Читать книгу Foe-Farrell - Arthur Quiller-Couch - Страница 22

"Well now," I asked, as my taxi bore us homeward, "what have you to say about all this?"

"I say," answered Jimmy with sententiousness, after a pause, "that you should never take three glasses of champagne on an empty stomach."

"I don't," said I.

"Nor do I," said Jimmy. "I took five, on Farrell's three … eight glasses to the bottle. It was a Christian act, because I saw that was he exceeding. But he insisted on ordering two bottles: so it was all thrown away."

"What was thrown away?"

"The Christian act. … I say, Otty," he reproached me, "wake up! You're not attending."

"On the contrary," I assured him, "I am waiting with some patience for the explanation you owe me. After dragging me out of bed at one o'clock in the morning, it's natural, perhaps, you should assume me to be half-asleep—"

Jimmy broke in with a chuckle. "Poor old Otty! You've been most awfully decent over this."

"Cut that short," I admonished him. "I am waiting for the story: and you provide the requisite lightness of touch; but the trouble is, you don't seem able to provide anything else."

"Don't be stern, Otty," he entreated. "It is past pardon. I know, and to-morrow—later in the morning, I should say—you'll find that the defendant feels his position acutely. Honour bright, I'll do you credit in the dock. … Wish I was as sure of Farrell. But, as for the story, as I am a sober man, I don't know where to begin. There's a wicked uncle mixed up in it, and a wicked nephew and a taxi, and a lady with a reticule, and a picture palace, and a water-pipe, and heaps upon heaps of policemen—they're the worst mixed up of the lot—"

"Begin at the beginning," I commanded. "That is, unless you'd rather defer the whole story for the magistrate's ear."

"The whole story?" He chuckled. "I'd like to see the Beak's face. … No, I couldn't possibly. My good Otty, how many people d'you reckon it would compromise?"

"You've compromised Farrell pretty thoroughly, anyhow," said I grimly: "and you've compromised the cause in which I happen to be interested. Has it occurred to you, my considerate young friend, that Farrell has receded to 1000 to 1 in the betting?—that, in short, you've lost us the seat?"

"I compromise Farrell?"—Jimmy sat up and exclaimed it indignantly. "I lose you his silly seat? … Rats! The little bounder compromised himself! He's been doing it freely—doing it since ten o'clock—two crowded hours of glorious life … 'stonishing, Otty, what a variegated ass a man can make of himself nowadays in two short hours, with the help of a taxi and if he wastes no time. When I think of our simple grandfathers playing at Bloods, wrenching off door-knockers. … Oh, yes—but you're waiting for the story. Well, it happened like this—

"Farrell called on you this morning, soon after breakfast-time, and found me breakfasting. He was in something of a perspiration. It appeared that he'd fired off a letter to the Times directed against our dear Professor; and, having fired it, had learnt from somebody that the Professor was a close friend of ours. He had come around to make the peace with you, if he could—he's a funny little snob. But you had flown."

"I had gone off," said I, "to catch Jack Foe and warn him that the letter was dangerous."

"Think so? Well, you'd left the Times lying on the floor, and he picked it up and read his composition to me while I dallied with the bacon. It seemed to me pretty fair tosh, and I told him so. I promised that if his second thoughts about it coincided with my first ones, I would pass them on together to you when I saw you next, and added that I had trouble to adapt my hours to political candidates, they were such early risers. That, you might say, verged on a hint: but he didn't take it. He hung about, standing on one leg and then on the other, protesting that he would put things right. I hate people who stand on one leg when you're breakfasting, don't you? … So I gave him a cigar, and he smoked it whilst I went on eating. He said it was a first-class cigar and asked me where I dealt. I said truthfully that it was one of yours, and falsely that you bought them in Leadenhall Market off a man called Huggins. I gave him the address, which he took down with a gold pencil in his pocket-book. … I said they were probably smuggled, and (as I expected) he winked at me and said he rather gathered so from the address. He also said that he knew a good thing wherever he saw it, that you were his bo ideal of a British baronet, and that we had very cosy quarters. This led him on to discourse of his wife, and how lonely he felt since losing her—she had been a martyr to sciatica. But there was much to be said for a bachelor existence, after all. It was so free. His wife had never, in the early days, whole-heartedly taken to his men friends: for which he couldn't altogether blame her—they weren't many of 'em drawing-room company. A good few of them, too, had gone down in the world while he had been going up. He instanced some of these, but I didn't recollect having met any of 'em. There were others he'd lost sight of. He named these too—good old Bill This and Charley That and a Frank Somebody who sang a wonderful tenor in his day and would bring tears to your eyes the way he gave you Annie Laurie when half drunk: but again I couldn't recall that any of them had been passed down to me. 'You see, Mr. Collingwood,' he said, 'when one keeps a little house down at Wimbledon, these things have a way of dropping out as time goes on.' 'Just like the teeth,' said I. He thought over this for a while, and then laughed—oh, he laughed quite a lot—and declared I was a humorist. He hadn't heard anything so quick, not for a long while. 'Mr. Collingwood,' he said, 'I'm a lonely man with it all. I don't mind owning to you that I've taken up these here politics partly for distraction. It used to be different when me and Maria could stick it out over a game of bezique. She used to make me dress for dinner, always. We had a billiard-room, too: but that didn't work so well. I could never bring her up to my standard of play, not within forty in a hundred, by reason that she'd use the rest for almost every stroke. She had a sense of humour, had Maria: you'd have got along with her, Mr. Collingwood, and she'd have got along with you. You'd have struck sparks. One evening I asked her, 'Maria, why are you so fond of the jigger?' 'Because of my figger,' says she, pat as you please. Now, wasn't that humorous, eh? She meant, of course, that being of the buxom sort in later life—and it carried her off in the end—' Why, hallo!" Jimmy exclaimed. "Are we home already?"

