage, together with his letter of credit, had preceded him across
the ocean on the _Mauretania_; and as it might be a day or so before he
could establish connection with it, he had prudently placed the bulk of
his ready money in his note-case, earmarking it for the purchase of new
clothes and other necessaries on the morrow so that he might be enabled
to pay his first visit to Tilbury House in becoming state. The
remainder, sufficient for the evening’s festivities, he had put in his
trousers pockets.
It was into his right trousers pocket therefore that he now groped. His
fingers closed on a half-crown. He promptly dropped it. He was feeling
_seigneurial_, but not so _seigneurial_ as that. Something more in the
nature of a couple of coppers was what he was looking for, and it
surprised him to find that except for the half-crown the pocket appeared
to be empty. He explored the other pocket. That was empty too.
The explanation was, of course, that the life of pleasure comes high.
You cannot go stuffing yourself and a voracious sea cook at restaurants,
taking buses and Underground trains all over the place, and finally
winding up at a cinema palace, without cutting into your capital. Sam
was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the half-crown was his
only remaining spare coin. He was, accordingly, about to abandon the
idea of largess and move on, when the vocalist, having worked his way
through You’re the Sort of a Girl That Men Forget, began to sing that
other popular ballad entitled Sailors Don’t Care. And it was no doubt
the desire to refute the slur implied in these words on the great
brotherhood of which he was an amateur member that decided Sam to be
lavish.
The half-crown changed hands.
Sam resumed his walk. At a quarter past eleven at night there is little
to amuse and interest the stroller east of Wellington Street, so he now
crossed the road and turned westward. And he had not been walking more
than a few paces when he found himself looking into the brightly lighted
window of a small restaurant that appeared to specialise in shellfish.
The slab beyond the glass was paved with the most insinuating oysters.
Overcome with emotion, Sam stopped in his tracks.
There is something about the oyster, nestling in its shell, which in the
hours that come when the theatres are closed and London is beginning to
give itself up to nocturnal revelry stirs right-thinking men like a
bugle. There swept over Sam a sudden gnawing desire for nourishment.
Oysters with brown bread and a little stout were, he perceived, just
what this delightful evening demanded by way of a fitting climax. He
pulled out his note-case. Even if it meant an inferior suit next
morning, one of those Treasury notes which lay there must be broken into
here and now.
It seemed to Sam, looking back later at this moment, that at the very
first touch the note-case had struck him as being remarkably thin. It
appeared to have lost its old jolly plumpness, as if some wasting fever
had struck it. Indeed, it gave the impression, when he opened it, of
being absolutely empty.
It was not absolutely empty. It is true that none of the Treasury notes
remained, but there was something inside--a dirty piece of paper on
which were words written in pencil. He read them by the light that
poured from the restaurant window:
“DEAR SAM,--You will doubtless be surprised, Sam, to learn that I
have borowed your money. Dear Sam, I will send it back tomorow A.M.
prompt. Nothing can beat that wipet, Sam, so I have borowed your
money.
“Trusting this finds you in the pink,
“Yrs. Obedtly,
“C. TODHUNTER.”
Sam stood staring at this polished communication with sagging jaw. For
an instant it had a certain obscurity, the word “wipet” puzzling him
particularly.
Then, unlike the missing money, it all came back to him.
The rush of traffic was diminishing now, and the roar of a few minutes
back had become a mere rumble. It was almost as if London, sympathising
with his sorrow, had delicately hushed its giant voice. To such an
extent, in fact, was its voice hushed that that of the Wellington Street
vocalist was once more plainly audible, and there was in what he was
singing a poignant truth which had not impressed itself upon Sam when he
had first heard it.
“Sailors don’t care,” chanted the vocalist. “Sailors don’t care. It’s
something to do with the salt in the blood. Sailors don’t care.”
