The Bravo of London Read online

  It was sufficiently late when Won Chou’s peculiarly appetising meal had been despatched to answer to this requirement. Mr Joolby glanced up at the deepening sky of spilled-ink blue as seen through an uncurtained pane, produced a box of cigars curiously encased in raffia and indicated to his guest that they might as well be going.

  ‘It’s a slow affair with me,’ he apologised as he laboriously crawled about the room, preparing for the walk, ‘so you must expect a tiresome round. Now as we have some little distance to go—’

  ‘But is it quite safe—this place we go to?’ asked Bronsky who had drunk too sparingly of either wine or spirits to have his natural feebleness heartened. ‘It would not do—’

  ‘Safe as the Kremlin,’ was the half contemptuous reply, for by the measure of the visitor Joolby was a man of mettle. ‘My own chap is in charge there and so far as that goes the place is run as a proper business. Ah-Chou’—raising his voice, for that singularly versatile attendant was again at his look-out—‘we go come one two hour. You catchee make dark all time.’

  ‘Alle light-o,’ came cheerfully back and although no footsteps were to be heard Won Chou might be trusted to be carrying out his instructions.

  ‘And makee door plenty fast. No one come look-see while not is,’ was the further injunction; then piloting his guest into the lumber-strewn yard Mr Joolby very thoroughly put into practice this process as regards the rear premises before he led the way towards their destination. Leading, for most of the journey, it literally was, for much of their devious route was along mere passages, and even in the streets Mr Joolby’s mode of progression monopolised the path while Bronsky’s superficial elegance soon prejudiced him against using the gutter. He followed his host at a laboured crawl, relieving his mind from time to time by little bursts of ‘psst!’ and ‘chkk!’ at each occasion of annoyance. Joolby, unmoved, plodded stolidly ahead, his unseen features occasionally registering their stealthy broadening grin, although he seldom failed to throw a word of encouragement over his shoulder whenever a more definite phrase indicated that the comrade had come up against an obstruction or trod into something unpleasant.

  ‘Well, here we are at last,’ was the welcome assurance as they emerged into a thoroughfare that was at least a little wider and somewhat better lit than most of the others. ‘That is the place, next to the greengrocer. When we go back we can take an easier way, since you don’t seem to like this one, Bronsky, especially as it will be quite dark then.’

  ‘It will be as good that we should,’ assented Mr Bronsky, still justifiably ruffled. ‘Seldom have I been through such tamgod—’

  ‘Just a minute,’ put in Joolby coolly. ‘Better not talk until I’ve made sure that everything is clear,’ and they having now come to the rag-and-bone shop he rapped in a quite ordinary way on the closed door. With no more than the usual delay of coming from an inner room and turning a rusty key it was opened by an elderly Hebrew whose ‘atmosphere’—in its most generous sense—was wholly in keeping with his surroundings.

  ‘Good evening, Ikey,’ said Mr Joolby, still panting a little now that he had come to rest after an unusual exertion, ‘I have brought you perhaps a very good buyer. This gentleman is making up a large purchase for export and if it is worth his while—’

  ‘Come in, sirs, come in if you please,’ begged Ikey deferentially; the door was held more fully open and they passed into a store heaped with rags, bones, empty bottles, old metal, stark rabbit skins and all the more sordid refuse of a city’s back-kitchens. Joolby did not appear to find anything disturbing in the malodorous air and even the fastidious Bronsky might have been perfectly at home in these surroundings.

  ‘It is quite O.K., Mr Joolby,’ said Ikey when the door was closed again, and it could have been noticed that he spoke neither so ceremoniously nor in such very audible tones as those which had passed on the threshold. ‘If you want him he’s upstairs now and there isn’t nothing different going on anywhere.’

  Joolby grunted what was doubtless a note of satisfaction and wagged assurance at Mr Bronsky.

  ‘There you see,’ he remarked consequentially, ‘it’s exactly as I told you. This isn’t the land of domiciliary visits and if the police are coming they will always send you printed form giving twenty-four hours notice.’