"We have arrived at the Temple, E.C.," said I gently, "but scarcely yet at the beginning of the story."

He resumed it in our chambers, while I operated on the hearth with a firelighter.

"Well," said Jimmy, smoking, "to cut a long story short"—and I grunted my thanks—"he told me he was a lonely man, but that he knew a thing or two yet. Had I by any chance made acquaintance with the 'Catalafina,' in Soho? 'Oh, come!' said I bashfully, 'who is she?' 'It's a restarong,' said he: 'Italian: where the cook does things you can't guess what they're made of. Just as well, perhaps.' But the results, he undertook to say, were excellent."

"Do I see one?" I asked.

"No, you don't," answered Jimmy, sipping his whisky-and-soda. "That's just it, if you'll let me proceed. … He said that they kept some marvellous Lagrima Christi—if I liked Lagrima Christi. For his part, it always soured on his stomach. But we could send out for a bottle of fizz—I'm using his expression, Otty—"

"I trust so," said I.

"He called it that. He said he would take it as an honour if I'd join him in a little supper this very evening at the 'Catalafina.' He had a meeting at 7.30, at which he would do his best to soften down this letter of his in the Times; he would get it over by 9.30. Could we meet (say) on the steps of the 'Empire' at ten o'clock? He would hurry thither straight from the Baths, report progress—for me to set your mind at rest—and afterwards take me off to this damned eating-house. I should never find it by myself, he assured me. He was right there; but I'm not anxious to try. My hope is that it, or the management, won't find me. … Well, weakly-and partly for your sake, Otty—I consented. He said, by the way, he would be greatly honoured if I'd persuade you to come along too. 'It's Bohemian,' he said; 'if Sir Roderick will overlook it.' 'You told me it was Italian,' said I: 'but never mind. Sir Roderick, as it happens, is a bit of a Bohemian himself and is dining to-night with a club of them—the Lost Dogs, if you've ever heard of that Society.' I saved you, anyway. You may put it that I flung myself into the breach. They found you, but it was literally over my prostrate body … and here we are."

"Is that the story?" said I.

Jimmy leaned back on his shoulder-blades in the armchair. "It is the preliminary canter," he announced. "Now we're off, and you watch me getting into my stride—

"Farrell turned up, on time. He was somewhat agitated, and I suspect—yes, in the light of later events I strongly suspect—he had picked up a drink somewhere on the way. I got into his taxi, and we swung up Rupert Street, and out of Rupert Street into what the novelists, when they haven't a handy map or the energy to use it, describe as a labyrinth leading to questionable purlieus. I am content to leave it at purlieus. The driver, as it seemed to me, had as foggy a notion as I of what, without infringing Messrs. Swan and Edgar's lingerie copyright, we'll call the 'Catalafina's' whereabouts. Farrell spent two-thirds of the passage with his head out of window. I don't mean to convey that he was seasick: and he certainly wasn't drunk, or approaching it. He kept his head out to shout directions. He was pardonably excited—maybe a bit nervous in a channel that seemed to be buoyed all the way with pawnbrokers' signs. But he brought us through. We alighted at the entrance of the 'Catalafina'; Farrell paid the driver, and I advised him to find his way back before daylight overtook him.

