The Bravo of London Read online

  ‘So that’s that,’ he summarised as he turned back without betraying any further symptom of interest. He had not long to wait for his new acquaintance’s reappearance.

  ‘Our efforts have been crowned with success,’ announced Mr Galton, beaming with satisfaction. ‘Mrs Hocking only stipulates for no late cooking.’

  ‘Famous,’ replied Dixson, a little more careless of his speech now that he had secured quarters. ‘I never tackle a heavy meal after sunset myself—insomnia.’

  ‘The question of terms I have left for your own arrangement. But I do not think that you will find Mrs Hocking too exacting.’

  ‘I’m sure. And you’ll remember your promise? I’m dying to see the celebrated twelfth-century canopied sedilia.’

  ‘You have heard of our unique Norman feature? Oh, really!’ It would have been impossible to strike a better claim on the vicar’s favour. ‘Really, Mr Dixson, I had no idea that you took an actual interest in ecclesiastical architecture.’

  ‘Well, naturally, I felt a deep regard for the church where my forefathers worshipped. Way out at home someone happened to be able to lend me a sort of guide to Sussex. I simply lapped it. Now I want to go over every nook and cranny in Tapsfield.’

  ‘So you shall; so you shall,’ promised the clergyman. ‘I will answer for it. We’ll arrange about the church as soon as you are settled.’ He had turned to go, but before Dixson was through the gate he heard his name called with a rather confidential import. ‘And, by the way, while I think of it. We have a little informal entertainment in the school house once a week—a, er, “penny reading” we call it.’

  ‘A sort of sing-song, I suppose?’

  ‘Precisely; but not in any way—er—boisterous. Well, we find it increasingly difficult sometimes—not that everyone isn’t most willing; quite the contrary, indeed, but what handicaps us with our limited material is to provide variety. Now I was wondering if you could be persuaded to give a little talk—it need only be quite short, of course—on “Life and Adventure in the Land of the Wombat”, or naturally, any other title that commends itself to you. You—? Well, think it over, won’t you?’

  ‘That was a tolerably soft shell,’ reflected Dixson, as he discreetly avoided discovering any of the interested eyes that had been following the details of his arrival from behind stealthily arranged curtains. ‘Now for Mrs Hocking—and the husband and daughter who work at the paper mill.’

  CHAPTER II

  JOOLBY DOES A LITTLE BUSINESS

  STRANGERS who had occasion to visit Mr Joolby’s curio and antique shop—and quite a number of very interesting people went there from time to time—often had some difficulty in finding it at first. For Mr Joolby, in complete antagonism to modern business methods, not only did not advertise but seemed to shun the more obvious forms of commercial advancement. His address had never appeared in that useful compilation, the Post Office London Directory, and as yet—surely a simple enough matter—Mr Joolby had not taken the trouble to have the omission righted. The street in which he had set up, while far from being a slum, was not one of the better-known and easily remembered thoroughfares of the East End, so that collectors who stumbled on his shop (and occasionally discovered some surprising things there) more often than not found themselves quite unable to describe its exact position to others afterwards, unless they had the forethought at the time to jot down the number 169 and the name Padgett Street before they passed on elsewhere. ‘A couple of turns out of Commercial Road, somewhere towards the other end’ was as good as keeping a secret.

  Nor would the inquirer’s search be finished once he reached Padgett Street, for with the modesty that marked his activity in sundry other ways, Mr Joolby had neglected to have his name proclaimed about his place of business or else he had allowed it to fade from the public eye under the combined erosion of time and English weather. Of the place of business itself little could be gleaned from outside, for the arrangement of the shop window was more in accord with Oriental reticence than in line with modern ideas of display. Dust and obscurity were the prevailing impressions.

  Inside was an astonishing medley of the curious and antique and in this branch of his activities the dictum of an impressed collector did not seem unduly wide of the mark: that Mr Joolby could supply anything on earth, if only he knew where to put his hands upon it. And if the arrangement of the large room one first entered suggested more the massed confusion of an extremely bizarre furniture depository than any other comparison, it had what, to its proprietor’s way of thinking, was this supreme advantage: that from a variety of points of view it was possible to see without being seen, not only about the shop itself but even including the street and pavement.

