"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."
"I am refereeing the match."
"Oh, are you? Then you will have a front row seat at the tragedy and will get a good view when my life is blighted and the cup of happiness dashed from my lips."
I frowned. I did not approve of this sort of talk from a young man in the springtime of life. I would not have liked it much even from someone more elderly.
"Come, come," I said. "Don't falter, Walter. Why this defeatist attitude? From what people tell me, George Porter will be less than the dust beneath your chariot wheels. I think you will beat him."
"I don't, and I'll tell you why. You know the Botts family?"
I did indeed, and spent a considerable portion of my time avoiding them. The head of the house, Mrs. Lavender Botts, had a distressing habit of writing books and talking a good deal about them. Her works were not novels. I am a broadminded man and can tolerate female novelists, but Mrs. Botts gave English literature a bad name by turning out those unpleasant whimsical things to which women of her type are so addicted. My Chums The Pixies was one of her tides, How To Talk To The Flowers another, and Many Of My Best Friends Are Field Mice a third. The rumour had got about that she was contemplating a fourth volume on the subject of elves.
Ponsford Botts, her husband, told dialect stories, and perhaps even harder to bear w
as their elder son, Cosmo, a Civil Servant by profession who reviewed books for various weekly papers and like so many book reviewers had a distressing tendency to set everybody right about everything. Strong men had often hidden behind trees when they saw Cosmo coming.
"Yes, I am fairly Botts-conscious," I said. "Why do you ask?"
His voice shook a little as he replied. "I have just heard they are going to walk round with me tomorrow." I saw what he had in mind.
"You think they will put you off your game?"
"I know they will, but that's not the worst. Angela will be there, too. You see the frightful peril that looms?"
I said no, I didn't, and he muttered something about somebody, whose name I did not catch, being a fatheaded ivory-skulled old dumb-bell.
"Surely it's obvious? You've seen me play golf, haven't you?"
"Oddly enough, no, except when driving off the first tee or holing out at the ninth. No doubt I missed a genuine treat, but I find it pleasanter these days to remain in my chair on this terrace. Why?"
"Because, if you had, you would know that once on the course I become a changed man. In ordinary life calm, suave and courtly, the moment I am out on the links and things go wrong, as they always do, the fiend that sleeps in me is awakened. I curse my caddy, I snarl at spectators, I make a regular exhibition of myself. And tomorrow, as I say, the air will be thick with Bottses, each rasping my nervous system in his or her individual way. And Angela will be there, looking on."
I nodded gravely.
"You think that something will pop?"
"I don't see how it can be avoided. Picture what will happen if just as I have missed a short putt old Botts starts telling me the story of the two costermongers who went to heaven, or Ma Botts brings up the subject of elves, or Cosmo explains how he would have made the shot. Yes, unquestionably something will pop."
"And you fear the effect this generous wrath of yours will have on your betrothed?"
"Well, figure it out for yourself. She thinks she is linking her lot with a Chevalier Bayard. What will be her reaction when she finds that what she has really drawn is a Captain Bligh of the Bounty? I'll tell you what her reaction will be. She will recoil from me in horror and cancel all orders for the trousseau before I can say 'Henry Cotton'. And quite understandably. I wouldn't want to marry Captain Bligh of the Bounty myself."
"But I thought the angry young man was all the go nowadays."
"Not if he is as angry as I get when I miss a short putt. And the shock will be all the greater because up till now I have always gone out of my way to be deferential and courteous to these human streptococci. The strain was fearful, but for Angela's sake I stifled my true opinion of them and wore die mask. The urge to tell them to go and boil their respective heads was very strong, but I resisted it."
"You feel that she would have taken in bad part the suggestion that they should go and boil their heads?"
"Of course she would. She has a niece's love for Ma Botts, the same for Pa Botts, and a cousin's love - though I don't see how she manages it - for Cosmo Botts, and had I revealed what I really thought of them, would have been as sore as a gumboil and might even have given me the bum's rush. As it is, I am not sure that I may not have given her some inkling of the truth, for her manner has been strange of late. I catch her looking at me in a speculating sort of way, as if she suspected."
"Imagination."
"It may be so, but it doesn't matter one way or the other, for tomorrow she will know all. So now you see what I had in mind when I spoke just now of doom, disaster, desolation and despair."
His problem was one that undoubtedly presented many points of interest, and fortunately I was in a position to solve it.
"What you need," I said, "is self-control, and I will tell you how you can achieve it. In my playing days I, like you, was inclined to become a little emotional on the golf course. I cured myself by thinking of Socrates."
"The Greek bozo?"
"The, as you say, Greek bozo. Job would probably have answered equally well, but for some reason I preferred Socrates."
"I don't seem to follow you. How does Socrates get into the act?"
"Perfectly simple. He, if you remember, had his troubles…it can't have been at all pleasant for him to have to drink that bowl of hemlock…but he refused to let them get him down, bearing them consistently with good-humoured calm and a stiff upper hp. So if you keep reminding yourself that even if your best shots end up in bunkers you are much better off than he was, and murmur 'Socrates' to yourself at intervals - or, better, 'Socks'…no, I have it. I shall be with you tomorrow, and every time I notice that you are about to erupt I will whisper the magic word in your ear. That ought to do the trick."
