Читать книгу Happy Stories, Just to Laugh at - Стивен Ликок - Страница 5

Table of Contents

Sometimes you get a lesson in life. Something occurs to show you that your career, after all, no matter how successful, hasn’t amounted to so much—is, in fact, a pretty selfish business. How much did you ever do for anybody beside yourself?

You get this feeling when brought into contact with men you knew early in life, and lost from sight—when you find such men with success twice as big as your own, and a life behind them filled with all sorts of things done for other people ... and with that, a complete modesty about it all, almost an unconsciousness of what they have done.

I felt all that when I met—or rather re-met after years and years—my friend McIvor McCoy. It was out on the big grass lawn of the Empress Hotel—you know it, of course—in Victoria B.C., on such a lovely morning—but it’s always a lovely morning there—all flowers and springtime and the ruffled Pacific Ocean reaching away to eternity.

There stood McCoy, as easy and debonair as ever, with his old-time way of seeming balanced on his toes, swaying faintly in the light breeze, such a cheery, affable, nut-brown elderly man—old? Well, yes, I suppose, but with something of timeless youth still about him. Neatly but loosely dressed he was, in a suit of careless but expensive grey with little touches of an older fashion: a flower in his buttonhole, a signet ring, seals on his watch chain and the grey Homburg hat of years ago ...

“Well, well,” he said, “well, well!”—and it sounded the pleasantest thing in the world to say—“Come and sit on this bench and let’s talk—”

“What a charming place,” he began, “and the ocean, how wonderful! I’ve just been congratulating the hotel manager”—he spoke with a certain dignity as of one whose congratulation meant something—“been congratulating the manager on the ocean.”

Now look at that. I would never have thought of congratulating the manager on the Pacific Ocean ... I wouldn’t have realized that he put it there. Yet in a sense he did; he might have put the hotel a hundred miles inland in the bush ...

It began to bring back McCoy to me. He was like that; always congratulating people on things—with the quiet dignity of a Scottish laird recognizing merit ...

“And such a charming hotel,” he continued. “These wonderful corridors; I had quite a romp with some of the children in them this morning ... I gave them all some candy.”

Now, there again. “Did you know them?” I asked. “No, no—just children in the hotel. There are always children in a hotel. That’s why I carry candy.”

Now, could I do that? Well, I guess not. How do you romp with children? What do you say first? It beat me.

“Let’s move to that other bench,” said Mr. McCoy, rising, “the one over there.”

“Why do we do that?” I asked; I saw no particular need to move.

“I’m interested in benches just now,” said Mr. McCoy ... “I’ve invented a folding bench, a legless bench that folds up into a single piece ... a total weight of five pounds ... the only question is a matter of strain ... now, sit at the very end ...”

Then I remembered, of course, that McCoy, even from our college days, was an inventor. He took honour physics and mechanics and was always tinkering with inventions—queer inventions like this legless bench—a fireless cooker, and an iceless refrigerator, and a soundless telephone—things no one else would think of. I remember, even as a student he got five hundred dollars for an automatic electric street car bell, to ring immediately after they ran over anybody. There was quite a lot of talk about it but afterwards it was criticized—I forget why.

“And what a charming old town—” continued McCoy ... “I went yesterday up that old street on the right behind us”—he waved his hand over his shoulder—“part of the original town, quite abandoned now—but such very interesting old people in the shops, many from Scotland, still wistful for the Hebrides. I gave them,” he said, “each an American dollar—to one poor old fellow, from Huish itself, the most wistful, I gave five.”

There it was again. I’d been up that street—to buy a notebook. I didn’t know they were wistful. I didn’t know they were worrying about the Hebrides. They seemed just old people in old shops. If I’d known about the Hebrides I’d have given them—well, ten cents anyway ...

Incidentally I realized that Mr. McCoy must be well off ... Presently, when he began to tell me of all his inventions and of the people he’d met—the governments and ministers—I realized that of course he must be, simply rolling in it. Imagine sitting with the Pope discussing the heating of the Vatican with explosive magnesium! I don’t mean that he paraded these things; that was his least idea. They just came out in conversation. As I say, imagine sitting down with the Hospodar of Transylvania—I’ll swear I never knew who he was—to discuss blowing up the Iron Gates of the Danube to supply electricity to the Balkans.

But that was the way it was with Mr. McCoy. You see I call him Mr. McCoy, in writing, because he seemed so dignified. Of course I called him McIvor when we spoke, though in a way he seemed a new and strange person.