  At the moment that we have chosen for this intrusion—a time some weeks later than the arrival of ‘Anthony Dixson’ in Tapsfield—the place at a casual glance had all the appearance of being empty, for the figure of Won Chou, Mr Joolby’s picturesquely exotic shop assistant, both on account of absolute immobility and the protective obscuration of his drab garb, did not invite attention. But if unseen himself Won Chou was far from being unobservant and when a passer-by did not in fact pass by—when after an abstracted saunter up he threw an anxious glance along the street in both directions and then slipped into the doorway—a yellow hand slid out and in some distant part of the house the discreet tintinnabulation of a warning bell gave its understood message.

  Inside the shop the visitor—no one could ever have mistaken him for a customer, unless, perhaps, qualified by ‘rum’—looked curiously about with the sharp and yet furtive reconnaissance of the habitual pilferer. But even so, he failed at the outset to discover the quiescent figure of Won Chou and he was experiencing a slight mental struggle between deciding whether it would be more profitable to wait until someone came or to pick up the most convenient object and bolt, when the impassive attendant settled the difficulty by detaching himself from the screening background and noiselessly coming forward. So quietly and unexpected indeed that Mr Chilly Fank, whose nerves had never been his strongest asset (the playful appellation ‘Chilly’ had reference to his condition when any risk appeared), experienced a momentary shock which he endeavoured to cover by the usual expedient of a weakly aggressive swagger.

  ‘’Ullo, Chink!’ he exclaimed with an offensive heartiness, ‘blimey if I didn’t take you for a ruddy waxwork. You didn’t oughter scare a bloke like that, making out as you wasn’t real. Boss in?’

  ‘Yes no,’ replied Won Chou with extreme simplicity and a perfect assurance in the adequacy of his answer.

  ‘Yes—no? Whacha mean?’ demanded Mr Fank, to whom suspicion of affront was an instinct. ‘Which, you graven image?’

  ‘All depend,’ explained Won Chou with unmoved composure. ‘You got come bottom side chop pidgin? You blong same pidgin?’

  ‘Coo blimey! This isn’t a bloomin’ restrong, is it, funny? I want none of yer chop nor yer pigeon either. Is old Joolby abart? If yer can’t speak decent English nod yer blinkin’ ’ed, one wei or the other. Get me, you little Chinese puzzle?’

  ‘My no sawy. Makee go look-see,’ decided Won, and he melted out of the shop by the door leading to the domestic quarters.

  Left to himself Mr Chilly Fank nodded his head sagely several times to convey his virtuous disgust at this pitiable exhibition.

  ‘Tchk! tchk!’ he murmured half aloud. ‘Exploitation of cheap Asiatic labour! No wonder we have a surplus industrial population and the nachural result that blokes like me—’ but at this point the house door opened again, Won Chou having returned with unforeseen expedition, so that Mr Fank had to turn away rather hastily from the locked show-case which he had been investigating with a critical touch and affect an absorbing interest in something taking place in the street beyond until he suddenly became aware of the other’s presence.

  ‘Back again, What-ho? Well, you saffron jeopardy, don’t stand like a blinkin’ Eros. Wag yer ruddy tongue abart it.’

  ‘My been see,’ conceded
Won Chou impartially. ‘Him belongy say: him you go come.’

  ‘My strikes! if this isn’t the nattiest little vade-mecum that ever was!’ apostrophised Mr Fank to the ceiling bitterly. ‘Look here, Confucius, forget yer chops an yer’ pigeon and spit it aht straightforward. The boss—Joolby—is he in or not and did he say me go or him come? Blarst yer, which—er—savvy?’

  At this, however, it being apparently rather a subtler idiom than the hearer’s limited grasp of an alien vernacular could cope with, Won Chou merely relapsed into an attitude of studious melancholy, extremely trying to Mr Fank’s conception of the yellow man’s status. He was on the point of commenting on Won Chou’s shortcomings with his customary delicacy of feeling when the sound of hobbling sticks approaching settled the point without any further trouble.

  As Mr Joolby was—ethnologically at all events—white, a person of obvious means, and in various subterranean ways reputedly powerful, Mr Fank at once assumed what he considered to be a more suitable manner and it was with an ingratiating deference that he turned to meet the dealer.

