“You’d get used to it, Robert, you’d get used to it, if you’d lived
familiar with it all your life, as I have.”
“Ah!” said Gardener, “but I wasn’t born like you, sir, to shine.”
If he meant that the other was a light in his way—a little tallowy,
perhaps—his own dry, hungry cheeks certainly justified him in the
self-depreciation. They justified him, moreover—or he fancied they
did, which was all the same as to the moral—in continuing to act
jackal to this social lion, who had once been his employer in the
cheap furniture-removal line. He lived—hung, it would seem more
apposite to say—on his traditions of the great man’s business
capacities, capacities whose fruits were here to witness, for evidence
of the competence upon which his principal had retired. He got, in
fact, little else than his traditions out of his former master at this
date; yet it was strange how they served to delude him into a belief
in his continued profit at the hands of the old patronage. The moral
benefit he acquired from stealing into the local chapel to hear Mr.
Plumley take a Sunday-school class, was at least worth as much to him
as the occasional pipe of tobacco, or glass of whisky and water, which
his idol vouchsafed him. For Mr. Gardener, as a true ‘poor relation’
of the gods, was humbly thankful for their cheapest condescensions.
“You stuck to your principles, sir,” he said, standing on one leg and
the toe of the other, in humble deprecation of his right to any but
the smallest possible allowance of oilcloth. Perhaps he would have
brought his foot down, even he, could he have guessed the true
significance of his own remark.
“I did, Robert,” said Mr. Plumley, placidly sleeking his hair. “I
always do. Have a pipe, Robert?”
“Thank you kindly, sir,” said the man. “That was a mistake you made,
sir.”
“Mistakes,” said Mr. Plumley, “will occur. Have some whisky, Robert?”
“You’re very good, sir.”
“You don’t like it too strong, I think, Robert? And how’s the world
treating you, my friend?”
“Much as usual, sir. From hand to mouth’s my motto.”
“Sad, sad to be sure. They’ll distrain upon me, I suppose.”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“The inhumanity of the world, Robert! You do pretty reg’lar porter’s
work for Bull and Hacker, the auctioneers, don’t you, Robert?”
“That’s so, Mr. Plumley,” said the man, wondering. “But the work’s
heavier than the wages.”
“They’ll be commissioned to seize the necessary goods. I wish you’d
manage to give ’em a hint, Robert—over the left, you know, without
any reference to me—that there’s a picture I prize (and that I’ve
reason to believe a dealer is after), what would more than pay the two
pun odd of the distraint if put up first. O’ course, I can’t appear to
favour the matter myself, being a con——”
“Passive resister, sir.”
“Thank you, Robert; being the one most concerned in disputin’ the
justice of the law. But a hint from you might settle the question at
once. We aren’t very good friends, Bull and me; and, if he thought I
prized the article, he’d be moral sure to seize it, slap away, to
spite me.”
“The picter?”
“The picture, Robert. There it is.”
It hung in an obscure corner, a dingy enough article, in an old
damaged frame.
“It don’t look the price,” said Gardener doubtfully.
“It cost me more in a bad debt,” said the ex-remover, busying himself
with the whisky in his heavy, observant way.
“Very like, sir,” answered the other, and coughed behind his hand.
“I know what you mean,” said his patron; “that I was took in. Well,
I’ve reason to think not, my man. I’ve reason to think that picture’s
worth a deal—say, fifty pun. Anyhow, I mean to try.”
“A dealer’s after it, you say?”
“Yes, I do say.”
“Then why—with deference, sir—don’t you sell direct to him?”
“Why don’t I? Am I a man of business, Robert? Look about you. Have I
learned, do you think, to take a hexpert’s word as to the precise
vally of a article that I see his heye’s on, or to argy by induction
that a good private offer means a better public one? When it comes to
overreaching—hem!—a connoyser’s a man like myself; so we’ll just, by
your leave, put the picture up to auction.”
He carried the decanter back to its place in one of the shiny
cupboards.
“Besides, my friend,” said he, talking over his shoulder, “don’t you
see as how my conscience demands this seizure?”
