A Few Quick Ones (16 page)

True, the great majority of the entrants had that indefinable something in their appearance that suggested that if the police were not spreading dragnets for them., they were being very negligent in their duties, but fully a dozen were so comparatively human that he could see that it was going to cause comment when he passed them over in favour of Algernon Aubrey. Questions would be asked, investigations made. Quite possibly he would be had up before the Jockey Club and warned off the turf.

However, with the vast issues at stake there was nothing to do but stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood and have a go at it, so proceeding to the platform he bowed to the applause of what looked to him like about three hundred and forty-seven mothers, all ferocious, raised a hand to check - if possible - the howling of their offspring, and embarked on the speech which he had been at pains to prepare in the watches of the night.

He spoke of England's future, which, he pointed out, must rest on these babies and others like them, adding that he scarcely need remind them that the England to which he alluded had been described by the poet Shakespeare as this royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-Paradise, this fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war. Than which, he thought they would all agree with him, nothing could be fairer.

He spoke of
Wee Tots,
putting in a powerful build-up for the dear old sheet and urging one and all to take advantage of the easy subscription terms now in operation.

He spoke - and here his manner took on a new earnestness - of the good, clean spirit of fair play which has made England what it is - the spirit which, he was confident, would lead all the mothers present to accept the judge's decision, even should it go against their own nominees, with that quiet British sportsmanship which other nations envy so much. He had a friend, he said, who, acting as judge of a Baby Contest in the south of France, had been chased for a quarter of a mile along the waterfront by indignant mothers of Hon. Mentions armed with knives and hat pins. That sort of thing could never happen at Bramley-on-Sea. No, no. English mothers were not like that. And while on this subject, he said, striking a lighter note, he was reminded of a little story of two Irishmen who were walking up Broadway, which may be new to some of you present here this afternoon.

The story went well. A studio television audience could hardly have laughed more heartily. But though he acknowledged the guffaws with a bright smile, inwardly his soul had begun to shrink like a salted snail. Time was passing, and there were no signs of Oofy and his precious burden. Long 'ere this he should have rolled up with the makings.

He resumed his speech. He told another story about two Scotsmen who were walking down Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow. But now his comedy had lost its magic and failed to grip. A peevish voice said "Get on with it", and the sentiment plainly pleased the gathering. As he began a third story about two Cockneys who were standing on a street corner in Whitechapel, possibly a hundred peevish voices said "Get on with it", and shortly after that perhaps a hundred and fifty.

And still no Oofy.

Five minutes later, the popular clamour for a showdown having taken on a resemblance to the howling of timber wolves in a Canadian forest, he was compelled to act. With ashen face he awarded the handsome knitted woolly jacket to a child selected at random from the sea of faces beneath him and sank into a chair, a broken man.

And as he sat there, trying not to let his mind dwell on the shape of things to come, a finger tapped him on the shoulder and he looked up and saw standing beside him a policeman.

"Mr. Little?" said the policeman.

Bingo, still dazed, said Yes, he thought so.

"I shall have to ask you to come along with me," said the policeman.

Other policemen on other occasions, notably on the night of the annual aquatic encounter on the River Thames between the rival crews of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, had made the same observation to Bingo, and on such occasions he had always found it best to go quietly. He rose and accompanied the officer to the door, and with a curiosity perhaps natural in the circumstances asked why he was being pinched.

"Not pinched, sir," said the policeman, as they walked off. "You're wanted at the station to identify an accused….if you can identify him. His statement is that he's a friend of yours and was acting with your cognisance and approval."

"I don't follow you, officer," said Bingo, who did not follow the officer. "Acting how?"

"Taking your baby for an airing, sir. He claims that you instructed him to do so. It transpired this way. Accused was observed by a Mrs. Purkiss with your baby on his person slinking along the public thoroughfare. He was a man of furtive aspect in a panama hat with a scarlet ribbon, and Mrs. Purkiss, recognizing the baby, said to herself 'Cor lumme, stone the crows!'."