I was certainly impressed, even at the very start, when I asked him where he was bound for and he answered cheerily and casually, “Fiji, very possibly, but I’m not quite decided.”

Then I realized that there was a big steamer lying at the dock down below—it’s only a couple of hundred yards—with rags of smoke coming out of the funnels, dull raucous blowings from time to time, and that moving of cabs, trucks and little figures on the dock that indicates a departing liner.

“Fiji,” he said, “but I’m not certain ...”

“Don’t you have to have a passport?”

He laughed easily.

“I carry plenty of them,” he said. “They let me have all I want ...”

Here was another touch of unconscious importance, but no affectation about it.

But it was his mention of the Hebrides that had brought him back most clearly to my mind, as I recalled him from our college days.

Let me explain:

We were classmates for years. My old friend’s name is not really McCoy, but McIvor McCoy, written not with a little c but with an apostrophe and indeed properly spelt McQuohy. The McCoys came originally from Huish—or Huosh—in the Inner Hebrides, that is, after they moved in from the Outer Hebrides. The family escutcheon is two thistles and a dagger with the motto Creagh-na-Skaw. The present head of the clan is Lord Coy who is, of course, the McCoy, though oddly enough he is not the McIvor. His eldest son is. Their present seat is McCoy Castle which hangs on the edge of a skaw in the Inverness country. Tourists pay a shilling to go through the grounds and walk out on the stone platform that overlooks the steep drop of the skaw. Some pay more. One or two, it is said, who didn’t pay, have fallen over. The family motto Creagh-na-Skaw is cut in the stone. It means Watch-Your-Step. But it’s Gaelic. They do say that in the old Highland days—but of course that’s just talk.

It goes without saying that the McCoys were out in the “Forty Five,” every man of them, out and back. My friend is very proud of a dirk of the Young Pretender that they have at McCoy Castle; they have his dirk, and his gold watch and chain, and his gold pencil, and his cuff-links. The Young Pretender, it seems, while in hiding in Scotland, spent a night at McCoy Castle.

You will wonder how I could remember all these details. But they all came back to me in a flood of memory when I met McCoy .... This used to be his talk at college—so much so, that the other students used to like to take a rise out of him, ask him if he’d heard lately from Lord Coy, and how the Duke of Inverness was keeping, and rag him about McCoy Castle.

McIvor never saw it. He had too much Highland dignity ...

So, naturally, I found myself beginning to laugh at the recollection of it all, and saying,

“Have you ever seen your kinsman, Lord Coy, in your travels?”

“Oh, yes,” he answered. “I’ve been at McCoy Castle several times. The first time I sent Lord Coy a salmon rod with a reel I’d invented which he was good enough to accept ... He invited me to Coy Castle—that is, I came with the rod and he invited me in ... I came back later and brought him an exact replica of the Pretender’s gold watch, which I asked him to accept.”

“Did he?” I asked.

“He did,” said Mr. McCoy, with dignity, “as head of the clan. He was delighted with the workmanship. He said that the only way to distinguish the original from the replica was that one had a chain and the other had not ... I sent him a chain from London—without, of course, any forewarning, so as to forestall all refusal.”

“Did it forestall it?”

“It did,” said Mr. McCoy ... “We’ll shift, if you don’t mind, to that further bench ...”

Then he went on talking of his own prompting, as it seemed.

... “Once again I went to Coy Castle, bringing with me a valiseful of high explosive, of very high explosive; and boring tools.”

“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “What for?”

“I showed Lord Coy a plan for damming the river below the skaw, blowing a tunnel under his castle and driving fifty thousand hydro-electric volts right through it ...”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“His Lordship,” said Mr. McCoy, choosing his words with care, “was tremendously impressed. He at once took me out on the stone parapet that overhangs the ravine. I showed him the method of a safety clutch that could be installed to prevent accident. We came in again ... He immediately, that very night, had a man take me to Edinburgh to look up the records ... The man, by mistake, took me clear to London ...”

“And what came of it?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Mr. McCoy, “nothing. That often happens.” A momentary shadow passed over his face.

I realized that, after all, the life of an inventor must have its trials. Think of that dull Scottish nobleman. Utterly unaware of progress. McCoy offers to blow up his castle. Does he see it? No. I more than suspected—I am inclined to see through things of this sort pretty easily that it was not by mistake that the man took Mr. McCoy all the way to London.

“That was too bad,” I said.