“Not quite, sir, _with_ humility, if so be as——”
“You’re dense, Robert. Look here, I’m a conscientious resister, ain’t
I? Law ain’t necessarily equity because the devil and Mr. Chamberlain
frames it. There’s some lawgivers that are Vicars of Jehovah, and some
of——but perhaps you’ve never heard of Abaddon?”
“_Haven’t_ I?” said Mr. Gardener ruefully. “I was near run in once for
tendering one as had been passed on me.”
“He was king of the bottomless pit,” said Mr. Plumley patiently. “_He_
framed this here law what’s made a passive objector of me. Well, if,
in resigning myself to his unjust processes, I force the
picture-dealer’s hand, thereby making a profit elsewise denied me,
don’t you see how I round on the law—triumph over it—kill two birds
with one stone, as it might be?”
“Yes, sir; I see that,” said Mr. Gardener, though still doubtfully.
“You do, do you?” responded the other. “Well, then, the only thing is
to make the law pay as heavy as possible by getting the picture run up
to the dealer’s figure.”
“But the law wouldn’t go for more’n its two pun odd,” protested the
jackal.
“O, you fool!” snarled the lion. “It’s the moral profit’s the game,
don’t you see? _I_ gain by the very hact what starts of itself to ruin
me. It’s as plain as two pins.”
Mr. Gardener scratched his head, and broke into a short laugh.
“Bless you sir,” said he, “it’s clear enough; if on’y you’ll tell me
who in all this here place is a-going to run up the dealer, since you
can’t yourself.”
Mr. Plumley, bending at the cupboard, did not answer for a moment.
When at last he did, rising and facing round, there was a curious
pallor on his lips, and he had to clear his throat before he could
articulate—
“You, Robert.”
“Me, sir! You’re joking.”
“Never less so, Robert.”
“I ain’t worth a sixpence in the world, sir.”
The ex-remover walked shakily across, and put a flabby, insinuative
hand on the other’s shoulder.
“I think I may say I’ve been a good friend to you, Robert?”
Gardener muttered an uneasy affirmative.
“To justify a great principle, Robert? It’s a mere matter of form;
it’s——humph! A moment, if you please. Think of it while I’m gone.”
A rap at the front door had obtruded itself. Mr. Plumley tiptoed
elephantinely out, was heard murmuring a few minutes in the hall, and
returned shortly in a state of suavely perspiring mystery.
“It’s the dealer himself, Robert,” he whispered, his little eyes
twinkling. “He’s come to make another attempt. I’ll humour him—humour
him, never fear. Now, you must be quick. Will you do this little thing
to oblige me?”
“Supposing I were let in, sir?”
Mr. Plumley coughed.
“I guarantee you, of course. It’s just a confidence between us. Go to
fifty pound—not a penny less nor more—and let him take it at any
figure he likes, beyond. He won’t fail you. You’ll do it, Robert?”
“I don’t favour the job, sir.”
“But you’ll do it?”
“Well, yes, then.”
Mr. Plumley showed him out, returned to the parlour, finished his
whisky and water, and called in the dealer from some hidden corner of
the hall where he had lain concealed. He had braced his nerves in the
interval. His attitude all at once was scowling and truculent—meet
for the reception of the shabby loafer who now presented himself.
“What are you grinning at, sir?” he roared. “This ain’t the face to
bring to business.”
“O! isn’t it?” said the man. “Then I’ll change it——” which he did,
so suddenly and terrifically that the other cowered. The stranger
snorted, and relaxed.
“What now, minion?” said he.
“Bah!” snarled Mr. Plumley: “it comes easy to a barnstormer.”
“Roscius, ye fat old Philistine,” cried the actor, striking his breast
with a ragged-gloved hand: “Roscius, thou ‘villainous, obscene, greasy
tallow-ketch!’”
“Well,” said Mr. Plumley, wiping his brow, “I meant no offence,
anyhow. Have a drink?”
The stranger breathed heavily, and assumed a Napoleonic pose.
“I will have a drink,” he said; and, in fact, before he would
condescend to utter another word, he had two.
“Ha!” he said then, ejaculating a little spirituous cloud, and his
lean, pantomimic face was all at once benign. “Richard’s himself
again, and eager for the fray! To the charge, my passive resister, my
heavy lead! Ye need Theophilus Bolton! Ye must pay!”
