Читать книгу Saul and the Spinster - Aidan de Brune - Страница 7

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THERE are quite a number of people in the city of Sydney who know the Salom Club; but usually they prefer that this knowledge shall be tucked away in some private corner of their minds. On occasions, some frequenter of the club receives a shock when one sees some friend or business acquaintance escorted through the premises by the proprietor, Captain Artimus Pontifex. Between the two, for a few moments, recognition may be awkward, but relations are soon on a normal footing, and old-time friendship closer by reason of a mutual secret.

The Salom Club has a history. Popular rumour states that it was founded by certain army bloods in the history of Captain Bligh, and that its history is continuous from that date. Members are shyly proud of this record, while not prepared to openly confirm it. Tradition enters largely into the history and procedure of the Salom Club. Just as drinking and gambling were the primary objects in its early days, to-day, gambling is its chief object, under the benevolent proprietor—though not personally indulged in.

It is difficult to locate the Salom Club. The inquirer has to penetrate the wealth of small, winding streets, rock-bound and narrow, on the west side of Circular Quay. The club-house is of stone and shows signs of its many years' resistance to storm and sunshine. In appearance it is an ordinary dwelling-house, standing amid a welter of old-fashioned dwelling houses, now converted into factories and stores.

Captain Pontifex's immediate predecessor had been a good business man. Deliberately avoiding publicity, and approaching only men of wealth who care for a little "flutter" far from any chance of limelight, he had considerably increased the club membership during his term of proprietorship.

Finding within the original building a certain lack of accommodation, he had purchased the two houses in the rear. The three yards of the building, under a competent architect, had become an adequate supper-dance hall. The three main buildings had been comfortably linked with this hall, and the upper floors converted into chambers where matters not approved by the forces of law and order were operated.

Captain Pontifex was proud of his establishment; it was his daily custom, when he arrived at the corner of Gatlow Court and Platlow Street, to pause and observe the sombre grey-faced building he owned, with pride and satisfaction. Often he reflected on past days when he had not dared to dream of his present comfortable circumstances—days in London, New York, Paris, Berlin—and the gradual slow descent in the social scale to Singapore and Suez. At the latter place he had barely managed to obtain a living, until a noble Englishman with a passion for exploration and gambling had one night frequented his lowly establishment.

The Englishman had opened his eyes to the next day's daylight in a small hovel on the outskirts of the town, which he found he was sharing, democratically, with a Turk, a negro, a Senegalese, and a dago of obese and perfumed frame. Captain Pontifex had left before dawn for parts unknown, to reappear in Sydney, Australia.

Only chance had brought the gallant captain to Australia—the chance of the first discreet ship he could find. Now he flattered himself he was set for life. He preened himself that he had learned lessons from past experiences; he believed he had schemed out a means to an adequate livelihood that would last him until—

At that point he always stopped. He had never employed an auditor; he had never audited himself—and he dreaded his appearance before the Final Auditor of Human Lives.

While the gallant captain, regiment unknown, prided himself that his: club was only known to, and appreciated by, those, who found their needed pleasures within its walls, the New South Wales Police Department had quite a respectable dossier regarding the place, its proprietor, and its frequenters. Had Captain Pontifex known that his club and himself had occupied many hours of a conference of Police Department heads, he would, doubtlessly, have journeyed to fresh fields and pastures new, without the preliminary work, or packing.

That the knowledge did not filter to Captain Pontifex was satisfactory not only to his swelling banking account, but to the authorities. The conference had decided that the Salom Club was a nuisance, but a necessary nuisance. In result, orders were given to leave the police severely alone—and that membership should be obtained for certain officers, who were made responsible for the seasonal plucking from its branches those with who the Police Department had inquisitive occasions. These memberships were obtained without the proprietor being aware of the purposes behind the applications for membership, and through the nominations of city men of repute, who had a passion for what a former generation terms "slumming."

Not long after his arrival in Australia, Inspector Saul Murmer heard of Captain Pontifex and his Salom Club, Disregarding an old axiom that curiosity is far worse than a disease, he investigated. To his gratification his discovered in Captain Pontifex an old London acquaintance. If Captain Pontifex did not feel the same gratification as the police officer, he nobly concealed his real feelings.