“No, no, oh, no,” said Mr. McCoy, recovering himself in that quick happy way he had ... “It was of no consequence. In any case I was just due to start for Holland ...”

“Holland?” I said.

“The Zuyder Zee,” he answered. “You may have read of the recovery of the flooded land of Holland where the Zuyder Zee broke in, hundreds of years ago.”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“It was recovered,” he said, “in polders by the sinking of caissons banded together with a welded network.”

Technical terms flowed easily from Mr. McCoy ... What a wonderful thing it must be, to be an engineer! What a lot they know.

“That was my work,” Mr. McCoy continued, “all mine. I brought the plans over in a sealed tube ... It was stolen ... or rather not stolen ... taken at the Customs and kept by the Government.”

“What could you do?” I asked.

“I could get no redress ... reasons of state ... I saw Mynheer Van Ploop, the Minister President; he said it had to be ... He was most affable but could do nothing ... I asked if I might have an audience with the Queen ... Impossible ... I thought perhaps a little diplomacy ... I asked leave to present Her Majesty with a beaten silver soup tureen, a large one ...”

“Would she take it?”

“Not in person. Mr. Van Ploop presented it ... She was most gracious; she has, you know, that plain almost rough way of all the family of Orange—‘Vooksillig,’ they call it in Dutch. We have no English for it. She said, ‘Where’s the spoon?’ So of course I bought Mr. Van Ploop a large spoon ...”

“Did he give it to her?”

“Oh, yes, he told me so himself. In fact, he was laughing about having paid the express on it out of his own pocket—till I stopped him ... He was really most considerate ... Had me taken across the frontier to avoid all danger.”

“Good heavens!” I said. I began to see that life among the courts and chanceries of Europe is not easy.

To think how little they appreciate science! How little they care for progress. A man like McCoy having to sneak across their frontiers.

“You seem to have been treated pretty badly over there,” I said.

“Oh, no,” he answered, “not at all—or perhaps only once.”

“Was that when you were called in to heat the Vatican?”

“Oh, no,” protested Mr. McCoy, “His Holiness was most delightful ... I was called in—I must be fair—not really called in—I got in, on a laisser entrer from the American Secretary ... His Holiness was delightful ... I explained to him my proposal for heating the Vatican by explosions of magnesium—in Latin, of course—I spoke in Latin entirely ... The dear old man sat and nodded his head so gently, merely saying hic ... hoc. But Cardinal Rampolla felt it was too much for him ... He took me by the arm and simply insisted—in English, excellent English—on my going out ... Oh, no, they were all delightful at the Vatican. In fact I was escorted under a papal guard to the Serbian frontier ...”

“But that magnesium stuff—that sounds very wonderful. Doesn’t the Pope understand Latin?”

“The word explosio,” said Mr. McCoy, “it may have mislead him. They so often have bombs carried in ... But of course the thing is wonderful.”

He was off again in his technical terms, more than I could follow, yet I am certain marvellously exact. That, it seems, is the idea about Fiji. Did you know—I didn’t—that Fiji has the greatest natural magnesium springs in the world? And that these, if they can be turned to run over uranium ore, will solve the problem of the liberation of atomic energy for industrial power ... Mr. McCoy intends to show the British High Commissioner at Fiji that with one teaspoonful of radiumized magnesium he can blow up Government House ...

To think that Mr. McCoy has carried secrets like that all round Europe without recognition ... And that reminded me ...

“Where did you say, McIvor, you were actually mistreated—what was that?”

“Let us move,” he said, “to the seat behind that trellis.” He seemed for some reason to look over his shoulder as he said it ... “That was in Belgrade.” He paused, with the shadow on his face.

“What happened?”

“I was kidnapped.” He paused again and then went on. “My plan had been to blow in the Iron Gates (the great rocks) of the Danube, thus creating unlimited power ... I had made certain experiments with high explosive near the Gates themselves in the evenings ... but the peasants are suspicious ... I had even tried to interest those in control of the upper waters—the Ban of Dalmatia—I gave him a Smith & Wesson revolver, and the Hospodar of Transylvania—I gave him—let me see, yes—a five-bladed jacknife ...”

“Well, what happened?”

“Finally I went to see Mr. Veryitch, the Prime Minister ... I must admit his manner was charming; he gave me a cigarette.”

“Good for him; and I bet you gave him a silver samovar, eh?”