CHAPTER FOUR
SCENE OUTSIDE FASHIONABLE NIGHT-CLUB
The mental condition of a man who at half past eleven at night suddenly
finds himself penniless and without shelter in the heart of the great
city must necessarily be for a while somewhat confused. Sam’s first
coherent thought was to go back and try to recover that half-crown from
the wandering minstrel. After a very brief reflection, however, he
dismissed this scheme as too visionary for practical consideration. His
acquaintance with the other had been slight, but he had seen enough of
him to gather that he was not one of those rare spiritual fellows who
give half-crowns back. The minstrel was infirm and old, but many years
would have to elapse before he became senile enough for that. No, some
solution on quite different lines was required; and, thinking deeply,
Sam began to move slowly in the direction of Charing Cross.
He was as yet far from being hopeless. Indeed, his mood at this point
might have been called optimistic; for he realised that, if this
disaster had been decreed by fate from the beginning of time--and he
supposed it had been, though that palmist had made no mention of it--it
could hardly have happened at a more convenient spot. The Old Wrykynian
dinner had only just broken up, which meant that this portion of London
must be full of men who had been at school with him and would doubtless
be delighted to help him out with a temporary loan. At any moment now he
might run into some kindly old schoolfellow.
And almost immediately he did. Or, rather, the old schoolfellow ran into
him. He had reached the Vaudeville Theatre and had paused, debating
within himself the advisability of crossing the street and seeing how
the hunting was on the other side, when a solid body rammed him in the
back.
“Oh, sorry! Frightfully sorry! I say, awfully sorry!”
It was a voice which had been absent from Sam’s life for some years, but
he recognised it almost before he had recovered his balance. He wheeled
joyfully round on the stout and red-faced young man who was with some
difficulty retrieving his hat from the gutter.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but you are extraordinarily like a man I used to
know named J. W. Braddock.”
“I am J. W. Braddock.”
“Ah,” said Sam, “that accounts for the resemblance.”
He contemplated his erstwhile study companion with affection. He would
have been glad at any time to meet the old Bradder, but he was
particularly glad to meet him now. As Mr. Braddock himself might have
put it, he was glad, delighted, pleased, happy and overjoyed. Willoughby
Braddock, bearing out the words of the two exquisites, was obviously in
a somewhat vinous condition, but Sam was no Puritan and was not offended
by this. The thing about Mr. Braddock that impressed itself upon him to
the exclusion of all else was the fact that he looked remarkably rich.
He had that air, than which there is none more delightful, of being the
sort of man who would lend a fellow a fiver without a moment’s
hesitation.
Willoughby Braddock had secured his hat, and he now replaced it in a
sketchy fashion on his head. His face was flushed, and his eyes, always
slightly prominent, seemed to protrude like those of a snail--and an
extremely inebriated snail, at that.
“Imarraspeesh,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” said Sam.
“I made a speesh.”
“Yes, so I heard.”
“You heard my speesh?”
“I heard that you had made one.”
“How did you hear my speesh?” said Mr. Braddock, plainly mystified. “You
weren’t at the dinner.”
“No, but----”
“You couldn’t have been at the dinner,” proceeded Mr. Braddock,
reasoning closely, “because evening dress was obliggery and you aren’t
obliggery. I’ll tell you what--between you and me, I don’t know who the
deuce you are.”
“You don’t know me?”
“No, I don’t know you.”
“Pull yourself together, Bradder. I’m Sam Shotter.”
“Sham Sotter?”
“If you prefer it that way certainly. I’ve always pronounced it Sam
Shotter myself.”
“Sam Shotter?”
“That’s right.”
Mr. Braddock eyed him narrowly.
“Look here,” he said, “I’ll tell you something--something that’ll
interest you--something that’ll interest you very much. You’re Sam
Shotter.”
“That’s it.”
“We were at school together.”
“We were.”
“The dear old school.”
“Exactly.”
Intense delight manifested itself in Mr. Braddock’s face. He seized
Sam’s hand and wrung it warmly.
“How are you, my dear old chap, how are you?” he cried. “Old Sham
Spotter, by gad! By Jove! By George! My goodness! Fancy that! Well,
good-bye.”
And with a beaming smile he suddenly swooped across the road and was
lost to sight.
The stoutest heart may have its black moments. Depression claimed Sam
for its own. There is no agony like that of the man who has intended to
borrow money and finds that he has postponed the request till too late.