"I will not attempt to describe the interior of the 'Catalafina.' Farrell saved me that trouble on the threshold. 'Twenty years or so,' he said, pausing and inhaling garlic, 'often makes a difference in these places. One mustn't expect this to be quite what it used to be." … Well, I hadn't, of course, and I dare say it wasn't. It had sand on the floor, and spittoons. It was crowded, between the spittoons, with little cast-iron tables, covered with dirty table-cloths spread upon American cloth and garnished with artificial flowers and napkins of Japanese paper. Farrell called them 'serviettes.' He also said he felt 'peckish.' I—well, I had taken the precaution of dining at Boodle's, and responded that I was rather for the bucket than the manger. He considered this for some time and then laughed so loudly that all the anarchists in the room looked up as if one of their bombs had gone off by mistake. … Oh, I omitted to mention that all the space left unoccupied by cigarette-smoke and the smell of garlic was crowded with anarchists, all dressed for the part. They wore black ties with loose ends, fed with their hats on, and read Italian newspapers—like a musical comedy. The waiters looked like stage-anarchists, too; but you could easily tell them from the others because they went about in their shirt-sleeves.

"Farrell caught the eye of one of these bandits, who came along with a great neuter cat rubbing against his legs. Farrell began with two jocose remarks which didn't quite hit the mark he intended them for. 'Hallo, Jovanny!' he said pretty loudly, 'I don't seem to remember your face, and yet it's familiar somehow.'—Whereat Giovanni, or whatever his name was, flung a look over his shoulder that was equal to an alarm, and all the anarchists looked up uneasily too—for Farrell's voice carries, as you may have observed. He followed this up by smiling at me over the carte du jour and observing in a jovial stentorian voice that he felt like a man returned from exile. Fifteen years—and it must be fifteen years—is a long stretch. … 'Oh, damn your Italian,' said Farrell suddenly, dropping the card. 'In the old days we used to make orders on our fingers, in the dumb alphabet, and risk what came.'

"By this time he had Giovanni, and several anarchists at the nearer tables, properly scared. But he picked up the card and went on, innocent as a judge,' We used to have a code in those days. For instance, you crooked one finger over your nose and that meant 'sea-urchins.'' 'Why?' I asked. 'That was the code,' Farrell explained. 'They used to have a speciality in sea-urchins, straight from the Mediterranean. You rubbed a soupsong of garlic into them with three drops of paprika. … Now what do you say to sea-urchins?'

"'Nothing, as a rule,' said I. 'Safer with oysters, isn't it? They don't explode.' I dropped this out just to try its effect on the waiter, and he blanched. One or two of our convives began to clear.

"Farrell ordered two dozen of oysters, to start with, and sent a runner out for—no, Otty, I won't say it again—for two bottles of Perrier-Jouet; two bottles and '96, mark you. On hearing this command about a dozen habitues of the 'Catalafina' arose hastily, drained their glasses and vanished.

"Farrell perceived it not. He had picked up the card again and was ordering some infernal broth made of mussels and I-don't-know-what. 'What do you say to follow?' he asked me.

"'Something light,' I suggested. 'Liver of blaspheming Jew, for choice: it sounds like another speciality of this kitchen.'

"In the interval before the wine was brought Farrell gave me a short account of the meeting he had just left: and he didn't lighten the atmosphere of suspicion around us by suddenly sinking his voice to a kind of conspirator's whisper. The meeting (it appeared) had been lively, and more than lively. Our small incursion—or the Professor's, rather—had been a fool to it. For the Professor's loyal pupils, stung by that letter in the Times, had organised a counter-demonstration. 'Their behaviour,' Farrell reported, 'was unbridled.' They would hardly allow me a hearing. I give you my word—and I wish Sir Roderick to know it—I was prepared to tell them that information had come to me which put a different complexion on the whole case. I was even prepared to tell them that, while I should ever insist on the South London University College and all similar institutions being subject to a more public control with an increased representation of local rate-payers on their governing bodies, I was confident that in this particular case the charge had been too hasty. … I have the notes of my speech in my great-coat pocket; I'll give them to you later and beg you as a favour to show them to Sir Roderick. But what was the use, when they started booing me because I wore evening dress?'

"'Why did you?' I asked.

"'Because, as I tried to explain, I had another engagement to keep immediately after the Meeting—a Conversatsiony, as I put it to them.'

"'Then perhaps,' said I, 'they took exception to some details of the costume—for instance, your wearing a silk handkerchief, and crimson at that, tucked in between your shirt-front and your white waistcoat.'

"'Is that wrong?' Farrell asked anxiously. 'Maria used to insist on it. She said it looked neglijay. … But I suppose fashions alter in these little details.' He stood up, removed the handkerchief, and stowed it in a tail-pocket.