  ‘’Evening, governor,’ he remarked briskly, at the same time beginning to disclose the contents of an irregular newspaper parcel—fish and chips, it could have been safely assumed if he had been seen carrying it—that he had brought with him. ‘Remember me, of course, don’t you?’

  ‘Never seen you before,’ replied Mr Joolby, with an equally definite lack of cordiality. ‘What is it you want with me?’

  To the ordinary business caller this reception might have been unpromising but Mr Fank was not in a position to be put off by it. He understood it indeed as part of the customary routine.

  ‘Fank—“Chilly” Fank,’ he prompted. ‘Now you get me surely?’

  ‘Never heard the name in my life,’ declared Joolby with no increase of friendliness.

  ‘Oh, right you are, governor, if you say so,’ accepted Fank, but with the spitefulness of the stinging insect he could not refrain from adding: ‘I don’t suppose I should have been able to imagine you if I hadn’t seen it. Doing anything in this way now?’

  ‘This,’ freed of its unsavoury covering, was revealed as an uncommonly fine piece of Dresden china. It would have required no particular connoisseurship to recognise that so perfect and delicate a thing might be of almost any value. Joolby, who combined the inspired flair of the natural expert with sundry other anomalous qualities in his distorted composition, did not need to give more than one glance—although that look was professionally frigid.

  ‘Where did it come from?’ he asked merely.

  ‘Been in our family for centuries, governor,’ replied Fank glibly, at the same time working in a foxy wink of mutual appreciation; ‘the elder branch of the Fanks, you understand, the Li-ces-ter-shire de Fankses. Oh, all right, sir, if you feel that way’—for Mr Joolby had abruptly dissolved this proposed partnership in humour by pushing the figure aside and putting a hand to his crutches—‘it’s from a house in Grosvenor Crescent.’

  ‘Tuesday night’s job?’

  ‘Yes,’ was the reluctant admission.

  ‘No good to me,’ said the dealer with sharp decision.

  ‘It’s the real thing, governor,’ pleaded Mr Fank with fawning persuasiveness, ‘or I wouldn’t ask you to make an offer. The late owner thought very highly of it. Had a cabinet all to itself in the drorin’-room there—so I’m told, for of course I had nothing to do with the job personally. Now—’

  ‘You needn’t tell me whether it’s the real thing or not,’ said Mr Joolby. ‘That’s my look out.’

  ‘Well then, why not back yer knowledge, sir? It’s bound to pay yer in the end. Say a … well, what, about a couple of … It’s with you, governor.’

  ‘It’s no good, I tell you,’ reiterated Mr Joolby with seeming indifference. ‘It’s mucher too valuable to be worth anything—unless it can be shown on the counter. Piece like this is known to every big dealer and every likely collector in the land. Offer it to any Tom, Dick or Harry and in ten minutes I might have Scotland Yard nosing about my place like ferrets.’

  ‘And that would never do, would it, Mr Joolby?’ leered Fank pointedly. ‘Gawd knows what they wouldn’t find here.’

  ‘They would find nothings wrong because I don’t buy stuff like this that the first numskull brings me. What do you expect me to do with it, fellow? I can’t melt it, or reset it, or cut it up, can I? You might as well bring me the Albert Memorial … Here, take the thing away and drop it in the river.’

  ‘Oh blimey, governor, it isn’t as bad as all that. What abart America? You did pretty well with those cameos wot come out of that Park Lane flat, I hear.’

  ‘Eh, what’s that? You say, rascal—’

  ‘No offence, governor. All I means is you can keep it for a twelvemonth and then get it quietly off to someone at a distance. Plenty of quite respectable collectors out there will be willing to buy it after it’s been pinched for a year.’

  ‘Well—you can leave it and I’ll see,’ conceded Mr Joolby, to whom Fank’s random shot had evidently suggested a possible opening. ‘At your own risk, mind you. I may be able to sell it for a trifle some day or I may have all my troubles for nothing.’ But just as Chilly Fank was regarding this as satisfactorily settled and wondering how he could best beat up to the next move, the unaccountable dealer seemed to think better—or worse—of it for he pushed the figure from him with every appearance of a final decision. ‘No; I tell you it isn’t worth it. Here, wrap it up again and don’t waste my time. I’d mucher rather not.’

