Читать книгу The Lion and the Lamb - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 10

Table of Contents

AT precisely twelve o'clock that morning, David presented himself at Abbs' Gymnasium. He walked past the offices, past the collection of electrically driven horses, boats, and punch balls, and various other appliances for promoting muscular development, to the farther end of the room where Abbs himself was coaching a promisinglooking couple of lightweights. At the end of the round, their instructor dismissed them, and came slowly across to his client. His manner was embarrassed, and he hesitated when David essayed to lead the way back to the office.

"Sorry, sir," he confessed, "but I'm afraid it's no use our going any further into that matter we were speaking of. I have decided against it."

David looked at him with hard, set eyes.

"Has any one been getting at you, Abbs?" he asked.

"I wouldn't put it like that, sir," the man replied uneasily. "I've been thinking it over, and I should only get into trouble if I were to help you to raise a gang in the way you suggest. Besides, they wouldn't have a chance. The other side are too strong."

"Is it a matter of money?" David enquired. "Shall I increase my offer?"

Abbs drew his visitor on one side out of the possible hearing of any loiterer. They mounted a few steps leading to the office, and left the little crowd of budding athletes behind them.

"It's not a matter of money, sir," he confided. "It's a matter of saving my life."

"I see," David remarked gravely. "They have been getting at you. I wonder how the deuce they found out?"

"You may as well know the truth now as later," Abbs sighed. "I've had it straight from a man who seems to know all about the gang you were connected with, and I've no fancy for being in their black books. He seems to have guessed what you were up to. Anyway, there it is. I value my skin more highly than to go any further with the business. That's with all due respect to you, sir."

David lit a cigarette and reflected for a minute. Then he laid his hand upon the other man's shoulder.

"Come into the office for a moment, Abbs," he invited.

"It wouldn't be of any use, sir," the man replied, shaking his head.

"Never mind. Come along," David insisted. "I'm going to put up another proposition to you."

They mounted the remaining steps, crossed the strip oi floor, and entered the office. David glanced keenly at the two typists as he passed. One of them, a striking, flamboyant-looking young woman, with a pile of Jll-coiffured, yellow hair, dark eyes and over-rouged lips, returned his gaze without flinching, with even a faint smile twitching at the corners of her lips. Except that she lacked altogether the wild-beast charm of the other woman, David shivered as he recognised the likeness.

"Send those girls out to lunch- or something, Abbs," he directed. "I want to be alone with you. No listeners-in this time."

Abbs did as he was bidden, and it seemed to David, who was watching her, that the young woman whom he had especially noticed left with great reluctance. Even after she had closed the door behind her, she lingered outside the glass partition, as though to watch some of the exercising going on below. It was not until Abbs, at his visitor's instigation, tapped upon the pane of glass, that she finally departed.

"You have some one to help you with this place, I suppose?" David enquired.

"I have taken Sammy West, the boxer, in, sir," Abbs replied. "He can put them through it all right, and he's as honest as the day."

"And how many pupils have you altogether?"

"Nigh on sixty."

"How much money have you sunk in the place?"

"Pretty well all of three thousand pounds," was the disconsolate admission. "A thousand of that I had to borrow from the bank."

"Is it paying?"

"No, it's not paying," Abbs acknowledged. "I don't say I'm losing a lot, but there's a trifle dribbles out every week. I reckon I want another thirty pupils to do any good, and then I couldn't afford the apparatus for them."

"You have two thousand of your own, hard-earned money in it," David reflected, "and already it's dwindling away. Got a lease of the premises?"

"Five years."

"I'll give you five thousand pounds for it, as it stands," David offered—"lease, good will, furniture and apparatus, cash down."

"What? Buy it outright?"

"That's the idea."

Abbs leaned upon the desk, his head between his hands. The wistful look in his face was almost pathetic.

"God, I'd love to do it," he muttered, "but the old man he'd have me for sure."

"Don't be a fool," his visitor enjoined. "You can walk straight out of this place to the other end of the world.