"'That's better,' said I.

"'I'm not above taking a hint,' said he, 'from one as knows. It'll be harder to get at. … But I don't believe, if you'll excuse me, that any one of these students, as they call themselves, ever wore an evening suit in his life—unless 'twas a hired one. No, sir; they came prepared for mischief. They meant to wreck the Meeting, and had brought along bags of cayenne pepper, and pots of chemicals to stink us out. They opened one—phew! And I have another, captured from them, in the pocket of my greatcoat on the rack, there. I'll show it to you by and by. Luckily our stewards had wind, early in the afternoon, that some such game was afoot, and had posted a body of bruisers conveniently, here and there, about the hall. So in the end they were thrown out, one by one—yes, sir, ignominiously. It don't add to one's respect for public life, though.'

"At this point the wine made its appearance, and—if you'll believe me—it was genuine: Perrier-Jouet, '96. A little while on the ice might have improved it, but we gave it no time. The oysters arrived too; but they were tired, I think. Something was wrong with them, anyhow. … Then—as I seem to remember having told you—Farrell put down three glasses of champagne on an empty stomach."

"You did mention it," said I; "somewhere in the dim and distant past."

"For my part," went on Jimmy seriously, "my potations were moderate. After trying the first oyster, I was sober enough to let the others alone. Then came on the alleged mussel-soup. I tried it and laid down my spoon. … Do you happen to know, Otty, which develops the quicker typhoid or ptomaine? and if they are, by any chance, mutually exclusive? Farrell will like to know.

"He swallowed it all. But when he had done he looked full in the eyes and said in a loud, unfaltering voice, 'This restarong is no longer what it was.'

"'The champagne is, and better,' I consoled him.

"'Well, what do you say now,' he asked,' to a pig's trotter farced with pimento? That sounds appetising, at any rate.'

"I think it was at this point, accurately, that I began to suspect him of having exceeded or of being on the verge of excess. But the suspicion no sooner crossed my mind than he set it at rest by getting up and walking across the room to his great-coat, on the rack by the door. His gait was perfectly steady. He drew certain articles from the pockets, returned with them, and laid them on the table: a cigar-case, a mysterious round box of white metal—sort of box you buy 'Blanco' in—and another round object concealed in a crushed paper-bag. He opened the first.

"'Have a cigar,' he invited me. 'They smoke between the courses in this place—proper thing to do.'

"'Sanitary precaution,' I suggested. 'I'll be content with a cigarette for the present. What are your other disinfectants?'

"He laughed, very suddenly and violently. 'Disinfectants?' he chortled; 'that's a good 'un! They're exhibits, my dear sir—pardon-liberty-calling-you-Dear-sir. Stewards collected a dozen, these infernal machines—'

"'There's no need to shout,' said I. No, Otty I was sober. … But I looked around and it struck me that the faces at the near tables were bright, and white, and curiously distinct in the cigarette-smoke.

"'I am not shouting,' Farrell protested: but he was, and at that moment. 'Disinfectants? That box, there—there's a bottle inside—sulphuretted hydrogen. T'other joker's a firework of sorts. I brought 'em along for evidence. … Wha's that?' He jerked himself bolt upright, staring at a dish the waiter held under his nose.

"'It's the tete de veau en spaghetti you ordered, sir,' said Giovanni.

"'Did I? I don't remember it. Do you remember my ordering tait-de-whatever it calls itself?' he asked me earnestly.

"Well, I couldn't, and I said so.

"'If I did,' commanded Farrell, 'take it away and let me forget it. This place is not what it was. … Take it away, you Corsican Brother, and bring me the bill! Look here,' said he as Giovanni departed. 'We'll get out of this and try something better. What do you say to looking in at the Ritz?' He lit his cigar and poured out more champagne.

"'As you like,' said I. 'Let's get out of this anyway. For my part, I've had enough.'

"'Well, I haven't,' said he, and fixed a stare on me. 'Oh, I see what you mean. I'm drunk. … It's no use your pretending,' he caught me up argumentatively. 'I've taken too much t'drink. Tiring day. Hope you're not a prude?'

"'Well then,' I confessed, 'it did strike me you were punishing the other fellow a bit too fast in the opening rounds. But you walked over to your corner, just now, steady as a soldier—'

"'Peculiarity of mine,' he explained. 'Ought t'have warned you. Takes me in head, long before legs. Do you a sprint down the street—even money—when we're outside. … Wha's this? Oh, the bill. … Thought it was more spaghetti. … Yes, I know. … Custom of house … pay the signora in the brass cage. My dear sir, if you'll 'scuse fam'liarity—'