  ‘That’ll be all right, governor,’ hastily got in Fank, though similar experiences in the past prompted him not to be entirely impressed by a receiver’s methods. ‘I’ll leave it with you anyhow; I know you’ll do the straight thing when it’s planted. And, could you—you don’t mind a bit on account to go on with, do you? I’m not exactly what you’d call up and in just at the moment.’

  ‘A bit on account, hear him. Come, I like that when I’m having all the troubles and may be out of my pocket in the end. Be off with you, greedy fellow.’

  ‘Oh rot yer!’ exclaimed Fank, with a sudden flare of passion that at least carried with it the dignity of a genuine emotion; ‘I’ve had just abart enough of you and your blinkin’ game, Toady Joolby. Here, I’d sooner smash the bloody thing, straight, than be such a ruddy mug as to swallow any of your blahsted promises,’ and there being no doubt that Mr Fank for once in a way meant approximately what he said, Joolby had no alternative, since he had every intention of keeping the piece, but to retire as gracefully as possible from his inflexible position.

  ‘Well, well; we need not lose our tempers, Mr Fank; that isn’t business,’ he said smoothly and without betraying a shadow of resentment. ‘If you are really stoney up—I’m not always very quick at catching the literal meaning of your picturesque expressions—I don’t mind risking—shall we say?—one half a—or no, you shall have a whole Bradbury.’

  ‘Now you’re talking English, sir,’ declared the mollified Fank (perhaps a little optimistically), ‘but couldn’t you make it a couple? Yer see—well’—as Mr Joolby’s expression gave little indication of rising to this suggestion—‘one and a thin ’un anyway.’

  ‘Twenty-five bobs,’ conceded Joolby. ‘Take me or leave it,’ and since there was nothing else to be done, this being in fact quite up to his meagre expectation, Chilly held out his hand and took it, only revenging himself by the impudent satisfaction of ostentatiously holding up the note to the light when it was safely in his possession.

  ‘You need not do that, my young fellow,’ remarked Mr Joolby, observing the action. ‘I know a dud note when I see it.’

  ‘Oh I don’t doubt that you know one all right, Mr Joolby,’ replied Fank with gutter insolence. ‘It’s this bloke I’m thinking of. You’ve had a lot more experience than me in that way, you see, so I’ve got to be blinkin’ careful,’ and as he turned to go a whole series of portentous nods underlined a mysterious suggestion.

&nbs
p; ‘What do you mean, you rascal?’ For the first time a possible note of misgiving tinged Mr Joolby’s bloated assurance. ‘Not that it matters—there’s nothing about me to talk of—but have you been—been hearing anything?’

  It was Mr Fank’s turn to be cocky: if he couldn’t wangle that extra fifteen bob out of The Toad he could evidently give him the shivers.

  ‘Hearing, sir?’ he replied from the door, with an air of exaggerated guilelessness. ‘Oh no, Mr Joolby: whatever should I be hearing? Except that in the City you’re very well spoken of to be the next Lord Mayor!’ and to leave no doubt that this pleasantry should be fully understood he took care that his parting aside reached Joolby’s ear: ‘I don’t think!’

  ‘Fank. Chilly Fank,’ mused Mr Joolby as he returned to his private lair, carrying the newly acquired purchase with him and progressing even more grotesquely than his wont since he could only use one stick for assistance. ‘The last time he came he had an amusing remark to make, something about keeping an aquarium …’

  Won Chou was still at his observation post when the door opened again an hour later. Again he sped his message—a different intimation from the last, but conveying a sign of doubt for this time the watcher could not immediately ‘place’ the visitors. These were two, both men—‘a belong number one and a belong number two chop men,’ sagely decided Won Chou—but there was something about the more important of the two that for the limited time at his disposal baffled the Chinaman’s deduction. It was not until they were in the shop and he was attending to them that Won Chou astutely suspected this man perchance to be blind—and sought for a positive indication. Yet he was the one who seemed to take the lead rather than wait to be led and except on an occasional trivial point his movements were entirely free from indecision. Certainly he had paused at the step but that was only the natural hesitation of a stranger to the parts and it was apparently the other who supplied the confirmation.