Читать книгу The Staff at Simson's - Frederick Niven - Страница 12

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The telephone was installed—and the telephone-bell rang. Mr. Gilmore, in the midst of adding up a column of figures, turned to glare at it, his eyes protruding. Its metallic summons put him off his stroke, as he (an ardent billiard player) would have said.

"That—confounded—innovation!" he hoarsely addressed it, and, stepping to the wall, took down the receiver. "Hallo?"

"...."

"Oh, yes, indeed," he bowed to the wall, "this is Simson's."

"...."

"Mr. Vannan! I am delighted to see you—I mean hear you," and he bowed again. "Have you just arrived?"

"...."

"Yes, yes, that is so. Just two days late for the great day. No, I didn't witness it myself; but, according to the papers and those who did see it, it was quite a procession, quite a pageant."

"...."

"They're not in at present, but I expect them both at any moment."

"...."

"Very good, Mr. Vannan, we shall look forward to seeing you. Good-bye."

Had Mr. Vannan, a buyer from South Africa, arrived only a few days earlier the Empire might have brought together more intensively at Robert's club on the day of festival. But it was of the past, all its huzzahing gone to join the shouting in Alexandria of two thousand years before. The barricades had been spirited away to whatever place of storage they were kept in. The bunting was unbent and stowed away in private or municipal lockers; the gravel that had been strewn on the more smoothly surfaced streets, as precaution against any hitch of slipping horses, had been swept up in the small hours of the day after the procession by the scavenging department, save for those few granules that the waddling pigeons would peck up or rain wash down the grated drains.

Into the warehouse Gilmore marched to advise Maxwell of the coming of the South African. Andy Middleton and Norman Nairn were at work building a stack of wincey that they had knocked down on purpose to put up again. Sandy Bain and Watty Yule, to judge by their chanting voices and the dull thump of pieces cast on to a counter up there, were filling an order. Henry Braid of the Dress Goods was bending over the well and talking down to Fenwick.

But where was Maxwell? No Maxwell, no Corbett, no Johnny Leng (his assistants) to be seen! The canister of twine, the stack of wrapping-paper, the file of pattern-books, the great shears that seemed kin with gardeners', had the long central counter to themselves.

"Mr. Maxwell there?" hailed Gilmore.

"Here!" came Maxwell's voice from his little office of brown-stained panels and frosted glass under the Dress Goods gallery.

Mr. Gilmore's eyes seemed to be popping from their sockets.

"Vannan from South Africa," he said hoarsely, "has just telephoned to advise he is coming along, and the bosses are both out. I can't call them up, because I don't know where they are."

"The devil he is! The devil they are!" Maxwell ejaculated. "Eh, gad, you'll have to lend me your office-boy."

"The office-boy!"

"Yes. Slack to-day here, and I've let my lads off for an hour. The boy must go and bring them back."

"Where are they?"

"I'll tell him."

"Oh, out playing billiards, I expect," said Gilmore. "Well, all the years I've been here I've never played a game in my employers' time, keen though I be on billiards, and——"

"Come off the perch! You don't get the same chance being in the counting-house all the time. They work hard when we're busy. They might as well be playing a game as pretending to be busy here to-day." He was going to say, "pretending to be busy like Andy Middleton," but left that unspoken.

"All right. I'll send the boy to you," the cashier agreed.

Back to the office he strode, thinking that things were indeed altogether too slack in the warehouse.

"Mr. Maxwell wants to see you," he told Tommy, "and take your bonnet with you. He wants you to go out for him somewhere."

The chief joy of being an office-boy was in unexpected outings, and Tommy, snatching his "bonnet" from the peg, went smartly and curiously into the warehouse, presenting himself with a "Yes, sir?" in the narrow doorway of Mr. Maxwell's narrow strip of office.

"Oh, yes, Tommy. You know Cameron's Billiard-Rooms?"

Tommy stared. What had billiard-rooms to do with soft goods?

