Читать книгу Good Evans! - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

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EDUCATED EVANS, being by nature gallant and by predisposition romantic, imagined, in the purity of his mind and the loftiness of his soul, that he might do almost anything that would be reprehensible in other men.

A lesser man might have thought twice before taking Millie Ropes to Lingfield. Millie was a little on the notorious side. She had left the bar of the "White Cow" with suspicious suddenness. There was a lot of vague talk about marked half-crowns. And she had subsequently disappeared from London, returning at the end of six months with a very small baby that she said belonged to her sister Annie, who had to leave England for Australia. Millie Robes was frankly an indiscretion on Evans' part.

"It's all over Camden Town, is it?" he said defiantly to a well-meaning friend. "Well, is it all over Camden Town that I give Orbindos—fear Melon—nothin' else mentioned? Is it all over Camden Town that I give Funny Freak—100-6 beat a head—hard lines? Is it all over Camden Town that I give Priory Park before the entries come out? I don't take no notice of what common people say about us. I'm like the well- known an' highly respected King Edward the Professor, who picked up a lady's garter an' shoved it round his neck, hence the celebrated sayin' 'Hony swar kwee maly pense'."

But Millie was not the only brick that Mr. Evans dropped. Was he not seen at the Hialto Cinema with Mrs. Alf Ibbidino? And was not Lou Ibbidino (her husband was in the ice-cream business) a lady about whom the tongue of gossip wagged slanderously?

"She's a Satisfied Client of mine," protested Evans when The Miller reproached him. "What was I to do when she asked me out to see the pictures?... I know she's Livin' Apart.... I know all about the barman at the Green Moon... but, Mr. Challoner, I'm like the famous wife of Julius Caesar, the well-known King of Italy, I'm never suspicious."

Too well was Educated Evans doing for the Lubes to ignore this opportunity. Old Sam's Midnight Special announced

OLD SAM

(The Moral Tipster) 83 years old and never got anybody into trouble. Patronise the Man who Gave Myra Gray. Old Sam gives tips that children can read. Don't Support Vice, support Purity.

Evans complained bitterly about this—his chief complaint being that Myra Gray was a figment of Lubean imagination.

But after a while the reflection upon his character began to get on his nerves. People began to stop him in the street and ask him not to speak to their wives. A woman who occupied a room in the mews told him he ought to be ashamed of himself—a man of his age. And behind it all was the crude propaganda of the Lubeses—apocryphal stories related to the hushed denizens of bars by Alf Lube, scandals proclaimed over the tea table by Mrs. Lube. Even Old Sam, that patriarchal man, made insulting references to the moral probity of the educated man.

"You've got to live it down," said The Miller.

"Live what down?" wailed the agitated Evans. "I done nothing—me character's bein' demobbed by them Lubeses and if I don't take 'em into court my name's not Evans!"

One day business took him to a foreign land—Camberwell, S.E. He had to interview a friend who had settled in this strange country. This friend had a wife whose sister was walking out with the brother of a head lad in a Wiltshire stable, and the possibility of obtaining direct stable information was not to be missed. They had completed their business, and it had been arranged that anything the wife's sister told the wife about what her young man's brother had told her young man should be communicated by the husband to Evans at the earliest possible moment. And after Evans had told his friend to ask his wife to tell her sister to ask her young man to tell his brother that Evans paid heavily for news, the party was adjourning when he received a very staggering piece of information.

"I wonder, Mr. Evans," said his friend, "whether you know of a job for my sister-in-law? She's been offered a place up your way, but she wants a little extra work to keep her going. She's as nice a young woman..."

Evans listened with closed eyes, framing the while a polite regret that he could not furnish the necessary employment.

"I've got meself into too much trouble lately min' to bein' kind to wimmin," he said, shaking his head. "There's a certain party in Camden Town who's cast more aspiration on my character than the far-famed Lewdcreature Burgia, the well-known female Crippen of Italy. But I might hear of something—what's the name of your lady friend?"

His friend gave it, and the educated man staggered.

"What?" he said incredulously. "Goo' lor'!"

His brain worked rapidly.

"I'll engage her," he said excitedly. "Two pun' ten a week if she'll come and do a bit of racing with me."

"She's highly respectable," warned the friend. "So am I," said Mr. Evans.

Thereafter life ran with greater smoothness at Orbindos Manse—which, despite the ecclesiastical and evangelical character of the title, was the one room above a stable in Bayham Mews which was the pied à terre of the World's Turf Adviser.

