Читать книгу The Lucky Number - Major General John Hay Beith - Страница 4

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“Bettersea trem? Right, miss!”

My wife, who has been married long enough to feel deeply gratified at being mistaken for a maiden lady, smiled seraphically at the conductor, and allowed herself to be hoisted up the steps of the majestic vehicle provided by a paternal County Council to convey passengers—at a loss to the rate-payers, I understand—from the Victoria Embankment to Battersea.

Presently we ground our way round a curve, and began to cross Westminster Bridge. The conductor, whose innate Cockney bonhomie his high official position had failed to eradicate, presented himself before us and collected our fares.

“What part of Bettersea did you require, sir?” he asked of me.

I coughed, and answered evasively:

“Oh, about the middle.”

“We haven’t been there before,” added my wife, quite gratuitously.

The conductor smiled indulgently, and punched our tickets.

“I’ll tell you when to get down,” he said, and left us.

For some months we had been considering the question of buying a dog; and a good deal of our spare time—or perhaps I should say of my spare time, for a woman’s time is naturally all her own—had been pleasantly occupied in discussing the matter. Having at length committed ourselves to the purchase of the animal, we proceeded to consider such details as breed, sex, and age. My wife vacillated between a bloodhound, because bloodhounds are so aristocratic in appearance, and a Pekinese, because they are dernier cri. (We like to be dernier cri even in Much Moreham.) Her younger sister Eileen, who spends a good deal of time with us, suggested an Old English sheep-dog, explaining that it would be company for my wife when I was away from home. I coldly recommended a mastiff. Our son John, aged three, upon being consulted, expressed a preference for twelve tigers in a box, and was not again invited to participate in the debate.

Finally we decided upon an Aberdeen terrier, of an age and sex to be settled by circumstances, and I was instructed to communicate with a gentleman in the North, who advertised in our morning paper that Aberdeen terriers were his speciality. In due course we received a reply. The advertiser recommended two animals—namely, “Celtic Chief,” aged four months, and “Scotia’s Pride,” aged one year. Pedigrees were enclosed, each about as complicated as the family tree of the House of Hapsburg; and the favour of an early reply was requested, as both dogs were being hotly bid for by an anonymous client in New York. The price of “Celtic Chief” was twenty guineas; that of “Scotia’s Pride,” for reasons heavily underlined in the pedigree, was twenty-seven. The advertiser (who was an Aberdonian) added that these prices did not cover cost of carriage. We decided not to stand in the way of the gentleman in New York, and having sent back the pedigrees by return of post, resumed the debate.

Finally Stella (my wife) said:

“We don’t really want a dog with a pedigree. We only want something that will bark at beggars and be gentle with baby. Why not go to the Home for Lost Dogs at Battersea? I believe you can get any dog you like there for five shillings. We will run up to town next Wednesday and see about it—and I might get some clothes as well.”

Hence our presence on the tram.

Presently the conductor, who had kindly pointed out to us such objects of local interest as the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament, stopped the tram in a crowded thoroughfare and announced that we were in Battersea.

“Alight here,” he announced facetiously, “for the ’Ome for Lost Dawgs!”

Guiltily realising that there is many a true word spoken in jest, we obeyed him, and the tram went rocking and whizzing out of sight.

We had eschewed a cab.

“When you are only going to pay five shillings for a dog,” my wife had pointed out with convincing logic, “it is silly to go and pay perhaps another five shillings for a cab. It doubles the price of the dog at once. If we had been buying an expensive dog we might have taken a cab; but not for a five-shilling one.”

“Now,” I inquired briskly, “how are we going to find this place?”

“Haven’t you any idea where it is?”

“No. I have a sort of vague notion that it is on an island in the middle of the river—called the Isle of Dogs, or Barking Reach, or something like that. However, I have no doubt——”

“Hadn’t we better ask someone?” suggested Stella.

I demurred.

“If there is one thing I dislike,” I said, “it is accosting total strangers and badgering them for information which they don’t possess. Not that that will prevent them from giving it. If we start asking the way we shall find ourselves in Putney or Woolwich in no time.”

“Yes, dear,” said Stella soothingly.

“Now I suggest——” My hand went to my pocket.

“No, darling,” interposed my wife hastily; “not a map, please!” (It is a curious psychological fact that women have a constitutional aversion to maps and railway time-tables. They would sooner consult an unprincipled errand-boy or a half-witted railway porter.) “Do not let us make a spectacle of ourselves in the public streets again! I have not yet forgotten the day when you tried to find the Crystal Palace. Besides, it will only blow away. Ask that dear little boy there. He is looking at us so wistfully. ...”

Yes, I admit it was criminal folly. A man who asks a London street-boy to be so kind as to direct him to a Home for Lost Dogs has only himself to thank for the consequences.

The wistful little boy smiled up at us. He had a pinched face and large eyes.

“Lost Dogs’ ’Ome, sir?” he said courteously. “It’s a good long way. Did you want to get there quick?”

“Yes.”

“Then if I was you, sir,” replied the infant, edging to the mouth of an alleyway, “I should bite a policeman!”

And with an ear-splitting yell, he vanished.