“As to that there,” began Mr. Plumley, stuttering and glowering; but
the other took him up coolly——
“As to that, dear boy, there’s no question. You’ve withheld me from a
profitable engagement——”
“O, blow profitable!” interposed Mr. Plumley. “And you didn’t jump at
the chanst neither!”
“To play a part for you,” went on the actor unruffled “Well, am I to
be Agnew, or Christie, or Sotheby, or who? My commission’s five per
cent.”
“Well, I don’t object to that,” said Plumley, relieved. “On the vally
of the picture to Gardener, that’s to say. Call it done, and call
yourself what you like.”
“One man in his time plays many parts,” murmured Mr. Bolton. “Put it
on paper, dear boy. I have a weakness for testaments.”
Mr. Plumley protested; the actor whistled. In the end, the latter
pocketed a document to the effect that Joshua Plumley agreed to pay
Theophilus Bolton a sum to be calculated at the rate of five per cent
on the ultimate selling price at auction (on a date hereafter to be
filled in) of a picture known as the “The Wood Shop.”
“You’ll be close?” said Mr. Plumley uneasily. “It might—it might
injure me, you know, if it got about. Short o’ fifty pound’s the
figger—you understand? Let Gardener secure it at that. I’ve my
reasons. You come to me quick and quiet after the sale, and you shall
have your two pound ten on the nail, and slip off with it as private
as you wish.”
Now, what was Plumley’s little game? And wasn’t he anyhow a good man
of business?
He was at least such a sure student of human nature as to have made no
miscalculation in the matter of Bull and Hacker’s predilections. They
seized, on the strength of Mr. Gardener’s artful insinuations, the
very picture on which the defaulter was supposed to set a value, and
put it up to sale one afternoon on the tail of a general auction. Mr.
Gardener bid for it (the practice was common enough amongst the firm’s
employés, acting for private clients, and Bull rather admired the
man’s astuteness in having suggested a seizure so prospectively
profitable to himself), and a strange dealer opposed him. They ran one
another up merrily, and the room gaped and sniggered and whispered. It
was an afternoon of surprises.
“Forty-six,” cried the auctioneer—“any advance on forty-six?”
A local lawyer, Bittern by name, was observed pushing his way through
the crowd.
“Good Lord!” he was muttering; “is the man daft!”
“Forty-seven,” said the dealer.
“Forty-eight,” bawled Gardener.
“Forty-nine,” said the dealer monotonously.
“Fifty!” cried Gardener stoutly; and hung on the bid which was to quit
and relieve him.
It did not come.
The auctioneer raised his stereotyped wail: It was giving the lot
away; a chance like that might never occur again; let him say
fifty-one. “Come, gentlemen! Shall I say fifty-one? No?” He would sell
at fifty, then—sell this unique work at the low figure of fifty
pounds. “Any advance on fifty pounds?” He raised his hammer.
“Not for me,” said the dealer, turning away. “Let him have it.”
Down came the hammer. “Gardener: fifty pounds,” murmured Mr. Bull,
with a very satisfied face. The purchaser stood stupefied.
Two flurried gentlemen at this moment entered the room. They seemed
more rivals than friends, and each shouldered the other rather rudely.
“Too late, by gosh!” growled one.
“Not a bit,” said the second, pushing past. “We’ll get the vendee to
put it up again. I dare say he’ll do it.”
“Here!” cried the first, grasping at the other’s receding figure.
Jibbing together, they made their way towards Gardener, who was
standing in rueful and dumbfounded altercation with the lawyer. A
brief but very earnest discussion took place among the four. At the
end, the rostrum was invoked, the picture was replaced on the table,
the two new-comers took up position. Gardener, mute and dazed, fell
back, in custody of the lawyer, who stood with a hard, shrewd glitter
in his eyes, and the auctioneer, blandly elated, raised his voice,
justifying his own judgment.
The picture, he said—as he had already informed the company, in
fact—was a desirable one, a rare example of that peerless master
Adrian Ostade; and the recent purchaser—whose property it was now
become—had been persuaded generously to put it up to auction again on
his own account, in answer to the representations of certain would-be
bidders, whom an unforeseen delay on the railway had prevented from
attending earlier.
“We will start at fifty pounds, gentlemen, if you please,” said he.
