The Blind Barber (2 page)

Dr. Fell rumpled his big mop of grey-streaked hair.

“Fortinbras!” he rumbled. “Haven’t I seen something about it recently in the highbrow magazines? It’s a theatre somewhere in London where the marionettes are nearly life-size and as heavy as real people; he stages classic French drama or something—?”

“Right,” said Morgan, nodding, “He’s been doing that to amuse himself, or out of a mystic sense of preserving the Higher Arts, for the past ten or twelve years; he’s got a little box of a theatre with bare benches, seating about fifty people, somewhere in Soho. Nobody ever used to go there but all the kids in the foreign colony, who were wild about it. Old Fortinbras’s
pièce de résistance
was his dramatisation of ‘The Song of Roland,’ in French blank verse. I got all this from Peggy Glenn. She says he took most of the parts himself, thundering out the noble lines from back-stage, while he and an assistant worked the figures. The marionettes’ weight—nearly eight stone, each of ’em stuffed with sawdust and with all the armour, swords and trappings—was supported by a trolley on which the figures were run along, and a complicated set of wires worked their arms and legs. That was very necessary, because what they did mostly was fight; and the kids in the audience would hop up and down and cheer themselves hoarse.

“The kids, you see, never paid any attention to the lofty sentiments. They probably didn’t even hear them or understand what it was all about. All they knew was that out would stagger the Emperor Charlemagne on the stage, in gold armour and a scarlet cloak, with a sword in one hand and a battle-axe in the other. After him would come bumping and reeling all the nobles of his court, with equally bright clothes and equally lethal weapons. From the other side would come in the Emperor of the Moors and
his
gang, armed to the eyebrows. Then all the puppets would lean against the air in various overbalanced positions while Charlemagne, with a voice of thunder said, ‘Pry, thee, friend, gadzooks, gramercy, what ho, sirrah!,’ and made a blank-verse speech lasting nearly twenty minutes. It was to the effect that the Moors had no business in France, and had better get to hell out of there—or else. The Emperor of the Moors lifted his sword and replied with a fifteen-minute address whose purport was, ‘Says you!’ And Charlemagne, whooping out his war-cry, up and dots him one with the battle-axe.

“That was the real beginning, you see. The puppets rose from the stage and sailed at each other like fowls across a cockpit, thrashing their swords and kicking up a battle that nearly brought down the roof. Every so often one of them would be released from the trolley as dead, and would crash down on the stage and raise a fog of dust. In the fog the battle kept on whirling and clashing, and old Fortinbras rushed behind the scenes screaming himself hoarse with noble speeches, until the kids were delirious with excitement. Then down would tumble the curtain; and out would come old Fortinbras, bowing and puffing and wiping the sweat off his face, supremely happy at the cheers of the audience; and he would make a speech about the glory of France which they applauded just as loudly without knowing what he was talking about … He was a happy artist; an appreciated artist.

“Well, the thing was inevitable. Sooner or later the high-brows would ‘discover’ him, and his art; and somebody did. He became famous overnight, a misunderstood genius whom the British public had shamefully neglected. No kids could get into the place now; it was all top-hats and people who wanted to discuss Corneille and Racine. I gather that the old boy was rather puzzled. Anyhow, he got a thumping offer to exhibit his various classic dramas in America, and it was one long triumphal tour …”

Morgan drew a deep breath.

“All this, as I say, I got from Miss Glenn, who is—and has been long before the thing grew popular—a sort of secretary and general manager for the foggy old boy. She’s some sort of relation of his on her mother’s side. Her father was a country parson or schoolmaster or something; and when he died, she came to London and nearly starved until old Jules took her in. She’s devilish good-looking, and seems prim and stiffish until you realise how much devilment there is in her, or until she’s had a few drinks; then she’s a glittering holy terror.

“Peggy Glenn, then, made the next member of our group, and was closely followed by my friend, Curtis Warren.

“You’ll like Curt. He’s a harum-scarum sort, the favourite nephew of a certain Great Personage in the present American Government … ”

“What personage?” inquired Dr. Fell. “I don’t know of any Warren who is—”

Morgan coughed.