  ‘No; is that rule?’ asked Mr Bronsky innocently, and repeated: ‘Good! good! It is comical,’ when he saw that the other two were being silently amused at his literalness. ‘Come, come,’ he hastened to add, thinking that it was time to reassert some of the authority that seemed to have become temporarily eclipsed by the progress of the unfortunate journey, ‘this is no business however, and we are not here for evers.’

  ‘Tell George to come down and bring pulls of his latest plates,’ confirmed Joolby. The narrow rickety stairs leading to the floor above—little better than a permanent ladder—were impractical for him and scarcely more inviting to Mr Bronsky. Ikey apparently had some system of conveying this message by jerking an inconspicuous cord for almost at once George Larch appeared at the top of the steps, recognising the two visitors as he descended.

  ‘Peace be with you, persecuted victim. The day dawns!’ exclaimed the comrade, bustling forward effusively and kissing Mr Larch on both cheeks—an indignity to which he had to submit or lose his balance among the jam jars.

  ‘That’s all right, Mr Bronsky,’ protested George who had as much prejudice against ‘foreign ways’ as most of his country-men. ‘But please don’t start doing that again—I told you about it once before, you may remember.’

  ‘But—but, are we not as brothers?’ stammered Mr Bronsky, uncertain whether or not to be deeply hurt. ‘In spirit of all-union greeting—’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t like the wife to catch you at it, that’s all, Mr Bronsky. I should never think of carrying on like that with a grown-up brother.’

  ‘Catch me “at it”,’ managed to voice the almost dumbfounded Bronsky. ‘“Carrying on”! Oh, the pigs Englishmen! You have no—no—’ At this emotional stress words really did fail him.

  ‘Come, come, you two—what the hell,’ interposed Mr Joolby judicially. ‘We’re here to see how you’ve got on, George. May as well go into the room where we can have a decent light. Did you bring pulls of the latest plates down? Bronsky here needs to be satisfied that you can do all I’ve claimed for you.’

  At the back of the evil-smelling vault Mr Ikey had his private lair, a mixture of office and, apparently, a living-room in every function. It was remarkably garnished with such salvage from the cruder stock as had been considered worthy of being held over and, as Joolby had foreseen, it possessed a light vastly superior to the dim glimmer that hung over the cavernous store. Here the three chiefly concerned drew close together, the old man remaining behind to stand on guard, while Larch, with the outward indifference that merged his pride as a craftsman and an ineradicable shame to be so basely employed, submitted an insignificant sheaf of papers. Some of the sheets were apparent Bank of England notes in the finished state, others proofs of incomplete plates and various details; both the visitors produced pocket lenses and Mr Bronsky smoothed out a couple of genuine notes that he extracted from a well-stocked wallet. A complete absorption testified their breathless interest.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Joolby when every sheet had been passed under review. ‘Say what you like, Bronsky, this is as near the real article as—’ and he instanced two things which might be admitted to be essentially the same although the comparison was more forcible than dainty.

  ‘It could certainly deceive me, I confess,’ admitted Bronsky, ‘and yet in ill-spent youth I have experience as bank official. But see,’ he added, as though anxious to expose some flaw, and wetting across one corner of a sheet with a moistened finger he demonstrated that it could easily be severed.

  ‘Ah, but you mustn’t judge the result by this paper, Mr Bronsky—of course it’s no good,’ put in Larch, carefully securing the fragments. ‘But if we get some of the genuine stuff, as M
r Joolby will tell you he means to do, not even the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England could be dead certain which was which—except for one thing, of course.’

  ‘And that is what?’

  ‘Why, the numbers to be sure. They can refer to their issue.’

  ‘Not so fast, George,’ objected Joolby, ‘how is that going to help them? Suppose we duplicate actual numbers that are out in circulation, and perhaps hold over the originals? We can triplicate, quadruple, multiply by a hundred times if it suits our purpose.’

  ‘Well, by hokey that’s an idea,’ admitted simple George Larch. ‘Why, they’d have to pay out on all that come in then or risk repudiating their own paper. It’s lucky for the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street that we aren’t in the wholesale business.’