With bowed shoulders, he made his way eastward. He turned up Charing
Cross Road, and thence by way of Green Street into Leicester Square. He
moved listlessly along the lower end of the square, and presently,
glancing up, perceived graven upon the wall the words, “Panton Street.”
He halted. The name seemed somehow familiar. Then he remembered. The
Angry Cheese, that haunt of wealth and fashion to which those fellows,
Bates and Tresidder, had been going, was in Panton Street.
Hope revived in Sam. An instant before, the iron had seemed to have
entered his soul, but now he squared his shoulder and quickened his
steps. Good old Bates! Splendid old Tresidder! They were the men to help
him out of this mess.
He saw clearly now how mistaken can be the callow judgments which we
form when young. As an immature lad at school, he had looked upon Bates
and Tresidder with a jaundiced eye. He had summed them up in his mind,
after the hasty fashion of youth, as ticks and blisters. Aye, and even
when he had encountered them half an hour ago after the lapse of years,
their true nobility had not been made plain to him. It was only now, as
he padded along Panton Street like a leopard on the trail, that he
realised what excellent fellows they were and how fond he was of them.
They were great chaps--corkers, both of them. And when he remembered
that with a boy’s blindness to his sterling qualities he had once given
Bates six of the juiciest with a walking stick, he burned with remorse
and shame.
It was not difficult to find the Angry Cheese. About this newest of
London’s night-clubs there was nothing coy or reticent. Its doorway
stood open to the street, and cabs were drawing up in a constant stream
and discharging fair women and well-tailored men. Furthermore, to render
identification easy for the very dullest, there stood on the pavement
outside a vast commissionaire, brilliantly attired in the full-dress
uniform of a Czecho-Slovakian field-marshal and wearing on his head a
peaked cap circled by a red band, which bore in large letters of gold
the words “Angry Cheese.”
“Good evening,” said Sam, curvetting buoyantly up to this spectacular
person. “I want to speak to Mr. Bates.”
The field-marshal eyed him distantly. The man, one would have said, was
not in sympathy with him. Sam could not imagine why. With the prospect
of a loan in sight, he himself was liking everybody.
“Misteroo?”
“Mr. Bates.”
“Mr. Yates?”
“Mr. Bates. Mr. Bates. You know Mr. Bates?” said Sam. And such was the
stimulating rhythm of the melody into which the unseen orchestra had
just burst that he very nearly added, “He’s a bear, he’s a bear, he’s a
bear.”
“Bates?”
“Or Tresidder.”
“Make up your mind,” said the field-marshal petulantly.
At this moment, on the opposite side of the street, there appeared the
figure of Mr. Willoughby Braddock, walking with extraordinary swiftness.
His eyes were staring straight in front of him. He had lost his hat.
“Bradder!” cried Sam.
Mr. Braddock looked over his shoulder, waved his hand, smiled a smile of
piercing sweetness and passed rapidly into the night.
Sam was in a state of indecision similar to that of the dog in the
celebrated substance-and-shadow fable. Should he pursue this
will-o’-the-wisp, or should he stick to the sound Conservative policy of
touching the man on the spot? What would Napoleon have done?
He decided to remain.
“Fellow who was at school with me,” he remarked explanatorily.
“Ho!” said the field-marshal, looking like a stuffed sergeant-major.
“And now,” said Sam, “can I see Mr. Bates?”
“You cannot.”
“But he’s in there.”
“And you’re out ’ere,” said the field-marshal.
He moved away to assist a young lady of gay exterior to alight from a
taxicab. And as he did so, someone spoke from the steps.
“Ah, there you are!”
Sam looked up, relieved. Dear old Bates was standing in the lighted
doorway.
Of the four persons who made up the little group collected about the
threshold of the Angry Cheese, three now spoke simultaneously.
Dear old Bates said, “This is topping! Thought you weren’t coming.”
The lady said, “Awfully sorry I’m late, old cork.”
Sam said, “Oh, Bates.”
He was standing some little space removed from the main body when he
spoke, and the words did not register. The lady passed on into the
building. Bates was preparing to follow her, when Sam spoke again. And
this time nobody within any reasonable radius could have failed to hear
him.
“Hi, Bates!”