“It’s on his mother’s side,” he replied. “That has a good deal to do with my story; so we’ll say for the moment only a Great Personage, not far from F. D. himself. This Great Personage, by the way, is the most dignified and pompous figure in politics; the glossiest Top-Hat, the neatest Trouser-Press, the prince of unsplit infinitives and undamaged etiquette … Anyhow, he pulled some wires (you’re not supposed to be able to do this) and landed Curt a berth in the Consular Service. It isn’t a very good berth; some God-forsaken hole out in Palestine or somewhere, but Curt was coming over for a holiday round Europe before he took over the heavy labour of stamping invoices or what-not. His hobby, by the way, is the making of amateur moving-pictures. He’s wealthy, and I gather he’s got not only a full-sized camera, but also a sound apparatus of the sort the news-reel men carry.

“But, speaking of Great Personages, we now come to the other celebrity aboard the
Queen Victoria
, also paralysed with sea-sickness. This was none other than Lord Sturton—you know—the one they call the Hermit of Jermyn Street. He’ll see nobody; he has no friends; all he does is collect bits of rare jewellery … ”

Dr. Fell took the pipe out of his mouth and blinked.

“Look here,” he said suspiciously, “there’s something I want to know before you go on. Is this by any chance the familiar chestnut about the fabulous diamond known as the Lake of Light, or some such term, which was pinched out of the left eye of an idol at Burma, and is being stalked by a sinister stranger in a turban? Because, if it is, I’ll be damned if I listen to you … ”

Morgan wrinkled his forehead sardonically.

“No,” he said. “I told you it was a rummy thing; it’s much queerer than that. But I’m bound to confess that a jewel
does
figure in the story—it was what tangled us up and raised all the hell when the wires got crossed—but nobody ever intended it to figure at all.”

“H’m!” said Dr. Fell, peering at him.

“And also I am bound to admit that the jewel got stolen—”

“By whom?”

“By me,” said Morgan unexpectedly. He shifted. “Or by several of us, to be exact. I tell you it was a nightmare. The thing was an emerald elephant, a big pendant thing of no historical interest but of enormous intrinsic value. It was a curiosity, a rarity; that’s why Sturton went after it. It was an open secret that he had been negotiating to buy it from one of the busted millionaires in New York. Well, he’d got it right enough; I had that from Curt Warren. The Great Personage, Curt’s uncle, is a friend of Sturton’s, and Curt’s uncle told him all about it just before Curt sailed. Probably half the people on the boat heard the rumour. I know we were all waiting to catch a glimpse of him when he came aboard—queer, sandy old chap with ancient side-whiskers and a hanging jaw; only attendant a secretary. He popped up the gangway all swathed round in checked comforters, and cursed everybody in reach.

“Now it’s a very odd thing, for a variety of reasons, that you should have mentioned the old familiar story about the fabulous jewel. Because, on the afternoon when all the trouble started—it was the late afternoon of the fourth day out, and we were to dock three days later—Peggy Glenn and Skipper Valvick and I had been discussing this emerald elephant, in the way you do when you’re lying back in a deck-chair with a robe across your knees, and nothing much to think about except when the bugle will blow for tea. We discussed whether it was in Lord Sturton’s possession or locked in the captain’s safe, and, in either case, how you could steal it. Peggy, I know, had evolved a very complicated and ingenious plan; but I wasn’t listening closely. We had all got to know one another pretty well in those four days, and we stood on very little ceremony.

“As a matter of fact,” said Morgan, “I was more than half-asleep. Then—”

L
OW ALONG THE SKY
there was a liquid yellow brightness, but twilight had begun to come down, and the grey sea wore changing lights on its white-caps when the
Queen Victoria
shouldered down against a heavy swell. The skyline tilted and rose above a boiling hiss; there was a stiff breeze along the almost deserted promenade-deck. Lying back drowsily in a deck-chair, well wrapped against the cold, Morgan was in that lethargic frame of mind when the booming sea-noises are as comfortable as a fire. He reflected that shortly lights would go on along the ship; tea would be set out in the lounge while the orchestra played. Both his companions were momentarily silent, and he glanced at them.

Margaret Glenn had dropped her book in her lap; she was lying back in the deck-chair with eyes half-closed. Her rather thin, pretty, impish face—which ordinarily wore such a deceptive look of schoolmistress primness—now seemed puzzled and disturbed. She swung shell-rimmed reading-glasses by one ear-piece, and there was a wrinkle above her hazel eyes. She was muffled in a fur coat, with a wildly-blowing batik scarf; and from under her little brown hat a tendril of black hair danced above the windy deck.

