‘Four false teeth in the lower left jaw,’ said Hooper, his hand in his waistcoat-pocket. ‘What tattoo-marks?’
‘Look here,’ began Pritchard, half rising. ‘I’m sure we’re very grateful to you as a gentleman for your ’orspitality, but per’aps we may ’ave made an error in –’
I looked at Pyecroft for aid – Hooper was crimsoning rapidly.
‘If the fat marine now occupying the foc’sle will kindly bring ’is status quo17 to an anchor yet once more, we may be able to talk like gentlemen – not to say friends,’ said Pyecroft. ‘He regards you, Mr Hooper, as a emissary of the Law.’
‘I only wish to observe that when a gentleman exhibits such a peculiar, or I should rather say, such a bloomin’ curiosity in identification-marks as our friend ’ere –’
‘Mr Pritchard,’ I interposed, ‘I’ll take all the responsibility for Mr Hooper.’
‘An’ you’ll apologise all round,’ said Pyecroft. ‘You’re a rude little man, Pritch.’
‘But how was I –’ he began, wavering.
‘I don’t know an’ I don’t care. Apologise!’
The giant looked round bewildered and took our little hands into his vast grip, one by one.
‘I was wrong,’ he said, meekly as a sheep. ‘My suspicions was unfounded. Mr Hooper, I apologise.’
‘You did quite right to look out for your own end o’ the line,’ said Hooper. ‘I’d ha’ done the same with a gentleman I didn’t know, you see. If you don’t mind I’d like to hear a little more o’ your Mr Vickery. It’s safe with me, you see.’
‘Why did Vickery run – ?’ I began, but Pyecroft’s smile made me turn my question to ‘Who was she?’
‘She kep’ a little hotel at Hauraki – near Auckland,’ said Pyecroft.
‘By Gawd!’ roared Pritchard, slapping his hand on his leg. ‘Not Mrs Bathurst!’
Pyecroft nodded slowly, and the Sergeant called all the powers of darkness to witness his bewilderment.
‘So far as I could get at it, Mrs B. was the lady in question.’
‘But Click was married,’ cried Pritchard.
‘An’ ’ad a fifteen-year-old daughter. ’E’s shown me her photograph. Settin’ that aside, so to say, ’ave you ever found these little things make much difference? Because I haven’t.’
‘Good Lord Alive an’ Watchin’! … Mrs Bathurst….’ Then with another roar: ‘You can say what you please, Pye, but you don’t make me believe it was any of ’er fault. She wasn’t that!’
‘If I was going to say what I please, I’d begin by callin’ you a silly ox an’ work up to the ’igher pressures at leisure. I’m trying to say solely what transpired. M’reover, for once you’re right. It wasn’t her fault.’
‘You couldn’t ’aven’t made me believe it if it ’ad been,’ was the answer.
Such faith in a Sergeant of Marines interested me greatly. ‘Never mind about that,’ I cried. ‘Tell me what she was like.’
‘She was a widow,’ said Pyecroft. ‘Left so very young and never re-spliced. She kep’ a little hotel for warrants and non-coms18 close to Auckland, an’ she always wore black silk, and ’er neck –’
‘You ask what she was like,’ Pritchard broke in. ‘Let me give you an instance. I was at Auckland first in ’97, at the end o’ the Marroquin’s commission, an’ as I’d been promoted I went up with the others. She used to look after us all, an’ she never lost by it – not a penny! “Pay me now,” she’d say, “or settle later. I know you won’t let me suffer. Send the money from home if you like.” Why, gentlemen all, I tell you I’ve seen that lady take ’er own gold watch an’ chain off ’er neck in the bar an’ pass it to a bo’sun ’oo’d come ashore without ’is ticker an’ ’ad to catch the last boat. “I don’t know your name,” she said, “but when you’ve done with it, you’ll find plenty that know me on the front. Send it back by one o’ them.” And it was worth thirty pounds if it was worth ’arf-a-crown. The little gold watch, Pye, with the blue monogram at the back. But, as I was sayin’, in those days she kep’ a beer that agreed with me – Slits it was called. One way an’ another I must ’ave punished a good few bottles of it while we was in the bay – comin’ ashore every night or so. Chaffin’ across the bar, like, once when we were alone, “Mrs B.,” I said, “when next I call I want you to remember that this is my particular – just as you’re my particular.” (She’d let you go that far!) “Just as you’re my particular,” I said. “Oh, thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,” she says, an’ put ’er hand up to the curl be’ind ’er ear. Remember that way she had, Pye?’