“Hey!” said the field-marshal, massaging his ear with a look of reproach
and dislike.
Bates turned, and as he saw Sam, there spread itself over his face the
startled look of one who, wandering gayly along some primrose path, sees
gaping before him a frightful chasm or a fearful serpent or some
menacing lion in the undergrowth. In this crisis, Claude Bates did not
hesitate. With a single backward spring--which, if he could have
remembered it and reproduced it later on the dancing floor, would have
made him the admired of all--he disappeared, leaving Sam staring blankly
after him.
A large fat hand, placed in no cordial spirit on his shoulder, awoke Sam
from his reverie. The field-marshal was gazing at him with a loathing
which he now made no attempt to conceal.
“You ’op it,” said the field-marshal. “We don’t want none of your sort
’ere.”
“But I was at school with him,” stammered Sam. The thing had been so
sudden that even now he could not completely realise that what
practically amounted to his own flesh and blood had thrown him down
cold.
“At school with ’im too, was you?” said the field-marshal. “The only
school you was ever at was Borstal. You ’op it, and quick. That’s what
you do, before I call a policeman.”
Inside the night-club, Claude Bates, restoring his nervous system with a
whisky and soda, was relating to his friend Tresidder the tale of his
narrow escape.
“Absolutely lurking on the steps!” said Bates.
“Ghastly!” said Tresidder.
CHAPTER FIVE
PAINFUL AFFAIR AT A COFFEE-STALL
London was very quiet. A stillness had fallen upon it, broken only by
the rattle of an occasional cab and the footsteps of some home-seeking
wayfarer. The lamplight shone on glistening streets, on pensive
policemen, on smoothly prowling cats, and on a young man in a shocking
suit of clothes whose faith in human nature was at zero.
Sam had now no definite objective. He was merely walking aimlessly with
the idea of killing time. He wandered on, and presently found that he
had passed out of the haunts of fashion into a meaner neighbourhood. The
buildings had become dingier, the aspect of the perambulating cats more
sinister and blackguardly. He had in fact reached the district which, in
spite of the efforts of its inhabitants to get it called Lower
Belgravia, is still known as Pimlico. And it was near the beginning of
Lupus Street that he was roused from his meditations by the sight of a
coffee-stall.
It brought him up standing. Once more he had suddenly become aware of
that gnawing hunger which had afflicted him outside the oyster
restaurant. Why he should be hungry, seeing that not so many hours ago
he had consumed an ample dinner, he could not have said. A
psychologist, had one been present, would have told him that the pangs
of starvation from which he supposed himself to suffer were purely a
figment of the mind, and that it was merely his subconscious self
reacting to the suggestion of food. Sam, however, had positive inside
information to the contrary; and he halted before the coffee-stall,
staring wolfishly.
There was not a large attendance of patrons. Three only were present.
One was a man in a sort of uniform who seemed to have been cleaning
streets, the two others had the appearance of being gentlemen of
leisure. They were leaning restfully on the counter, eating hard-boiled
eggs.
Sam eyed them resentfully. It was just this selfish sort of
epicureanism, he felt, that was the canker which destroyed empires. And
when the man in uniform, wearying of eggs, actually went on to
supplement them with a slice of seedcake, it was as if he were watching
the orgies that preceded the fall of Babylon. With gleaming eyes he drew
a step closer, and was thus enabled to overhear the conversation of
these sybarites.
Like all patrons of coffee-stalls, they were talking about the Royal
family, and for a brief space it seemed that a perfect harmony was to
prevail. Then the man in uniform committed himself to the statement that
the Duke of York wore a moustache, and the gentlemen of leisure united
to form a solid opposition.
“’E ain’t got no moustache,” said one.
“Cert’n’ly ’e ain’t got no moustache,” said the other.
“Wot,” inquired the first gentleman of leisure, “made you get that
silly idea into your ’ead that ’e’s got a moustache?”
“’E’s got a smorl clipped moustache,” said the man in uniform stoutly.
“A smorl clipped moustache?”
“A smorl clipped moustache.”
“You say he’s got a smorl clipped moustache?”
“Ah! A smorl clipped moustache.”