"She said…what was that line of Mrs. Purkiss's again?"

"Cor lumme, stone the crows!' sir. The lady's suspicions having been aroused, she summoned a constable and gave accused in charge as a kidnapper, and after a certain amount of fuss and unpleasantness he was conducted to the station and deposited in a cell. Prosser he said his name was. Is the name Prosser familiar to you, sir?"

The Officer's statement that there had been a certain amount of fuss and unpleasantness involved in the process of getting the accused Prosser to the police station was borne out by the latter's appearance when he was led into Bingo's presence. He had a black eye and his collar had been torn from the parent stud. The other eye, the one that was still open, gleamed with fury and what was patently a loathing tor the human species.

The sergeant who was seated at the desk invited Bingo to inspect the exhibit.

"This man says he knows you."

"That's right."

"Friend of yours?"

"Bosom."

"And you gave him your baby?"

"Well, you could put it that way. More on loan, of course."

"Ho!" said the sergeant, speaking like a tiger of the jungle deprived of its prey, if tigers of the jungle in those circumstances do say Ho! "You're quite sure?"

"Oh, rather."

"So sucks to you, sergeant!" said Oofy. "And now," he went on haughtily, "I presume that I am at liberty to go."

"You do, do you? Then you pre-blinking-well-sume wrong," said the sergeant, brightening at the thought that he was at least going to save something from the wreck of his hopes and dreams. "Not by any manner of means you aren't at liberty to go. There's this matter of obstructing the police in the execution of their duty. You punched Constable Wilks in the abdomen."

"And I'd do it again."

"Not for a fortnight or fourteen days you won't," said the sergeant, now quite his cheerful self once more. "The Bench is going to take a serious view of that, a very serious view. All right, constable, remove the prisoner."

"Just a second," said Bingo, though something seemed to tell him that this was not quite the moment. "Could I have that fiver, Oofy?"

His suspicions were proved correct. It was not the moment. Oofy did not reply. He gave Bingo a long, lingering look from the eye which was still functioning, and the arm of the law led him out. And Bingo had started to totter off, when the sergeant reminded him that there was something he was forgetting.

"Your baby, sir."

"Oh, ah, yes."

"Shall we send it, or do you want to take it with you?"

"Oh, with me. Yes, certainly with me."

"Very good," said the sergeant. "I'll have it wrapped up."

Referring back to the beginning of this chronicle, we see that we compared Bingo Little, when conversing with his wife Rosie on the subject of police and pawn shops, to a toad beneath the harrow. As he sat with Algernon Aubrey on the beach some quarter of an hour after parting from the sergeant, the illusion that he was what Webster's Dictionary describes as a terrestrial member of the frog family and that somebody was driving spikes through his sensitive soul had become intensified. He viewed the future with concern, and would greatly have preferred not to be compelled to view it at all. Already he could hear the sharp intake of the wifely breath and the spate of wifely words which must inevitably follow the stammering confession of his guilt. He and Rosie had always been like a couple of turtle-doves, but he knew only too well that when the conditions are right, a female turtle-dove can express herself with a vigour which a Caribbean hurricane might envy.

Emerging with a shudder from this unpleasant reverie, he found that Algernon Aubrey had strayed from his side and, looking to the south-east, observed him some little distance away along the beach. The child was hitting a man in a Homburg hat over the head with his spade, using, it seemed to Bingo, a good deal of wristy follow-through. (In hitting men in Homburg hats over the head with spades, the follow-through is everything.)

He rose, and hurried across to where the party of the second part sat rubbing his occipital bone. In his capacity of Algernon Aubrey's social sponsor he felt that an apology was due from him.

"I say," he said, "I'm most frightfully sorry about my baby socking you like that. Wouldn't have had it happen for the world. But I'm afraid he never can resist a Homburg hat. They seem to draw him like a magnet."

The man, who was long and thin and horn-rimmed-spectacled, did not reply for a moment. He was staring at Algernon Aubrey like one who sees visions.

"Is this your baby?" he said.