"Cameron's Billiard-Rooms? No, sir."

"Well, you know the Argyle Billiard-Rooms, then?"

"No, sir."

"Ah! Then you don't know Rattray's Billiard-Rooms, I suppose?"

"No, sir." Tommy had the disheartening thought that he might as well be back at school being cross-examined by the headmaster over some misdemeanour. The feeling of being out in the world of men had a melancholy subsidence.

"Come off the perch," said Mr. Maxwell, which was not at all the way that headmasters talked to erring pupils.

"No, sir, I'm sorry I don't."

Probity showed in Tommy's eyes, and Mr. Maxwell believed him. He took a pencil from his pocket, and on a scrap of paper drew a rough plan. "They are all in Argyle Street," he explained, and indicated their positions with three crosses. "One of them you'll spot easily, for there's a pawnbroker's sign sticking out over the pavement close to it. I want you, my lad, to go down there and look in each of them till you find, in one or another, Johnny Leng and Jack Corbett. Dick Robertson of Production is ostensibly out at a yarn-agent's, but I think you'll find him there, too."

Tommy opened wide his eyes. He was not happy over this errand. Mr. Maxwell, it appeared, manager of all the warehouse, had discovered the truancy of three assistants, and where they were playing truant, and was ordering him to be an arresting policeman and bring them back. He was not aware, more free though he found the world of business than the world of school, that the young warehousemen, so businesslike in their comings and goings at the door, were ever let out to play.

"Tell them," said Mr. Maxwell, "to come back at once, because there's a buyer arriving at any moment. And tell them not to come in all together. They can use the front and back doors and come in singly."

Light of intelligence showed in Tommy's eyes. He realised that here was complicity. On the realisation he grinned at Mr. Maxwell.

"Go on, hurry! What are you grinning at? And if you chatter about this I'll—I'll have you run through the calenders! Wait a minute. I've a letter here you can take and copy—copy quick—and then deliver it on the way back. That's what you're going out for if anybody asks you. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Tommy, feeling honoured, fellow-conspirator with the head of the warehouse.

As he copied the letter in the office Mr. Gilmore looked aslant at him, emitting occasional grunts as of disdain, watched him open the letter-book, flip the wet brush over a page, drop a dry sheet of blotting-paper over it, twirl the handles (Huh!), watched him take it out, remove the blotting-paper, put the letter in place, close the book and, putting it back in the press, turn the handles again with full muscle play (Huh!), watched him take the letter out, put it in an envelope and address the envelope.

"Ab-surd!" grunted Mr. Gilmore.

As Tommy sped away the conscientious cashier turned to Maitland.

"Maxwell has given some of the lads leave to go out," he explained, "to play a game of billiards somewhere, I expect. Knows where they are to be found, anyhow. Cunning, eh? He gives Tommy a letter to deliver when he's out looking for them, in case the youngster runs into old John or Mr. Robert and is asked where he is going. Huh, they wouldn't trouble to stop him. Absurd! Puh!"

Tommy Bruce raced along Cochrane Street to the square, down to Ingram Street, coasting the Union Bank, hurried down Virginia Street. Odours of foreign commerce were there being wafted from draughty entries and exhaling through pavement gratings, as was fitting to a street with such a name—odours of Virginia and the Indies. He turned the corner into Argyle Street, found the Argyle Rooms first and marched smartly into them. No, nobody there from Simson's; but to his amazement there were many young men sending the ivory balls kissing, cannoning, pocketing, some of whom he knew by sight—two from Knox's in Ingram Street, two from Ebenezer Moir's in Glassford Street.