  ‘Yes, to be sure,’ replied Joolby, favouring the other conspirator with a meaningful sideways look. ‘Lucky, isn’t it, Bronsky?’

  ‘I should think to smile,’ agreed Mr Bronsky, combing his luxuriant beard for the mere pleasure of verifying that dignified appendage. ‘Notwithstanding however.’

  ‘There’s one thing I should like to mention, Mr Joolby, while you’re here,’ said Larch, getting back to practical business. ‘Do you really mean me to go on with plates for all the high values up to the thousand pound printing?’

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Joolby, turning on his props to regard George with the blank full-faced stare that presented his disconcerting features in their most pronounced aspect. ‘What’s the difficulty?’

  ‘None at all so far as I’m concerned. Of course I can do them just the same as the others—technically there’s nothing whatever against it. Only no one ever heard of soft flims for anything like that—only for fives or tens or at the most a twenty.’

  ‘All the more reason why the big ones will go through then. As a matter of fact, George, our friend here has struck special facilities for putting stuff of that sort about in the East. There’ll be no risk to any of us at this end whatever happens.’

  ‘But you don’t mean that it’s going to be negotiable for anything like at value? Why if—?’

  ‘A profitable use will be found for all of them, never fear,’ replied Mr Joolby, evincing no intention of pursuing the subject. ‘Yes, we’re through now, Ikey. You can come off. Well, what is it then?’

  ‘It was Mrs Larch outside at the door,’ bleated Ikey in his ancient falsetto. ‘I assure her that the place is all locked up and no one here and she laugh at me through the keyhole. She says she will come inside and see for herself.’

  ‘Then she will,’ remarked George, who might be supposed to know. ‘So you may as well unlock the door and let her.’

  ‘If she is I had perhaps better as well go back into the room,’ suggested Mr Bronsky—they were again in the front shop on their way to leave. ‘Your wife, for some reason, cannot endure my presence.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that, Mr Bronsky,’ protested George guiltily, for he knew well enough that he could go exactly that far. ‘There must he some sort of a mistake … Still, if you think so, perhaps it would be as well at the moment.’

  Mrs Larch came breezily in, paying no more attention to the now obsequious Ikey than if he had been one of his own commercial assets—an emaciated thigh-bone. A woman smartly turned out (as she would herself have complacently said) and—if a little floridly—handsome still, she might bear slight resemblance now to the simple angel of George’s early dreams, but it was possible to trace something of that unfortunate pilgrim’s progress in her rather defiant front, her meretricious embellishment, and in an eye that was not devoid of material calculation. For the moment it was only the unwieldy form of Mr Joolby that stood out in that place of continual shadow.

  ‘Oh, good evening, Mr Joolby,’ she exclaimed, sparkling triumphantly over her success at the doorway. ‘Of course I guessed that Mr Ikey was telling fibs but I didn’t know that I should find you here. I suppose that George is up in the attic as usual? He might just as well be a member of the Carlton for all that I see of him nowadays.’

  ‘No, my dear, here I am,’ proclaimed George, emerging from his particular shadow. ‘Only you oughtn’t to be, after the place is shut up, you know. It isn’t prudent.’

  ‘Well, someone had to do something about it. I did go round to Padgett Street first and Mr Peke there—no, that isn’t right, is it? but I know that it’s some kind of a fancy dog. Anyhow, he seemed to be telling the truth when he said that you “not is” there, so there was nothing for it but to come on here and chance it.’

  ‘But what’s the matter, Cora?’ asked Larch. ‘Has anything happened?’

  ‘Only the landlord this time, my lad—the gas-man was yesterday and the furniture people—oh, you’ve been home since then, haven’t you, and know all about those beauties.’

  ‘But I thought that I left enough to tide over the most pressing. We figured it out, if you remember, and it seemed—’

  ‘So I thought, but unfortunately it didn’t turn out quite as we figured, boy, and some of the others got more pressing,’ said Mrs Larch calmly. ‘At all events I left the landlord sitting on the landing.’

  ‘He means it?’