“Indeed, no,” said Mr. McCoy. “You little know the Serbs if you think that. They’re a very proud people, especially men like Mr. Veryitch whose family have been Royal Cuspidors for a thousand years. You can’t give watches and jewels and presents to them. I gave Mr. Veryitch five hundred dollars in American bills. It was all he would take. In fact it was all I had.”

“Well—”

“Next morning I was kidnapped—kidnapped while I was feeding the swans in the public park—a new idea I’d worked out of feeding swans with a dust of compressed oxygen ...”

Mr. McCoy paused. The recollection seemed painful ... He got up and walked to the end of the trellis and looked around the corner of the leaves. Then he sat down again. I didn’t like to question him. It seemed amazing that Europe, including people like the Serbs that we think the world of, should have been so blind.

It was some little time before Mr. McCoy spoke again. The shadow had fallen again upon his face—a sort of queer perplexity ... such as one sees sometimes on the face of a puzzled child ... indeed it made him look quite young again.

“It was six months before I could get out of Serbia ... Mr. Veryitch must have heard of it ... at any rate he sent me under escort, for security’s sake, not only through Serbia but right across to a channel port ... I thought it wise to travel under assumed names ... in fact, I assumed several ... the escort acquiesced in it entirely ... I’ve since found it very useful ...”

Mr. McCoy seemed trailing off into memories and lapses of silence. Then he began again with something of his own animation.

“In London, the Home Secretary was most concerned, most helpful. He thought that the only way to avoid a European complication would be to secrete me for some time in the country ... I gave him a cigar. With him, I remember, that morning was Sir John Seeley—later, you know, Lord Mottistone. I gave him a pocketbook with a map of Hampshire—he comes from there, you know—he was delighted with it. He said he would never have known it was Hampshire. Perhaps it wasn’t. I got it in Serbia.”

Mr. McCoy went and looked round the trellis again. Perhaps it was the steamer. At any rate a long sonorous whistle was blowing ...

“One moment,” said Mr. McCoy, and with that he slipped sideways along the trellis and into the hotel somehow by the back ... At any rate he disappeared ... I waited ... The steamer whistle was blowing again.

I came round back on to the lawn ... As I did so, I saw two men hurrying across the grass towards me. I didn’t like the look of either of them. I was quick enough to grasp at once what it might mean; if this was another attempt to kidnap Mr. McCoy, I wanted nothing to do with it.

At any rate the men looked exactly it. One of them was in the dress of an hotel attendant, a disguise, of course, only too easy to assume and seen through at once. The other wore a sort of pretence of a police inspector’s uniform, a very good imitation but transparent enough also as he had no number on his neck and no badge—yet I will admit that when he reached me and spoke, his voice was certainly well schooled for the part.

“You were with a gentleman in grey, sir?” he asked.

I hesitated what to do; but supposed that all I had to do was to answer truthfully but give no extra information, so I said yes.

“Can you tell me where he is now?”

“No,” I said, “I can’t.”

Yet I thought at that moment I could see an open carriage driving from the hotel to the dock, and in it, I was almost certain, was Mr. McCoy ...

“Did he tell you where he was going?” persisted the man, and he added, “I may tell you that it’s only his friends who are looking for him.”

That was a little too thin.

“No,” I said, “not in definite terms. We were talking of other things.”

“Are you aware,” the man went on, “that you were talking with the Hospodar of Transylvania travelling incognito as the Ban of Dalmatia?”

He spoke with a sort of sneer that made me angry.

“No,” I said, “and if you want to know it, the gentleman is nothing of that sort at all, but an old college friend of mine that I’ve known for thirty years. He has no connection with Europe and is most likely going to Fiji.”

“Fiji!” they both exclaimed, “Fiji! We should have thought of it.” And off they went down the slope of the grass, running for the dock. I could see the gangway of the steamer being hauled in. Mr. McCoy I couldn’t see.

They failed to make it. I saw the steamer pull slowly away from the dock. I expected to see it stopped. If the man were really an inspector surely he could have had it stopped ... But no ... Away, away it went ... till it was a cloud of smoke away out on the horizon.

When I went in to lunch I looked over the steamer passenger list as given in the morning paper. Mr. McCoy’s name was not there. But it occurred to me that that didn’t mean anything. If Mr. McCoy only got on board at the last minute his name wouldn’t be on the list. But, oddly enough, the other fellow’s name was—there it was large as life—the Hereditary Ban of Dalmatia, passenger for Fiji.

It set me thinking—almost.