He hurried out and went on towards where, over the pavement, three enormous gilded globes gleamed. On the wall of the entry under these his eyes promptly caught the words Cameron—Billiards, and a somewhat crude representation of a hand with extended forefinger pointing upwards. He mounted the stairs at a leaping stride. On the first landing, facing him, were swing-doors. The upper part of each was of frosted glass, and on each pane was the same word, so that the effect, at least to Tommy's mind, was of a joyous shout:

Billiards Billiards

Pushing open one of the doors, he had a vague preliminary impression of a large chamber, almost a hall, in which were several tables for the game, green tables lit (though the day without was not dark) by gaslights under conical reflectors. Ribands of smoke undulated through the reflected light. Round the tables were young men, most of them in the ardent poses of the game, with out-thrust calculating chins and projecting elbows.

One at least of those for whom he sought saw him at the opening of the door before he saw them.

"Oh, see who's here!" Johnny Leng shouted. "Here's Oliver Twist!"

There was Johnny pointing a cue at him. Jack Corbett, leaning forward, was gauging a shot. He glanced round, then gave attention again to his stroke. Click—away spun the ivory ball, cannoned and pocketed.

At one side of the same table was Dick Robertson, at the other—to his astonishment—Bob Simson, cues in hand. At sight of Tommy they grinned affably.

Importantly he advanced and delivered his message.

"Mr. Maxwell says you're to come back at once. There's a buyer from South Africa coming to the wareus. You're not all to go in together, and some of you had better use the back way."

They hurried to the wall to replace their cues in the rack. The owner of the place rose from a settee that Tommy had not observed on entrance, a settee on a dais to one end of the chamber, and held his hand for some money that Johnny Leng was hurriedly offering him.

"All right, all right," said he to the others. "We can square up afterwards."

Out they went, and down they went clattering on the brass-edged stairs, young Tommy behind them. When he came into Argyle Street there they were, strung out. They had begun to part company on the moment of making exit. Two of them went east, two west, with urgent steps, fussy steps, altogether too businesslike, businesslike to the point of announcing truancy.

With a cherubic smile upon his face, Tommy went upon his authorised way, along Argyle Street and into the great retail house to which the letter he carried was addressed. In the vestibule he was observed and recognised—to his great content—by the lordly man who stood there, was granted a little nod from him. Chucking his chest, he continued past the hum and buzz where ladies sat upon high-backed chairs with right-hand gloves drawn off, feeling the quality of the ends of bolts of cloth spread loose before them. He pattered on up broad stairs, down which came other ladies, marched on upon the upper floor where were more counters and more ladies, these examining silks and satins, went on to a room of glass into which, on ærial wires, buzzed cash-containers like oranges, and there he handed his letter to a venerable gentleman within who, lowering his head, looked at him over the top of pince-nez, saying paternally the one word: "Simson's?"

"Yes, sir."

Tommy wheeled and went quickly downstairs again. By the time he got back to the office there was a hush there. Mr. Gilmore, leaning over his desk, was intent upon a ledger. Maitland was making out invoices, a sheaf of them beside him. Very sharply he spoke to Tommy.

"Get these enveloped, young fellow," he said. "And here"—he took from the rack an envelope that the boy had addressed earlier in the day—"write the addresses plain and don't at the bottom put a score, and then a couple of wee dots and another score. These are business communications. They are no' love-letters."

If young Bruce, because of his errand to the billiard-rooms that afternoon, had come back with a belief in the levity of the business life, Maitland was going to have him understand that business was, after all, and in spite of that errand, real and earnest. Tommy realised that the clerk was being stern with him, but the phrasing—the last words of the rebuff—amused him, and he grinned.

"It's naething to laugh at! Damn it, look at this one," and Maitland took another letter from the rack. "It's like a heron's wings flappin', and twa eyes in between them. If you must do something after you've finished the address, make a plain line—like that. See?"

"Yes, Mr. Maitland," replied the office-boy meekly.

Nevertheless it was a great world.

From the private room came laughter and the sound of jolly talk, Mr. Simson's voice, Mr. Robert's voice, and another—Mr. Vannan's, no doubt. Through the keyhole came the trickle of most excellent cigar smoke. Those were great days. Glasgow flourished.