The Bath Mysteries (15 page)

However, an unusually severe magistrate had fined the young gentleman £5 and warned him sternly about what might happen another time, and Cripples's own savings had proved just sufficient to start him in business again, so the incident had ended well enough.

The appearance of Bobby, who was himself fairly well known, whose tall form and disciplined bearing would in any case have borne their own warning with them, caused a certain ebbing movement among a few of the stall's customers, and Cripples's one eye was alight with suspicion as he handed Bobby the cup of coffee and ham sandwich asked for. Bobby was well aware that questioning Cripples was a process calling for much tact and patience if it were not to come up against the blank wall of his famous “Well, I don't just rightly remember”; and for the present, as he directed his attention to working his way through his sandwich – a formidable affair of a slice of cold bacon, “ham” being a purely courtesy term, inserted between the two halves of an enormously thick and long roll – he contented himself with complimenting Cripples on the dexterity with which he made his one arm do the work of two.

“Why not try an artificial arm, though?” he asked. “They fix up wonderful contraptions nowadays.”

“Did once,” Cripples answered briefly. “It hurt like fun, and I get along all right. Lucky,” he added, “it was left arm and right leg – keeps you from being lopsided like.”

“Yes, I suppose there's that,” agreed Bobby, still manfully facing up to his ham sandwich.

“I don't deny as, taking it all round, I've had my share of luck,” Cripples admitted gratefully, and hopped away to the other end of the stall to serve a new customer.

“How's business?” Bobby asked him when he returned.

In reply, Cripples admitted cautiously that it was not so bad but that it might be worse, and not so good but that it might be better.

“Want anything more?” he asked, noticing that the ham sandwich was beginning to show signs of admitting defeat and adding a broad hint that the presence of a “busy” never tended to improve business. “Makes the boys nervous like,” he explained.

“They needn't be,” Bobby assured him. “I'm not looking for anyone who could be here, only for someone I know isn't and can't be.”

Cripples did not ask for any explanation. He had noticed that the explanations of police officers tended to be unsatisfactory. Bobby finished his coffee and asked for another cup.

“I thought it was going to be fatal, judging from the first taste,” he remarked, “but as I've survived that one, I'll risk another.”

“Best cup of coffee on the Embankment,” declared Cripples with emphasis. “Why, when it's closing time at the Savoy, up the street there, all the toffs come down here for a taste of the genuine. Line up for it, they do.”

“So I've heard,” agreed Bobby, shamelessly confirming this quite untrue claim. “I had a cousin, Ronnie Owen. He made a pile on the Stock Exchange, and used to go to the Savoy and then come down here sometimes and treat the other chaps. Remember him? It's some time ago – two or three years back.”

Cripples did not remember the name, and asked what he looked like.

“A bit like me,” Bobby said. “Now he's lost his money and is a down and out himself. If you ever see him, tell him I've been asking for him. He knows where to find me. He might,” said Bobby carelessly, “go by the name of Priestman – William Priestman.”

“There was a chap of that name,” admitted Cripples, “as used to hang around – funny sort of chap, too. He near did murder once before the whole crowd here and not a soul dared say a word.”

“How was that?” Bobby asked.

“It was a rum go,” Cripples explained reminiscently, “as rum as any ever I saw. Started when a girl asked for a coffee and a doorstep and I saw she had the jumps. What I thought was you fellows were after her, but it wasn't that, it was her bully she was trying to give the slip to, and up he comes and took her arm and started to twist it just to show she wasn't going to give him the go-by so easy. So she let out a squeal and he twisted some more.”

“Didn't anyone interfere?” Bobby asked.

