THE PROUD SONS
The Proud Sons of Ragousa were celebrating the inauguration of a new
lodge, and the opening of a new lodge-room, and Bill Holbrook,
standing on the edge of the sidewalk, watched with wonder and
amusement the passing of a procession, which contained six brass bands
and some fifty silken banners, each representative of a branch lodge
except for one, heavily embroidered with bullion, and bearing the
inevitable golden argosy that marked in the parade the symbol of the
officers of the district lodge.
Fifty lodges were represented--Bill Holbrook counted the banners--the
Pride of Kent, the Pride of Hampshire, the Pride of the Five Ports,
the Pride of Limehouse…
It was a procession of ordinary people--artisans, factory folk, small
shopkeepers, a sprinkling of office men, honest, self-conscious
individuals, some wearing that hang-dog expression which comes to the
Englishman when he is feeling foolish, a few beaming at the joke of
appearing in public wearing purple plush regalia, not a few immensely
serious, transfigured by the unaccustomed publicity.
The spectacle was not altogether unexpected by Bill Holbrook. He knew
that odd experiences have a trick of duplicating themselves. On the
Sunday he had met the Ragousans in the flesh--he had been waiting all
week to meet them again.
“What have they got to be proud about, anyway?” he asked.
The policeman, by whose side he stood, smiled slowly.
“Well--you’ve seen these societies before… Good Templars and Buffaloes
and Sons of the Phœnix and Knights of the Round Table, haven’t you?
They like it. I’m a member of one myself--as a matter of fact, I’m
chief noble of my lodge--Sons of the Phœnix. But these chaps aren’t
temperance. At the same time it’s not a boozing crowd. I thought of
joining myself. It’s worth while. Costs a pound a year, but there’s
two Argosies, one in June and one in December, and they’re worth fifty
thousand pounds each. That’s why the order has caught on.”
“Fan me or I’ll faint!” said Bill. “What is all this stuff about
Argosies? I see now! There’s a golden ship on every banner. But what
do you mean by fifty thousand pounds--a quarter of a million
dollars!”
The policeman looked at him suspiciously. He saw a tall, thinnish
young man, rather good-looking and untidily dressed.
“You’re American, aren’t you? I thought you was from the bad way you
talk English. About these Argosies. You pay one pound a year, and
you’re insured for a hundred--if you join young enough. Then every
half-year there’s a drawing. In June there’s a first prize of ten
thousand and hundreds of others--at Christmas there’s a big bonus and
only one prize--fifty thousand.”
Bill watched the tail of the procession, with its little crowd of
small boys bringing up the rear, until it passed from sight.
“That’s a new one on me,” he said. “I’ll have to consult my police
adviser.”
Again the officer grinned.
“You lodge with Mr. Bullott, don’t you, sir?”
“Yes.” Holbrook was surprised that his fame extended to the Edgware
Road.
“I’ve seen you go in and out; I used to be on that beat. As a matter
of fact, I didn’t recognise you till that bird asked me if you had
rooms at the inspector’s house.”
Bill followed the constable’s quick sidelong glance. A few feet away
from them, gazing after the procession, was a man, who, in ordinary
circumstances, would not have attracted his attention. Bill had a
practice of dividing people he met casually into classes; one of these
he called “the adequately paid,” and it was in the last category that
he placed the interested spectator.
He was dressed in a well-made tweed suit. He wore a spotless
wide-winged collar; his cravat was black, his shoes sensible and
solid. The face was thin, almost intellectual. He had a slight red
moustache, and on the bridge of his bony nose rested a pair of
gold-rimmed spectacles.
“What do you think he is?” asked the policeman.
“I’ll guess,” said Bill. “He’s a floor manager.”
The constable shook his head.
“Wait a minute,” said Bill, “I haven’t got him high enough. He’s a
storekeeper--one of the synthetic intelligentsia. He has socialistic
tendencies, believes in the land theories of Henry George----”
“No, sir,” said the policeman triumphantly.
“I’ll try again,” said Bill. “He’s a clerk in a Government office,
probably holds some good position----”
“You’re wrong, sir,” said the officer.
“Then what is he?”
“He’s a burglar.”
The policeman made the startling statement with great calm.
“That is Toby Marsh,” he went on, before Bill could recover from his
shock, “one of the cleverest cracksmen in London--he’s only been
caught once, and that was by accident.”
At that moment the spectacled eyes turned and surveyed the two men in
a scrutinising, unabashed stare. In another instant he had resumed his
inspection of the procession.
“I’d like to talk to him. Bring him over.”
“Me?” said the officer, aghast. “Good heavens! I couldn’t do that!
Why, he’d tie me up in knots! Ordinary kind of police don’t deal with
people like that,” he explained. “You see, we’ve got nothing on him,
and the plain clothes branch doesn’t thank you for interfering with
that kind of feller.”
At this moment, “that kind of feller” walked away from them, and
disappeared in the crowd.
“Besides, you never know whether chaps like that are working for our
people or not. Though I wouldn’t say Toby was a ‘nark’.”
“Nark?” said the puzzled Bill. “Oh, you mean a stool pigeon. I get
you!”
“All the same,” the policeman went on, “a high-class burglar can be
very useful to Scotland Yard, and if I started getting fresh with him,
the chances are I’d get a rap over the knuckles to-morrow morning.”
There was a time when Bill Holbrook would have followed the exclusive
Mr. Marsh, and wrung from him a crisp column for the
_Dispatch-Herald_; but journalism belonged to the past. Bill was now a
business man, an expert on matters pertaining to publicity.
The initiative in the matter, however, was taken out of his hands. He
had said good-night to the policeman, and had turned into Cambridge
Terrace, when he saw Toby Marsh a little ahead of him. He was standing
with his back to the railings, in the attitude of one who was waiting
for somebody, and Bill would have passed him, but suddenly the man
moved across the path to intercept him.
“Excuse me, sir.”
His tone was that peculiar falsetto, which a certain class regard as
an easy advertisement of good-breeding.
“I observed you regarding the rabble, or, as one would put it, the
_hoi polloi_, and possibly you, as a newspaper reporter, are
interested in the psychology of the lower orders which makes such
exhibitions possible.”
Bill was taken aback, both by the elegance of the diction, and the
unusual nature of the man’s opening.
“The lower orders,” Mr. Marsh went on, evidently enjoying the sound
of his own voice most thoroughly, “have the instinct of imitation. And
when the instinct of imitation coincides with the desire for
aggrandisement, the natural consequence is something foolish. Hence
the Sons of Ragousa, with their pathetic mysteries, their grips, their
password--which, by the way, is ‘Drake’--their robes, their cowls,
their blue fire initiations, their priors, their grand priors,
captains of lodges and orders of the day.”
Bill grinned.
“You seem to have a close acquaintance with the order.”
“All orders are familiar to me,” said Mr. Marsh, with a modest and
self-deprecating gesture. “But the Twenty-Third Degree of the Sons of
Ragousa more especially.”
He saw the look of mystification in the other’s face, and was smugly
gratified.
“With the Twenty-Third Degree of the Proud Sons of Ragousa,” he
repeated with relish; “and more especially with the Golden Voice of
the Absolute!”
For a moment Bill stared at him suspiciously. Was he drunk? Apparently
Mr. Marsh read his thoughts.
“I am an abstainer, and a believer in prohibition. When I speak of the
Golden Voice of the Absolute, I speak of a tangible, material being,
beautiful to the eye, pleasant to the ear--her terrestrial name is
Miss Elizabeth Carew!”