‘I think so,’ said the sailor.
‘Yes, “Thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,” she says. “The least I can do is to mark it for you in case you change your mind. There’s no great demand for it in the Fleet,” she says, “but to make sure I’ll put it at the back o’ the shelf,” an’ she snipped off a piece of her hair-ribbon with that old dolphin cigar-cutter on the bar – remember it, Pye? – an’ she tied a bow round what was left – just four bottles. That was ’97 – no, ’96. In ’98 I was in the Resilient – China station – full commission. In Nineteen One, mark you, I was in the Carthusian, back in Auckland Bay again. Of course I went up to Mrs B.’s with the rest of us to see how things were goin’. They were the same as ever. (Remember the big tree on the pavement by the side-bar, Pye?) I never said anythin’ in special (there was too many of us talkin’ to her), but she saw me at once.’
‘That wasn’t difficult?’ I ventured.
‘Ah, but wait. I was comin’ up to the bar, when, “Ada,” she says to her niece, “get me Sergeant Pritchard’s particular,” and, gentlemen all, I tell you before I could shake ’ands with the lady, there were those four bottles o’ Slits, with ’er ’air-ribbon in a bow round each o’ their necks, set down in front o’ me, an’ as she drew the cork she looked at me under her eyebrows in that blindish way she had o’ lookin’, an’, “Sergeant Pritchard,” she says, “I do ’ope you ’aven’t changed your mind about your particulars.” That’s the kind o’ woman she was – after five years!’
‘I don’t see her yet somehow,’ said Hooper, but with sympathy.
‘She – she never scrupled to feed a lame duck or set ’er foot on a scorpion at any time of ’er life,’ Pritchard added valiantly.
‘That don’t help me either. My mother’s like that for one.’
The giant heaved inside his uniform and rolled his eyes at the car-roof. Said Pyecroft suddenly:
‘How many women have you been intimate with all over the world, Pritch?’
Pritchard blushed plum-colour to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch neck.
‘’Undreds,’ said Pyecroft. ‘So’ve I. How many of ’em can you remember in your own mind, settin’ aside the first – an’ per’aps the last – and one more?’
‘Few, wonderful few, now I tax myself,’ said Sergeant Pritchard relievedly.
‘An’ how many times might you ’ave been at Auckland?’
‘One – two,’ he began – ‘why, I can’t make it more than three times in ten years. But I can remember every time that I ever saw Mrs B.’
‘So can I – an’ I’ve only been to Auckland twice – how she stood an’ what she was sayin’ an’ what she looked like. That’s the secret. ’Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women ’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walk down a street, but most of ’em you can live with a month on end, an’ next commission you’d be put to it to certify whether they talked in their sleep or not, as one might say.’
‘Ah!’ said Hooper. ‘That’s more the idea. I’ve known just two women of that nature.’
‘An’ it was no fault o’ theirs?’ asked Pritchard.
‘None whatever. I know that!’
‘An’ if a man gets struck with that kind o’ woman, Mr Hooper?’ Pritchard went on.
‘He goes crazy – or just saves himself,’ was the slow answer.
‘You’ve hit it,?
?? said the Sergeant. ‘You’ve seen an’ known somethin’ in the course o’ your life, Mr Hooper. I’m lookin’ at you!’ He set down his bottle.
‘And how often had Vickery seen her?’ I asked.
‘That’s the dark an’ bloody mystery,’ Pyecroft answered. ‘I’d never come across ’im till I come out in the Hierophant just now, an’ there wasn’t anyone in the ship who knew much about ’im. You see, he was what you call a superior man. ’E spoke to me once or twice about Auckland and Mrs B. on the voyage out. I called that to mind subsequently. There must ’ave been a good deal between ’em, to my way o’ thinkin’. Mind you, I’m only giving you my résumé of it all, because all I know is second-’and, so to speak, or rather I should say more than second-’and.’
‘How?’ said Hooper peremptorily. ‘You must have seen it or heard it.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Pyecroft. ‘I used to think seein’ and hearin’ was the only regulation aids to ascertainin’ facts, but as we get older we get more accommodatin’. The cylinders work easier, I suppose…. Were you in Cape Town last December when Phyllis’s Circus came?’
‘No – up-country,’ said Hooper, a little nettled at the change of venue.
‘I ask because they ’ad a new turn of a scientific nature called “Home and Friends for a Tickey”.’
‘Oh, you mean the cinematograph – the pictures of prize-fights and steamers. I’ve seen ’em up-country.’