Prosperity was revealed in the two flower-pots topped with the blazing blue of hyacinths, in the gold lettering on the door tablet, in the new green and magenta tablecloth.

"Good heavens!" said The Miller, stopping in the doorway to survey the unexpected grandeur.

Mr. Evans smirked in a self-deprecatory way.

"I got a young lady who comes in an' does," he said simply.

"Does what?"

Evans shrugged.

"Does for me. I got no time nowadays to go messin' about makin' beds and fryin' sausages."

The Miller turned the straw between his teeth.

"Attractive?" he asked.

Evans' shoulders went up and down.

"I scarcely notice the girl," he said indifferently. "Her name's Mrs. Lube—"

"Eh?" The Miller's eyes opened. "Not your hated rival—and you let her come here?"

"She don't have any truck with Old Sam," said Evans, avoiding the visitor's eye. "As dear old B— Mary said to Cardinal Rishloo, the famous French poet, when she had her uncle chopped in four pieces for encouragin' Lady Jane Graves, 'Relations are best apart.' "

The Miller nodded slowly.

"I think you're mad!" he said.

"I'm quite 'in sansitas,' to use a foreign expression," said Mr. Evans calmly. "As a matter of fact she ain't any relation at all. But her name's Mrs. Lube and she's partially a widder—her husband havin' run away with another lady. I pay her two ten a week an' she's worth it."

News travels fast in Camden Town. Mr. Alf Lube, supporting the bar of the "Grey Squirrel," heard a whisper.

"Here, what's that?" he demanded.

"He's goin' about with Mrs. Lube—that's all I know. He was down at Kempton—or was it Plumpton?—with her. Harry Gribble, the bookmaker, said Evans introduced her in a gentlemanly way an' she took seventy-five shillin's to five Cats Eyes an' drew."

Alf went purple.

"That's a lie!" he said. "And for tuppence I'd give you a punch on the nose."

His informant laid two pennies on the counter and uttered truculent words. Apparently Alf neither saw nor heard. He dashed back to the headquarters of Old Sam's Midnight Special.

"Here!" he demanded wrathfully. "What's all this about you an' Evans? Here's me workin' me brains out tryin' to think winners an' you gallivantin'..."

After he had picked himself up and Mrs. Lube had thrown the broken chair into the scullery—she always used a chair as a weapon in her more distraught moments,

"I'll go an' see Evans," she said, and went in search of the bag in which she did her shopping. In was the only bag she had in which she could carry a poker.

Mr. Evans was not in when she bounced into his room. There was in his place a neat little woman in a print dress.

"Where's that...?" Mrs. Lube described the educated man vividly.

"Moderate your language," said the calm guardian of Evans' home. "I'm a respectable woman an' not used to common talk. What's more, I don't want to lose me temper and slosh you one."

Mrs. Lube gasped as an idea flashed on her. "What name do you call yourself?" she demanded.

"Lube," said Mrs. Lube II. "I call myself that because it was me husband's."

Mrs. Lube I. stood petrified.

"Your real name... no relation to me?"

"Gawd forbid!" said Mrs. Lube II.

Mrs. Lube staggered down the stairs a broken woman. Half a dozen people saw her leave. Half a dozen broadcasters spread the tidings. So it was true....

People who scarcely knew Alf Lube came up to him and gripped his hand sympathetically. Perfect strangers offered him beer, and women came to their front doors to see him pass, shake their heads sorrowfully and say "Poor feller!"

As to Emma (which was one of her Christian names, the other being Amelia), she explained the matter to her husband.

"Another woman called Mrs. Lube, eh?" he said, with cold politeness. "Oh, yes, I dessay...."

"Go an' see for yourself," hissed his partner. Alf Lube said nothing, but looked murderous.

Detective-Inspector Challoner thought it necessary to warn his friend.

"Personally," he said, "I have no very strong feelings in the matter. We haven't had a good murder in Camden Town for years, and I should know who did it, because I happen to have heard that Alf Lube was trying to buy a German revolver that Joe Carter brought back from the war."

Educated Evans turned pale.

"Is it my fault," he demanded, "that people talk about me an' her? Ain't they been talkin' about me for munce and munce, a scandalisin' an' deprecatin' me? As the well-known an' celebrated Cleopatra, her that hid Moses in the bulrushes, said: 'You can't do nothin' if you can't prove nothin'.' "

"We shall see," said The Miller ominously.