Mr. Bolton, in the background, pulled his hat over his eyes, and
settled himself to listen.
That great financial strategist, Mr. Plumley, sat drinking whisky and
water by lamplight. His pipe lay at his side. He had tried to smoke
it; but tobacco flurried him.
“It should be about settled by now,” he muttered. “Where’s that
Bolton?”
“Rap!” came the answer, upon such an acute nervous centre, that he
started as if he had been stung.
He rose, made an effort to compose himself, and went to the door.
A spare tall figure detached itself from the dark, and entered.
“What the devil’s been keeping you?” growled the ex-remover.
“Ah! you’re short-sighted, my friend,” said Mr. Bittern, and walked
coolly into the parlour.
Mr. Plumley stared, felt suddenly wet, shook himself, and followed.
When it came to creeping flesh, he felt the full aggravation of his
size. The slow march of apprehensions, taking time from a sluggish but
persistent brain, seemed minutes encompassing him.
“So,” said the lawyer, dry and wintry, the moment he was in, “you
coveted your neighbour’s one ewe lamb?”
Mr. Plumley took up his pipe, blew through it, put it down again, and
said nothing.
“You’d heard of Gardener’s aunt’s little bequest to him of fifty
pounds, duty free, eh?” asked the lawyer.
“No,” said Mr. Plumley.
“O!” said the lawyer. “He bid fifty pounds for that picture of yours
this afternoon, and got it. On whose instructions?”
“Ask him, sir. He acts for many.”
“It wasn’t on yours, then?”
“Is that reasonable, Mr. Bittern, when to my knowledge the man wasn’t
worth a brass farden?”
“What do you say about holding him to his bargain?”
“I say, if he’s bought the picture, he must pay for it.”
“And who bid against him? You don’t know that either, I suppose?”
“Nat’rally. Was I there?”
“Well, I’ve settled for him with Bull and Hacker, and brought you
their cheque, less commission and distraint. Give me a receipt for
it.”
The great creature, elated with his own strategy as he was, could
hardly draw it out, his hands shook so. But he managed the business
somehow. The lawyer examined the paper, and buttoning it into his
pocket, took up his hat.
“O, by the way!” he said, as if on an afterthought, “I was forgetting
to mention that Gardener, after securing the picture, put it up to
auction again, at the particular request of some late arrivals, and
was bid a thousand pounds for it. It turned out to be a very good
work.”
Mr. Plumley took up his pipe again quite softly, looked at it a
moment, and suddenly dashed it to smithereens on the floor.
“It was a plant!” he cried in a fat, hoarse scream. “I’ll be even with
him—I’ll have the money—the picture was mine—I’ll—by God, I say,
it was a conspiracy!”
The lawyer at the door lashed round on him like whipcord.
“And that’s what I think,” he shouted. “The meanest, dirtiest trick
that was ever played by a canting scoundrel on a poor brother. But I
may get to the bottom of it yet, from the opening scheme to enlist
Gardener’s sympathies for a poor martyr to conscience, to the last
wicked design upon him in the saleroom. I may get to the bottom of it,
cunning as it was planned; and, when I do, let some look out!”
As he flung away, he let in a new-comer, Mr. Bolton, by the opened
door. Mr. Plumley, choking in the backwater of his own fury, had sunk
into a chair, gasping betwixt bitterness and panic. He could not, for
the moment, remember how far he had committed himself. He looked up to
meet the insolent, ironic smile of his confederate. “Come along, dear
boy,” said Mr. Bolton. “Curtain’s down. Cash up!”
He presented a claim for fifty pounds, and stood, his hat cocked on
his head, picking his teeth.
“What’s this curst gammon?” sneered Mr. Plumley, rousing himself.
“Commission,” said the actor airily. “Five per cent. on the ultimate
selling price of a picture.”
“It went at fifty.”
“Pardon _me_, sir. _Ultimate—ultimate_, see agreement” (he smacked
his chest). “One thou’ was the figure, and dirt cheap. Fine example.
I’ll trouble you for a cheque.”
“Two pound ten. I’ll give it you in cash.”
Mr. Bolton whistled a stave, and turned round, his hands deep in his
breeches’ pockets.
“I can sell to the other party. Good day to you, and look out.”
[The End]