‘Biograph or cinematograph was what I was alludin’ to. London Bridge with the omnibuses – a troopship goin’ to the war – marines on parade at Portsmouth, an’ the Plymouth Express arrivin’ at Paddin’ton.’
‘Seen ’em all. Seen ’em all,’ said Hooper impatiently.
‘We Hierophants came in just before Christmas week an’ leaf was easy.’
‘I think a man gets fed up with Cape Town quicker than anywhere else on the station. Why, even Durban’s more like Nature. We was there for Christmas,’ Pritchard put in.
‘Not bein’ a devotee of Indian peeris,19 as our Doctor said to the Pusser,20 I can’t exactly say. Phyllis’s was good enough after musketry practice at Mozambique. I couldn’t get off the first two or three nights on account of what you might call an imbroglio with our Torpedo Lieutenant in the submerged flat, where some pride of the West Country had sugared up a gyroscope; but I remember Vickery went ashore with our Carpenter Rigdon – old Crocus we called him. As a general rule Crocus never left ’is ship unless an’ until he was ’oisted out with a winch, but when ’e went ’e would return noddin’ like a lily gemmed with dew. We smothered ’im down below that night, but the things ’e said about Vickery as a fittin’ playmate for a warrant-officer of ’is cubic capacity, before we got ’im quiet, was what I should call pointed.’
‘I’ve been with Crocus – in the Redoubtable,’ said the Sergeant. ‘’E’s a character if there is one.’
‘Next night I went into Cape Town with Dawson and Pratt; but just at the door of the Circus I came across Vickery. “Oh!” ’e says, “you’re the man I’m looking for. Come and sit next me. This way to the shillin’ places!” I went astern at once, protestin’, because tickey seats better suited my so-called finances. “Come on,” says Vickery, “I’m payin’.” Naturally I abandoned Pratt and Dawson in anticipation o’ drinks to match the seats. “No,” ’e says, when this was ’inted – “not now. Not now. As many as you please afterwards, but I want you sober for the occasion.” I caught ’is face under a lamp just then, an’ the appearance of it quite cured me of my thirst. Don’t mistake. It didn’t frighten me. It made me anxious. I can’t tell you what it was like, but that was the effect which it ’ad on me. If you want to know, it reminded me of those things in bottles in those herbalistic shops at Plymouth – preserved in spirits of wine. White an’ crumply things – previous to birth, as you might say.’
‘You ’ave a beastial mind, Pye,’ said the Sergeant, relighting his pipe.
‘Per’aps. We were in the front row, an’ “Home an’ Friends” came on early. Vickery touched me on the knee when the number went up. “If you see anything that strikes you,” ’e says, “drop me a hint”; then ’e went on clicking. We saw London Bridge an’ so forth an’ so on, an’ it was most interestin’. I’d never seen it before. You ’eard a little dynamo like buzzin’, but the pictures were the real thing – alive an’ movin’.’
‘I’ve seen ’em,’ said Hooper. ‘Of course they are taken from the very thing itself – you see.’
‘Then the Western Mail came in to Paddin’ton on the big magic-lantern sheet. First we saw the platform empty an’ the porters standin’ by. Then the engine come in, head-on, an’ the women in the front row jumped, she headed so straight. Then the doors opened an’ the passengers came out an’ the porters got the luggage – just like life. Only – only when anyone came down too far towards us that was watchin’, they walked right out o’ the picture, so to speak. I was ’ighly interested, I can tell you. So were all of us. I watched an old man with a rug ’oo’d dropped a book an’ was tryin’ to pick it up, when quite slowly, from be’ind two porters – carryin’ a little reticule an’ lookin’ from side to side – comes out Mrs Bathurst. There was no mistakin’ the walk in a hundred thousand. She come forward – right forward – she looked out straight at us with that blindish look which Pritch alluded to. She walked on and on till she melted out of the picture – like – like a shadow jumpin’ over a candle, an’ as she went I ’eard Dawson in the tickey seats be’ind sing out: “Christ! there’s Mrs B.!” ’
Hooper swallowed his spittle and leaned forward intently.
‘Vickery touched me on the knee again. He was clickin’ his four false teeth, with his jaw down like an enteric at the last kick.21 “Are you sure?” says he. “Sure,” I says. “Didn’t you ’ear Dawson give tongue? Why, it’s the woman herself.” “I was sure before,” ’e says, “but I brought you to make sure. Will you come again with me to-morrow?”
‘ “Willingly,” I says. “It’s like meetin’ old friends.”