Saul Murmer became, a valued member of the Salem Club. He was not so Innocent as to register under an imaginary name, knowing the physical disabilities which made the disguise impossible for him. All he required from Captain Pontifex, beyond the necessary permission to frequent the club, was a discreet silence regarding his occupation, and a complete "red-herring" when any club frequenter became knowledgeable and inquisitive.

So complete was Captain Pontifex's control of his club and members that it was more than two months after the Inspector's initiation before Superintendent George Dickson knew of the fact. Police rumours state that Superintendent Dixon, on receiving the news, swore very emphatically.

The Salom Club opened, or rather unbolted, its steel-lined doors exactly at mid-day on seven days of the week. Its hours of business, from mid-day to nine in the evening, were "light grey" compared with its hours of relaxation, from nine onwards past midnight. It is a coincidence that from six each morning, until Commissioner McFee arrived at his office, is occupied by worthy officers of the department in writing detailed reports in which the name of the Salom Club frequently appears.

The eighth morning after Inspector Saul Murmer met Miss Mathilde Westways at the Green Lagoon night-club, the Englishman attended by request, at Superintendent Dixon's room. The conference, and it would have been called a "conference" by Sergeant Lionel Leyland, who doted on such conferences, surrounded the history of one, Montgomery de Leuce, formerly named by misguided but doting parents, Benjamin O'Connors.

Montgomery de Luece had been, in an English existence, a teacher of handwriting in a large public school. The advent of shorthand, typewriting, dictographs, and the peculiar trend of modern education—establishing the theory that the more illegible a student's handwriting the higher his culture and education—rendered handwriting experts superfluous. M. de Luece had, as time progressed, found his fine upstrokes, his graduated down-strokes, and well-contrived loops, a drug on the scholastic market. He had to bewail the fact that the fine German script of the Victorian era had fled before Georgian motor-cars, aeroplanes, and a radio-whines.

Mistakenly, he took his only asset to the commercial markets. There, a slight slip in the curvature of a loop had proved the down-stroke of his career. M. de Luece rested, at a benevolent Government's expense, while then-Sergeant Murmer pondered deeply on the whereabouts of a sum of three thousand and ten pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence. M. de Luece had always been artistic in detail, even while signing other people's cheques.

While a guest of His Britannic Majesty, in one of the palatial castles situated in lonely spots in England, Signor Montgomery de Luece became interested in history. He learned of the old-time punishment of transportation, and directed his attention, therefore, to such history of Australia as could be obtained in the country of his birth.

He found Australia intriguing, and when freedom came, transferred himself and his ambitions to the land under the Southern Cross. There he found men of wealth who had never learned the secrets of expert handwriting, and returned to his former artistic, work. Again the cheering cup betrayed—and Superintendent Dixon evolved a supreme desire to discuss handwriting with so great an expert. Naturally, he called on Inspector Murmer to secure an interview at an early date.

Leaving his Superintendent's office, Saul Murmer decided to walk down to Circular Quay. After the long and technical interview his primary desire was a longing for air; at the foot of Pitt Street he acquired a secondary desire—for information, and turned westwards. He arrived in Platlow Street to witness Captain Pontifex performing his morning genuflections to his property.

Quickening his steps, Saul Murmer drew level with the club proprietor at the moment he was reaching out a hand to press the little knob to announce his arrival to the stalwart doorkeeper unless that individual mistook the summons to be that of another "sheep" announcing his intentions to contribute his mite of fleece to this city-grazier's coffers.

"Consider the shearer of the lilies," misquoted Saul Murmer softly. "Solomon in all his glory—"

"Lilies?" Habit brought Captain Pontifex to a smart military salute. "Lilies?" he repeated. "I wouldn't call them lilies, my dear sir!"

"No?" Saul Murmer tilted his soft hat well to the back of his head and wiped his fevered brow. He disliked walking. "Then—shall we call them lambs?"

"Lambs?" The gallant captain spoke scornfully. "No, sir, we'll not call them lambs."

"Neither lilies nor lambs," the stout Englishman pondered mournfully; "Really, captain, you are difficult to please. Now a shearer—"

"A shearer is a common person who shears sheep," stated the club proprietor in the tone of one instructing abysmal ignorance.

"How clever!" Saul Murmer's tones held reverence. "May I ask, my dear captain, if you acquired that profound knowledge while earning a precarious living as a line sergeant in His Britannic Majesty's army—Arthur Wesley?"