Tottie's a bad man in London, but he doesn't look far outside. You're a Welshman, aren't you?"

"Born in Aberystwith."

"Off you go there to-morrow then," David suggested. "Cut out everything here and get away clean. I'll add another couple of hundred to the cheque for travelling expenses and moving. What about it?"

Abbs, with a deep sigh, hesitated no longer.

"I'll do it, sir," he decided.

The place was empty, and the luncheon hour almost past, when Abbs, with a hearty handshake, took his final leave of the new owner of his boxing academy. David for some time wandered round the place alone. The first of the staff to reappear was Sammy West. David marched him up to- the office.

"Heard the news, West?" he asked pleasantly. Sammy West, a good-looking, freckled-faced, sturdy young man, who seemed as though nothing in the world would either disturb or surprise him, grinned.

"I had a pint with Tom Abbs on his way home," he confided. "He told me my job was all right, Mister."

"Your job's more than all right," David assured him. "What are you making at it?"

"Four quid a week. I couldn't ask Tom any more, because I knew he was barely making the place pay. My fights bring me in- a bit too, of course."

"Go slow with the fighting for a time," David enjoined. "I don't want you knocked out just when you might be useful. It's ten pounds a week for you, West, if you'll carry out instructions."

Sam West scratched his head.

"I'd always rather have regular money, sir," he admitted.

"I'll tell you what I want you to do then," David continued. "Pick out the likely young men who come here for physical training, the adventurous ones, if you know what I mean, the young fellows who have got some insides to them, and enjoy a fight. Don't push out the others, but bring the likely ones together as much as you can. Train them with this one idea in your mind. I want them to be as quick as lightning on their feet, to keep keen and steady, and to acquire at any rate the elements of jiu jitsu. I want you to teach them this: that it's quite possible, at anything like close quarters, for them to tackle a man with either gun or knife, and put him out before he's had time to draw either. Do you get me, West? I want a band of fighters—clean, wholesome fighters—who are going to be clever enough with practice and discipline, to tackle some of these professional gangsters. Can it be done, do you think?"

"Aye, sure it can be done," Sammy West assented. "It's a rummy go, though, all the same."

"Not so very," David assured him. "I've got lots of money, Sam, and I'm a good player. There's a band of gangsters in this city to whom I owe the knock, and they're going to get it. You train the lads. I'll do the rest. As you fix upon the likely ones, drop charging them anything. There'll be big pay coming as soon as I can make use of them."

"I'll do my best," West promised, as he took his leave. "There's plenty of 'em are only too keen on a bit of a scrap. When I see them that way, I always encourage them. I always hold that fighting's the best sport in the world, when all's said and done."

The next arrivals, after the somewhat prolonged luncheon hour, were the two young lady typists. David opened the communicating door and called them into his office.

"Young ladies," he enquired, "how much do you get a week at this establishment?"

The girl who had previously shown her interest in him raised her eyebrows, but answered promptly.

"Three pounds each, and it isn't enough."

"Don't take your hats off," David begged. "Here's twelve pounds—a fortnight's pay. I've bought the business, and I have my own typists coming."

They both stared at him in amazement.

"Where's Mr. Abbs then?" the one who seemed to have appointed herself as spokesman demanded.

"Gone."

"What, never coming back?"

"Never coming back. Sold out. Retired. Gone for a cruise round the world."

"Why can't we stay on, please?" she pleaded. "If it's you who've bought the business, I should like to work for you."

He smiled.

"You'll consider it a trifling reason," he remarked, "unless you think it out, but I don't like the perfume you use."

She looked at him steadfastly for a moment. His face was like granite, his expression unyielding. She shrugged her shoulders. More than ever in that moment she seemed like an insignificant, and less alluring counterpart of that strange goddess of the Bermondsey public house.

"Come along, Aimée," she said, turning to her companion. "I think," she added, looking over her shoulder at David, "that you will repent of your bargain before you're much older."