"It solves the whole thing. I see myself getting through the final of the President's Cup without a stain on my character. What was it you were saying - that people were saying that George Porter would be beneath my chariot wheels?"
"Less than the dust."
"They said a mouthful," said Walter, now completely restored to his customary equanimity, and with a gay 'Socks' on his lips went off to the bar for a gin and tonic.
He was on the first tee with Angela when I arrived there on the following afternoon, chatting chummily of this and that. Nobody else was present. The annual contest for the President's Cup never draws the dense crowd of spectators which you see at some such event as the British Open. Its high-sounding title is perhaps a little misleading, for it is not one of our big competitions. Entries are accepted only from those whose handicap is not lower than eighteen, it having been designed as a special treat for the underprivileged submerged tenth of our golfing world. It brings out the rabbits as if it were a conjuror extracting them from a silk hat.
George Porter and Walter both had handicaps of eighteen, but I had been told by those who had watched them that there was a marked difference between them in action. George, these eye-witnesses said, played a steady game. He was a vegetarian and teetotaller, and teetotal vegetarians all play a steady game, due, I think, to the essential vitamins in the grated carrots. Walter, on the other hand, was one of those uncertain performers, varying between a dashing scratch and a shaky thirty-six. Which W. Judson, I was asking myself, should we see this afternoon - the masterful stylist who had once done the long seventh in three or his alter ego who frequently took a spotty eleven at the short second?
It was good, at any rate, whatever the future might bring, to note that at the moment he was still plainly in the best of spirits, these appearing to be not in the least damped by the advent at this point of Mr. and Mrs. Botts. They were not accompanied by their son Cosmo, he, they said, having been detained at home by a rush order from the Booksy Weekly for an article on Albert Camus And The Aesthetic Tradition. They held out hopes that he would be joining us at the turn, and Walter said "Capital, capital, capital." A few moments later he drew me aside and revealed the reason for his exuberance. George Porter, it seemed, was in the poorest shape owing to an overnight rift with his fiancée. The local grapevine reported that relations between the two had been severed. From a reliable source Walter had learned that his rival had spent the morning in the bar, sullenly drinking glass after glass of barley-water, and the view he took was that the President's Cup was as good as on his mantelpiece.
"If I can't extract the stuffing from a fellow who has received the ring and letters back and is full to the brim with barley-water/' he said jubilantly, "I'll never show myself on a golf course again. See, here he comes, looking licked to a splinter."
It was true. George Porter, who had just appeared, gave the impression, as he advanced towards us on leaden feet, of having had his insides removed by a taxidermist who had absent-mindedly forgotten to complete the operation by stuffing him. I believe this often happens when a young lover has been handed his hat by the adored object. He groaned civilly in response to my greeting, and in a hollow voice called Tails - correctly - when Walter spun the coin for the honour. With bowed head he took his
place on the first tee, and the match began.
It speedily became evident that Walter, in predicting a one-sided contest, had not erred. What ensued was a mere massacre, and I am not ashamed to say that, pro-Walter though I was, my heart bled for George Porter. It was plain that the unfortunate man felt his position deeply. It is bad enough to lose the girl you love after spending a fortune on her for months in the matter of flowers and chocolates, and when in addition to this the pants are being trimmed off you in an important golf match the nadir of depression is reached. I have said that George Porter's head was bowed, but his trouble was that he did not keep it bowed. Too often, when making a shot, he would raise it heavenwards, as if asking why a good man should be persecuted like this, which of course resulted in topping. And in sharp contradistinction to his pitiful efforts Walter, striking an inspired vein, was playing superbly.
Golf in its essence is a simple game. All you have to do is hit the ball hard in the right direction. Walter, if he hit the ball at all, always hit it hard, and by the law of averages there was bound to come a day sooner or later when he hit it in the right direction. It had come this afternoon, and I was not surprised that he found himself three up at the turn. His lead would have been even more substantial, had he not at two of the short holes overdriven the green by some fifty yards, while on the ninth the same excess of zeal caused him to miss the cup four times in succession.
There was a brief intermission here while Walter genially permitted his opponent a breathing spell in which he could regroup his shattered forces. George Porter wandered off a little way, to be alone with his grief, and Walter held a sort of court on the tenth tee.
The suavity of his manner had never been more pronounced. He was all courteous attention when Mrs. Botts brought the conversation round to elves. Those little beetles you saw crawling on the turf were really elves, she said, and when she mentioned that she was thinking of calling her forthcoming book Elves On The Golf Course nothing could have exceeded the warm enthusiasm with which Walter agreed that that was the stuff to give them. Ponsford Botts once more told his story of the two costermongers who went to heaven, and even though he told it with a Swedish dialect Walter laughed unstintedly. He also patted his caddy on the head, and when Cosmo Botts appeared from the clubhouse greeted him like a brother. It seemed to me that in appointing myself his guardian angel this afternoon I had taken on a sinecure.