She observed: “I say, what can be keeping Curt? It’s nearly tea-time, and he promised to be here long ago; then we were going to round you two up for cocktails … ” She shifted, and her earnest eyes peered round at the porthole behind as though she expected to see Warren there.

“
I
know,” said Morgan lazily. “It’s that bouncing little blonde from Nashville; you know, the one who’s going to Paris for the first time and says she wants to gain experiences for her soul.”

Turning a wind-flushed face, the girl was about to rise to the remark when she saw his expression, and stuck out her tongue at him instead.

“Bah!” she said, without heat. “That little faker; I know her type. Dresses like a trollop and won’t let a man get within a yard of her. You take my advice,” said Miss Glenn, nodding and winking wisely. “You stay clear of women who want to gain deep experience for the soul. All that means is that they don’t want to employ the body in doing it.” She frowned. “But I say, what
can
have happened to Curt? I mean, even with the notorious unpunctuality of American men—”

“Ha-ha-ha!” said Captain Thomassen Valvick, with an air of inspiration. “I tell you, maybe. Maybe it is like de horse.”

“What horse?” asked Morgan.

Captain Valvick uttered one of his amiable snorts and bent his big shoulders. Even though the deck was rolling and pitching in a way that made the deck-chairs slide into each other, he stood upright without difficulty. His long sandy-reddish face was etched out in wrinkles of enjoyment, and behind very small gilt-rimmed spectacles his pale-blue eyes had an almost unholy twinkle. He wrinkled them up; he snorted again, hoarsely, through his sandy moustache, pulled down his large tweed cap over one ear, and made a massive gesture that would have been as heavy as a smaller man’s blow.

“Ha-ha-
HA
!” thundered Captain Valvick. “Ay tell you. In my country, in Norway, we haff a custom. When
you
wont to make a horse stop, you say, ‘Whoa!’ But we don’t. We say, ‘
Brubublubluoooo-bloooo!
’”

Shaking his jowls and lifting his head like Tarzan over a fresh kill, Captain Valvick here uttered the most extraordinary noise Morgan had ever heard. It cannot be reproduced into phonetic sounds, and so loses its beauty and poignancy. It was something like the noise of water running out of a bath-tub, but rising on a triumphant note like a battle-cry, and trembling on in shadings of defective drains and broken water-pipes; as though Mr. Paul Whiteman (say) had built a symphony round it, and come out strongly with his horns and strings.

“
Bru-bloo-bulooooluloo-buloooooo!
” crowed Captain Valvick, starting low with his shakings of head and jowl, and then rearing up his head at the climax.

“Isn’t that a lot of trouble?” inquired Morgan.

“Oh, no! Ay do it easy,” scoffed the other, nodding complacently. “But ay was going to tell you, de first time I try it on a English-speaking ’orse, de ’orse didn’t understand me. Ay tell you how it was. At dat time, when I was young, I was courting a girl who lived in Vermont, where it always snow like Norway. So ay t’ink ay take her out for a sleigh-ride, all nice and fine. I hire de best horse and sleigh dey got, I tell de girl to be ready at two o’clock in de afternoon, and I come for her. So of course I want to make a good impression on my girl, and I come dashing up de road to her house, and I see her standing on de porch, waiting for me. So ay t’ink it be fine ting to make de grand entrance, and ay say, ‘
Brubu-bluooo-bloo!
’ fine and strong to de ’orse so ay can turn in de gates. But he don’t stop. And ay t’ink, ‘Coroosh! What is wrong wit’ de goddam ’orse?’” Here Captain Valvick made a dramatic gesture, “So I shout, ‘
Brubu-bloooo-bloooo!
’ and lean over de footboard and say it again. And dis time de ’orse turn its head round to look at me. But it don’t stop, you bet. It keep right on going, straight past de house where de girl is standing, and it only gallop faster when I keep saying, ‘
Brubu-blubluoooo-bl-oooo!
’ And my girl open her eyes at me and look fonny, but de ’orse fly straight on up de road; and all I can do is stand up in de sleigh and keep taking off my hat and bowing to her w’ile all de time ay go farder and farder away from her; and still ay am doing dat we’en we go round a bend and ay can’t see her no more … ”

All this was recited with much pantomime and urging the reins of an imaginary horse. With an expiring sigh Captain Valvick shook his head in a melancholy fashion, and then twinkled benevolently.