“Well,” explained Cripples, “she was his girl, and it don't do to come between a bully and the girl he's running – like as not she'll round on you as well as him. One man did try, she squealed so pitiful like, and got laid out with a straight one on the point of the jaw, the bully being an old boxing bloke and handy still with the fists. So the rest of 'em kept quiet, and he gave her arm another twist just to show, and she did a faint, and no wonder neither. She come to when he shoved a lighted cigarette against her arm, and said it would have been her face, only that being bad for business. Some of 'em shouted out to him to stop, and he did it again, just to show 'em; three times he did it on her arm above the wrist, and her whimperings and crying and asking him please not to; and then this chap I'm telling you about – Priestman I found out his name was afterwards – came up – a tall bloke, and his toes through his boots and his coat that way you wondered how it hung together; a proper scarecrow even for along here, which ain't no Bond Street nor Sunday parade neither. But none of us noticed that; for he pushed right through them that was looking on, and he never said a word, but just stood there, and he put out one hand towards the bully and the girl.”

“What happened?” Bobby asked as Cripples paused in his narrative.

“That's the rummy part of it,” answered the coffee-stall keeper slowly. “Somehow he seemed to grow tall as he stood there till he was like a tower, and all about him we could feel a fury blowing like the wind, and I heard a man say: ‘My God, he'll kill him'; and the rummy thing about that was we all knew what he meant. It was the other fellow who was going to kill the bully, not the bully him, as would have been natural like and only to be expected. The bully felt it, too, for he doubled up his fists and we thought he was going to hit out, but someway it seemed he didn't dare, for when he saw how the other looked, and his eyes, and how there was that wind of anger round him only waiting to be loosed, then he seemed to wilt like, and there was no more spunk in him. He gave a sort of a whimper, and he said: ‘I ain't nothing to do with you,' and the other said to him: ‘Kneel down'; and s'elp he, true as I stand here, the bully done it, and, what's more, none of us was a bit surprised; sort of knew, all of us, he couldn't help, him being up against something so much stronger than him as a steam roller's stronger than the mud it goes over. Then the other chap said to the girl: ‘Stand up,' and she done it, too, and there they was, her standing up and her bully kneeling there in the gutter before her.

“I've seen some queer things along by here, but never none like that; him on his knees, and her standing up looking at the other chap with her face all lit and the tears on it still, and a look on it the way you see on a woman's face in church sometimes, like it was God she was seeing. So then he said to the bully: ‘Get out,' and, believe it or not, that fellow just ran – ran, he did; ran so I don't suppose he stopped till he was a mile away or more. Then the new- come chap says to the girl: ‘Better find someone else to go whoring with,' and with that up comes a copper. ‘What's all this about? Move on there,' he says, and that was the end, no one wanting to tell what had happened, which anyway the copper wouldn't have believed, as no one would who hadn't seen for themselves. But we all knew someway that fellow in rags would have killed the bully if he had said a word, broke him in two and chucked the halves over the rail into the river there as easy as I could a doll from a Christmas-tree. Like ice on fire he was, all cold and still outside, and yet, you knew, all aflame within.”

“Ever seen any of them again?” Bobby asked.

“Not the bully. Take a team of horses to get him here any more,” answered Cripples confidently. “Dreams of it still, most like, and sweats when he does. Nor the girl, this being out of the beat for the likes of her, except when finished. She was only this way trying to dodge her bully, as no girl ever does, except for luck like hers, them sort being worth money. If you ask me,” said Cripples suddenly, “it was the eye done it. Some of 'em said afterwards it was just like you read of at the circus, when a bloke goes in among the lions and tigers and such-like, and there's not one of them dares touch him. But it was a brave thing to see, and, eye or no eye, I don't know how he done it.”

“I suppose there's more in us than any of us know,” Bobby said slowly. “A man with a hungry tiger after him would probably beat most of the running records.”

“Reckon I could myself like that,” agreed Cripples with a grin. “Only where's it come from, and why can't you always?”

But those were questions too difficult for Bobby. He made no effort to answer them, and the coffee-stall keeper went on:

“I suppose it was a bit like that with this bloke I've been telling you about; you just felt somehow he was tremendous, bigger than he was himself – if you see what I mean.”

“Have you ever seen him again?” Bobby asked once more.