He left Mr. Evans very thoughtful, though not for long. Mrs. Lube II. was a cheery soul, a lady of thirty-five; rather, as The Miller had supposed, attractive. She dressed neatly and took an intelligent interest in racing, so that Evans was more or less justified in adding to his circulars:

"Address all communications and other postal orders to E. Evans, Orbindos Manse, or to my private secretary, Mrs. Lube."

He had arranged to take his lady friend to Sandown. If the truth be told, Mr. Evans did not find his deception a very irksome one. Mrs. Lube II. was a presentable lady, who agreed with almost everything he said.

On the way to Sandown he explained to her the new move.

"You be my secretary, Mrs. L.," he said. "I'll give you another ten shillin's a week for that."

She brightened at the prospect; and there was room for improvement, for all that morning she had been glum and depressed—in fact, Mr. Evans had the suspicion, when she arrived at the Manse, that she had been crying. She had had some bad news, she told him when he questioned her, but she made no attempt to inform him of its character.

"Naturally"—Mr. Evans pursued the topic as the train sped to Esher—"you haven't got my education. I don't suppose you ever will. Take the two seasons, flat an' jumpin'—they're caused by the world going round on its axle or orbit. The farther you get away from the sun the colder it gets, which is natural, hence the National Hunt Committee an' the so- called sport of gentlemen. Take chemistry, botomy and syntax. Take mathematics or decimals. Take algebra, invented by the far-famed Euclid. Take hist'ry... ."

Fortunately the train had reached Esher station before Mrs. L. could take anything more than a passing interest in the scenery.

Mr. Evans had come down laden with information, but his star was not in the ascendant. There is no doubt that Guggs should have won the first race if he had been trying. But he wasn't trying.

"He ought to have won ten minutes," said Mr. Evans hotly. "I had him from a friend of mine whose wife's sister is keeping company—"

Only then was he dimly aware of the presence of Mr. Alf Lube. The man was watching him evilly. When Evans walked into the paddock Mr. Lube followed, muttering incoherently.

"You're looking pale, Mr. Evans," said Mrs. L.

Evans smiled a sickly smile.

"I just remembered a client I didn't send Guggs to. We'll keep him anyway!"

His unbeatable selection in the second race should have won pulling up, instead of which he was pulled up before he won.

"Tut, tut!" said Evans impatiently, as he glared through his glasses at the offending horse. "There's a bit of dirty work there."

He feared dirty work elsewhere; kept an apprehensive eye over his shoulder for Mr. Alfred Lube. Never once did he miss his shadow. As Evans was standing by the ring marking his card, a hateful voice spoke at his elbow.

"You'll go on till you go off!" grated Mr. All Lube.

"I don't want any talk with you, my friend," said Mr. Evans loudly.

Mr. Lube laughed harshly. Later, Evans saw him in the bar, drinking whisky feverishly, and suggested to his companion that they should go home by the next train. But the fire of racing was in her and on her disappearance into the ring to battle with bookmakers, Evans thought it was an excellent opportunity to explain the situation to the disgruntled husband of Mrs. Lube I.

He saw him emerge from the bar, met his murderous scowl with a smile, and was about to approach him when his arm was caught in a firm grip and he was swung round.

The man who confronted him was six feet in height and terribly broad. He had a strong, brutal face and light blue eyes that glinted murder.

"Here," said the stranger. "I see you talkin' to a lady just now—Mrs. Lube."

Evans opened his mouth but no sound came.

"She's my wife," said the giant fiercely. "I admit I done wrong, but a lovin' wife ought to take her husband back. When I see her this mornin' she wouldn't—some one's come between us. WHAT IS SHE TO YOU?"

Mr. Evans' mouth was dry, as the stranger urgently rocked him to and fro, and then inspiration came.

"Excuse me," said Evans, with what dignity he could summon. "I know nothing about the lady in question—she's a mere friend or client. I'm Educated Evans, the far-famed Turf Prophet. If you're Mr. Lube then I have been mistaken an' I apologise. That's the gent. who calls himself Mr. Lube." He pointed at the glowering Alf.

Mr. Lube II. released his grip.

"Who—him?... Calls himself Mr. Lube...."

Evans waited till the battle joined and sped blithely to the pass out gate. He did not even turn his head to see the result of the contest, but it was a satisfaction to him to see the motor ambulance speeding round the course towards Tattersall's.