We walked on, hot-faced.

“Little wretch!” said Stella.

“We simply asked for it,” I rejoined. “What are we going to do next?”

My question was answered in a most incredible fashion, for at this moment a man emerged from a shop on our right, and set off down the street before us. He wore a species of uniform, and emblazoned upon the front of his hat was the information that he was an official of the Battersea Home for Lost and Starving Dogs.

“Wait a minute, and I will ask him,” I said, starting forward.

But my wife would not hear of it.

“Certainly not,” she replied. “If we ask him he will simply offer to show us the way. Then we shall have to talk to him—about hydrophobia, and lethal chambers, and distemper—and it may be for miles. I simply couldn’t bear it. We shall have to tip him, too. Let us follow him, quietly.”

To those who have never attempted to track a fellow-creature surreptitiously through the streets of London on a hot day the feat may appear simple. It is in reality a most exhausting, dilatory, and humiliating exercise. Our difficulty lay not so much in keeping our friend in sight as in avoiding frequent and unexpected collisions with him. The general idea, as they say on field-days, was to keep about twenty yards behind him; but under certain circumstances distance has an uncanny habit of annihilating itself. The man himself was no hustler. Once or twice he stopped to light his pipe, or converse with a friend. During these interludes Stella and I loafed guiltily upon the pavement, pointing out to one another objects of local interest with the fatuous officiousness of people in the foreground of railway posters advertising health-resorts. Occasionally he paused to contemplate the contents of a shop window. We gazed industriously into the window next door. Our first window, I recollect, was an undertaker’s, with ready-printed expressions of grief for sale upon white porcelain discs. We had time to read them all—from “In Lasting Memory of Our Dear Mother” to “A Token of Respect from the Choir.” The next was a butcher’s. Here we stayed, perforce, so long that the proprietor, who was of the tribe which disposes of its wares almost entirely by personal canvass, came out into the street and endeavoured to sell us a bullock’s heart.

Our quarry’s next proceeding was to dive into a public-house.

We turned and surveyed one another.

“What are we to do now?” inquired my wife.

“Go inside too,” I replied, with more enthusiasm than I had hitherto displayed. “At least I think I ought to. You can please yourself.”

“I will not be left in the street,” said Stella firmly. “We must just wait here together until he comes out.”

“There may be another exit,” I objected. “We had better go in. I shall take something, just to keep up appearances, and you must sit down in the Ladies’ Bar, or the Snug, or whatever they call it.”

“Certainly not!” said Stella.

We had arrived at this impasse when the man suddenly reappeared, wiping his mouth. Instantly and silently we fell in behind him.

For the first time the man appeared to notice our presence. He regarded us curiously, with a faint gleam of recognition in his eyes, and then set off down the street at a good round pace. We followed, panting. Once or twice he looked back over his shoulder—a little apprehensively, I thought. But we ploughed on.

“We ought to get there soon at this pace,” I gasped. “Hallo, he’s gone again!”

“He turned down to the right,” said Stella excitedly.

The lust of the chase was fairly on us now. We swung eagerly round the corner into a quiet by-street. Our man was nowhere to be seen, and the street was almost empty.

“Come on!” said Stella. “He may have turned in somewhere.”

We hurried down the street. Suddenly, warned by a newly awakened and primæval instinct, I looked back. We had overrun our quarry. He had just emerged from some hiding-place of his own, and was heading back towards the main street, looking fearfully over his shoulder.

Once more we were in full cry....

For the next five minutes we practically ran—all three of us. The man was obviously frightened out of his wits, and kept making frenzied and spasmodic spurts, from which we surmised that he was getting to the end of his powers of endurance.

“If only we could overtake him,” I said, hauling my exhausted spouse along by the arm, “we could explain that——”

“He’s gone again!” exclaimed Stella.

She was right. The man had turned another corner. We followed him round, hot-foot, and found ourselves in a prim little cul-de-sac, with villas on either side. Across the end of the street ran a high wall, obviously screening a railway-track.

“We’ve got him!” I exclaimed, feeling as Moltke must have felt when he closed the circle at Sedan.

“But where is the Dogs’ Home, dear?” inquired Stella.

The question was never answered, for at this moment the man ran up the steps of the fourth villa on the left and slipped a latchkey into the lock. The door closed behind him with a venomous snap, and we were left alone in the street, guideless and dogless.

A minute later the man appeared at the ground-floor window, accompanied by a female of commanding appearance. He pointed us out to her. Behind them, dimly, we could descry a white tablecloth, a tea-cosy, and covered dishes.

The commanding female, after a prolonged and withering glare, plucked a hairpin from her head and ostentatiously proceeded to skewer together the starchy white curtains which framed the window. Privacy secured, and the sanctity of the English home thus pointedly vindicated, she and her husband disappeared into the murky background, where they doubtless sat down to an excellent high tea.

Exhausted and discomfited, we drifted away.

“I am going home,” said Stella in a hollow voice. “And I think,” she added bitterly, “that it might have occurred to you to suggest that the man might possibly be going from the Dogs’ Home, and not to it.”

I apologised. It is the simplest plan, really.