“Just once, and that's another funny thing about it,” Cripples answered, “for then he was so different like you couldn't never have told he was the same if you hadn't known it was – sort of shrunk he was, and gone little like, and all humped up and slouching like the rest of 'em you see looking out for cigarette-ends along by here, because there isn't anywhere else for them to go. You know the sort?”

Bobby nodded an agreement as he looked out from the tiny circle of warmth and light around the coffee stall into the dark shadows of the night, where formless shapes drifted slowly by without hope or purpose.

“It was the next day,” Cripples resumed, “after what I told you about happened. I had just been serving a customer, and I turned round and he was there, as different as you like but the same in spite of that. He put down three-pence, and he says, and his voice had gone all flat and slow: ‘A coffee and the best value for two-pence you've got.' So I gave him a ham sandwich same as you've just had, which has more eating in it, so to say, than most, though a steak and kidney runs it close. He ate it the way you eat when you've had nothing for a day or two – you can always tell – and then he said: ‘If anyone asks for Priestman – William Priestman – say he says, ‘All right.'”

“Did anyone ask?” Bobby inquired.

“No, but a customer told me he saw someone speak to him as he went away, and most likely it was Mr. Smith.”

“Who is he?”

“There's no one knows,” Cripples answered, “but every so often you hear of him asking questions along the Embankment, trying to find someone suitable for a job he has. If he comes across a fellow what's real up against it, no friends, no home, nowhere to go, and he seems likely to suit, then Mr. Smith will give him a chance. That's what I call real, sensible charity. And if you don't seem likely to suit, half a crown for you after he's finished asking you questions. Particular he is to get just the man he wants.”

“I suppose,” Bobby said slowly, “he has his reasons.”

“Wants to be sure he gets the right sort, and he generally does, because no one that goes with him ever comes back again.”

“Yes, that sounds as if he chose well,” Bobby agreed. “We all reckoned he must have heard about this chap Priestman and thought he was the sort likely to turn out suitable. He must have told him to leave a message with me, and then he happened to meet Priestman himself and so they fixed it up, and all I say is, Priestman deserved his luck.”

“He deserved luck,” agreed Bobby gravely, staring thoughtfully out where the dark river flowed and wondering to himself what that luck had been. “I should like to meet this Mr. Smith,” he said.

“Ah, that you'll never do,” Cripples answered, “for no one ever has. Some has seen him like a shadow going by and some has heard him speak a word, and some has known he was standing there behind them, but when they've turned he's been away again, off into the dark. There's some he touches on the shoulder and draws aside to ask his questions of, but even they don't see him, for he always has his hat pulled down and his coat-collar turned up.”

Bobby asked some more questions, but could learn nothing further. No other description was to be had. Mr. Smith seemed only to be known as a shadow that passed by, as a low, hoarse, whispering voice from between down-drawn hat and up-turned collar. If the answers he received were not those he wanted, a half-crown would be slipped into your hand and in a moment he would be away, nor was it ever any use to try to follow, so sudden was he in the darkness, so swift and agile in his movements. But if he thought you suitable, then side by side you and he went away together, and for you, said Cripples and his friends, it was farewell forever to dark night on the Embankment and the river flowing by.

“Feeling cold?” Cripples asked suddenly.

“No. Why?” Bobby asked.

“I thought I saw you shivering, that's all,” explained the other.

“It was only at my thoughts,” Bobby answered.

“It's the draught comes under the bridge,” Cripples suggested. “Catches you just where you are standing. Try another coffee – the best in London and no extract neither, like some use. All fresh ground every morning.”

Bobby declined the offered coffee with thanks, but bought a packet of cigarettes instead, just for the sake of giving business. He asked carelessly:

“Would you know this Priestman if you saw him again?”

“No one who was there that night would ever forget the way he looked,” Cripples answered. “I could tell him among a thousand twenty years from now, and so could all the rest of them.”

“It's a long time ago, though,” Bobby remarked.