  ‘I’m afraid he most decidedly does. There was that nasty little air of finality about the way he picked his teeth with a bus ticket as he talked—I think he must save them up for it—that, as the Sunday school poem says: “Is a certain forerunner of sorrow”. “Come now, Mrs Larch,” he said, running his suety eye over everything I’d got on, “you can’t be hard up you know and you’ve had a cart-load of warnings. Doesn’t your husband make good money?” “Better than most husbands at his job do, I will say,” I replied, “but, you know, it’s always the cobbler’s wife who has the worst shoes, and just at the moment—”’ She finished up with the conventional little laugh and held out a hand towards him.

  ‘Come, George, fork out. I’m sorry if you’re rocky too but it’s an absolute that it’s no good going back without it.’

  ‘“Rocky”, my God!’ said George, echoing her shallow laugh. ‘Well—but how much do you need to square it?’

  ‘Oh, a couple might do just to carry on—and of course as many more as you can spare me.’

  ‘A couple, eh, my girl?’ he replied, fishing deeply into both his trouser pockets. ‘You don’t mean tanners by any chance? Well, that’s the state of the exchequer.’ Two sixpences and a few coppers were the result of his investigation.

  ‘I see. No winners among them today, I suppose, and you’d rather gone it? I might have guessed as much. Well, that being that, Mr Joolby will have to advance you a trifle.’

  ‘What me? Two quids?’ exclaimed Mr Joolby aghast. ‘You can’t be serious. Everyone know that I never advance anything until afterwards and your husband has been paid for a full week and this is only Friday. Oh, I couldn’t—’

  ‘All right; only if you don’t our place will be sold up and then where are you going to find George when you want him?’

  This was so plainly common sense that there could be only one outcome (to say nothing of the pressure of another development that was duly formulating) but even as he would have capitulated one of the freakish impulses, that occasionally brought out the shifty grin, moved Joolby to change his purpose. Instead of the amount required he slyly picked out another paper and Cora found herself being offered a wholly unexpected five-pound note—in point of fact one of George’s most recent productions.

  ‘Oh, Mr Joolby, that is kind—’ she began gratefully and then flashed to what it was—sensed it in Larch’s instinctive frown, in Joolby’s half averted face, creased with foolish enjoyment. She bit on to the unpleasant tremor: very well, only Joolby should never again enjoy at her expense that particular satisfaction.

  ‘Well, of all the—’ she mock-indignantly declared, and entering into the spirit of the thing crumpled up the note and playfully flung it back at the ogre. ‘Nice fix it would be for you, Mr Joolby, if I was nicked for planting a snide ’un. They’d be here
after George like one o’clock and then what would become of all the work you’ve paid him for doing?’

  ‘That’s all right, Mrs Larch—it was only our fun,’ protested Mr Joolby, leering like his ancestral satyr. ‘It isn’t likely that we’d risk anything of the sort just now, is it? But I will tell you this: when we get the right stuff you needn’t be afraid of walking into the Bank of England with your paper.’

  ‘I daresay. But in the meantime I am afraid of the bailiff walking into our flat with his paper. George there knows well enough. I must have something before I can go back and that’s all there is about it.’

  ‘Well, so you shall have,’ promised Mr Joolby, calling up all the blandishment of his suavest manner. ‘And that is not all; I may as well tell you now, though I hadn’t intended to until it was quite settled. Very soon we shall have a nice regular job for you with good wages—oh, a splendid position in a beautiful house with very little to do and everything found that you require.’

  If Mr Joolby expected the enchanted lady to fall upon his neck (metaphorically, of course, for physical contact was a thing sheerly inconceivable) he was a little out of his reckoning. Cora Larch had experience of considerable slices of life in various aspects. During periods of George’s compulsory withdrawal it had been necessary for her to fend for herself, nor, in truth, had she ever found any particular difficulty in so doing. But as a result of the education that had thereby accrued she now approached Mr Joolby’s surprising proposal in the spirit that prompts a creature of the wild to walk all round a doubtful morsel before venturing to touch it.

  ‘Oh, and what sort of a job is it, may I ask?’ she guardedly inquired. ‘And for that matter, what sort of a house where everything is going to be so fairy-like?’