‘ “Yes,” ’e says, openin’ his watch, “very like. It will be four-and-twenty hours less four minutes before I see her again. Come and have a drink,” ’e says. “It may amuse you, but it’s no sort of earthly use to me.” He went out shaking his head an’ stumblin’ over people’s feet as if he was drunk already. I anticipated a swift drink an’ a speedy return, because I wanted to see the performin’ elephants. Instead o’ which Vickery began to navigate the town at the rate o’ knots, lookin’ in at a bar every three minutes approximate Greenwich time. I’m not a drinkin’ man, though there are those present’ – he cocked his unforgettable eye at me – ‘who may have seen me more or less imbued with the fragrant spirit. None the less when I drink I like to do it at anchor an’ not at an average speed of eighteen knots on the measured mile. There’s a tank as you might say at the back o’ that big hotel up the hill – what do they call it?’
‘The Molteno Reservoir,’ I suggested, and Hooper nodded.
‘That was his limit o’ drift. We walked there an’ we come down through the Gardens – there was a South-Easter blowin’ – an’ we finished up by the Docks. Then we bore up the road to Salt River, and wherever there was a pub Vickery put in sweatin’. He didn’t look at what ’e drunk – he didn’t look at the change. He walked an’ he drunk an’ he perspired in rivers. I understood why old Crocus ’ad come back in the condition ’e did, because Vickery an’ I ’ad two an’ a half hours o’ this gipsy manoeuvres, an’ when we got back to the station there wasn’t a dry atom on or in me.’
‘Did he say anything?’ Pritchard asked.
‘The sum total of’ is conversation from 7.45 p.m. till 11.15 p.m. was “Let’s have another.” Thus the mornin’ an’ the evenin’ were the first day,22 as Scripture says … To abbreviate a lengthy narrative, I went into Cape Town for five consecutive nights with Master Vickery, and in that time I must ’ave logged about fifty knots over the ground an’ taken in two gallon o’ all the wors
t spirits south the Equator. The evolution never varied. Two shilling seats for us two; five minutes o’ the pictures, an’ perhaps forty-five seconds o’ Mrs B. walking down towards us with that blindish look in ’er eyes an’ the reticule in ’er hand. Then out – walk – drink till train-time.’
‘What did you think?’ said Hooper, his hand fingering his waistcoat-pocket.
‘Several things,’ said Pyecroft. ‘To tell you the truth, I aren’t quite done thinkin’ about it yet. Mad? The man was a dumb lunatic – must ’ave been for months – years p’r’aps. I know somethin’ o’ maniacs, as every man in the Service must. I’ve been shipmates with a mad skipper – an’ a lunatic Number One, but never both together, I thank ’Eavin. I could give you the names o’ three captains now ’oo ought to be in an asylum, but you don’t find me interferin’ with the mentally afflicted till they begin to lay about ’em with rammers an’ winch-handles. Only once I crept up a little into the wind towards Master Vickery. “I wonder what she’s doin’ in England,” I says. “Don’t it seem to you she’s lookin’ for somebody?” That was in the Gardens again, with the South-Easter blowin’ as we were makin’ our desperate round. “She’s lookin’ for me,” ’e says, stoppin’ dead under a lamp an’ clickin’. When he wasn’t drinkin’, in which case all ’is teeth clicked on the glass, ’e was clickin’ ’is four false teeth like a Marconi ticker.23 “Yes! lookin’ for me,” ’e said, an’ he went on very softly an’ as you might say affectionately. “But,” he went on, “in future, Mr Pyecroft, I should take it kindly of you if you’d confine your remarks to the drinks set before you. Otherwise,” ’e says, “with the best will in the world towards you, I may find myself guilty of murder! Do you understand?” ’e says. “Perfectly,” I says, “but would it at all soothe you to know that in such a case the chances o’ your being killed are precisely equivalent to the chances o’ me being outed?” “Why, no,” ’e says. “I’m almost afraid that ’ud be a temptation.” Then I said – we was right under the lamp by that arch at the end o’ the Gardens where the trams come round – “Assumin’ murder was done – or attempted murder – I put it to you that you would still be left so badly crippled, as one might say, that your subsequent capture by the police – to ’oom you would ’ave to explain – would be largely inevitable.” “That’s better,” ’e says, passin’ ’is hands over ’is forehead. “That’s much better, because,” ’e says, “do you know, as I am now, Pye, I’m not so sure if I could explain anything much.” Those were the only particular words I had with ’im in our walks as I remember.’