Bingo said Yes, sir, that was his baby, and the man muttered something about this being his lucky day.

"What a find!" he said. "Talk about manna from heaven! I'd like to draw him, if I may. We must put the thing on a business basis, of course. I take it that you are empowered to act as his agent. Shall we say five pounds?"

Bingo shook his head sadly.

"I'm afraid it's off," he said. "I haven't any money. I can't pay you."

"You don't pay me. I pay you," said the man. "So if five pounds is all right with you…" He broke off, directed another searching glance at Algernon Aubrey and seemed to change his mind. "No, not five. It would be a steal. Let's make it ten."

Bingo gasped. Bramley-on-Sea was flickering before his eyes like a Western on the television screen. For an instant the thought crossed his mind that this must be his guardian angel buckling down to work after a prolonged period of loafing on his job. Then, his vision clearing, he saw that the other had no wings. He had spoken, moreover, with an American intonation, and the guardian angel of a member of the Drones Club would have had an Oxford accent.

"Ten pounds?" he gurgled. "Did I understand you to say that you would give me ten pounds?"

"I meant twenty, and it's worth every cent of the money. Here you are," said the man, producing notes from an inside pocket.

Bingo took them reverently and, taught by experience, held on to them like a barnacle attaching itself to the hull of a ship.

"When would you like to start painting Algy's portrait?"

The man's horn-rimmed spectacles flashed fire. "Good God!" he cried, revolted. "You don't think I'm a portrait painter, do you? I'm Wally Judd."

"Wally who?"

"Judd. The Dauntless Desmond man."

"The what man?"

"Don't you know Dauntless Desmond?"

"I'm afraid I don't."

The other drew a deep breath.

"I never thought to hear those words in a civilized country. Dauntless Desmond, my comic strip. It's running in the Mirror and in sixteen hundred papers in America. Dauntless Desmond, the crooks' despair."

"He is a detective, this D. Desmond?"

"A private eye or shamus," corrected the other. "And he's always up against the creatures of the underworld. He's as brave as a lion."

"Sounds like a nice chap."

"He is. One of the best. But there's a snag. Desmond is impulsive. He will go bumping off these creatures of the underworld. He shoots them in the stomach. Well, I needn't tell you what that sort of thing leads to."

"The supply of creatures of the underworld is begriming to give out?"

"Exactly. There is a constant need for fresh faces, and the moment I saw your baby I knew I had found one. That lowering look! Those hard eyes which could be grafted on the head of a man-eating shark and no questions asked. He's a natural. Could you bring him around to the Hotel Splendide right away, so that I can do some preliminary sketches?"

A sigh of ecstasy escaped Bingo. It set the bank notes in his pocket crackling musically, and for a moment he stood there listening as to the strains of some great anthem.

"Make it half an hour from now," he said. "I have to look in first on a fellow I know in Seaview Road."

8

Joy Bells for Walter

WHEN Walter Judson got engaged to Angela Pirbright, who had been spending the summer in our little community as the guest of her aunt Mrs. Lavender Botts, we were all very pleased about it. The ideal match, everybody considered, and I agreed with them. As the golf club's Oldest Member, I had been watching young couples pairing off almost back to the days of the gutty ball, but few so admirably suited to each other as these twain, he so stalwart and virile, she a girl whose outer crust bore a strong resemblance to that of Miss Marilyn Monroe. It was true that he played golf and she tennis, but these little differences can always be adjusted after marriage. There seemed no cloud on the horizon.

I was surprised, accordingly, when Walter came to me one afternoon as I sat in my chair on the terrace overlooking the ninth green, to note on his face a drawn, haggard look, the sort of look a man wears when one of his drives, intended to go due north, has gone nor'-nor'-east. Of that sunny smile of his, which had been the talk of the place for weeks, there was no sign.

"Something the matter, my boy?" I asked, concerned.

"Only doom, disaster, desolation and despair," he said, scowling darkly at a fly which had joined us and was doing callisthenics on the rim of my glass. "You have probably heard that tomorrow I play George Porter in the final of the President's Cup."