Читать книгу The Mystery Of A Wheel-Barrow - W. Humer Ferguson - Страница 7

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Mrs. Lubina Gabbleton was a lady whose acquaintance with persons of the male sex, throughout a checkered existence, had been mainly unsatisfactory. To her the theory of the universe resolved itself into one single proposition which she was wont to advance with unpleasant iteration: “Men is Brutes!” Everything else was of secondary importance. Given an interlocutor of whatever sex or social status, and she would propound her favourite theory ten times in an hour, and defy him or her to frame a syllogism to contravert it.

The late Mr. Gabbleton, who had early in life taken holy orders, had come out to the colony with the laudable intention of converting the heathen, and, imbued with the idea that a fair picture of domestic felicity would help to impress the aboriginal mind with the advantages of the Christian faith, he had wedded the fair Lubina, and taken her with him. Alas! shaking off the angelic meekness of maidenhood, Lubina had donned the armour of might. Du Boisgobey would say, “Elle portait la Calotte,” but virtuous Melbourne would shudder at any attempt to translate that masculine figure. Poor Gabbleton gradually succumbed to the nagging garrulities of his erstwhile tender Lubina. The temporary place of worship he had caused to be erected was the scene of his final struggle. In a remarkable discourse he proclaimed that wifely obedience was a desirable and holy thing, and dwelt at considerable length upon the bitter scenes of domestic strife engendered by an intemperate use of words and flat-irons. No sooner had he uttered the unfortunate word “flat-irons” (with which utensils Lubina’s arguments were frequently enforced) than his irascible spouse was up in arms. She laid siege to the pulpit, scaled the walls thereof, and, seizing her refractory husband by his scanty crop of hair, hurled him from the battlements, to the intense delight of the assembled heathen, who performed a wild and warlike dance around the prostrate divine. Physically and morally shaken; without influence amongst his swarthy flock; convinced at last that his wife’s argument, “Men is Brutes,” must be based upon some occult truth; he took to the fire-water, against the immoderate use of which he had hitherto so frequently inveighed, and ended his days by hanging himself by the girdle of his gown to the wooden steeple of his own chapel—a pathetic example to the matrimonially-inclined. Thus himself and his ministry were suspended at one and the same time.

Having interred her dear defunct, Mrs. Gabbleton next “realised” her situation. She sold her husband’s sermons by auction, disposed of the chapel as a cowshed, and gave her flat-irons to the native ladies with full directions for use. She bought an estate at St. Kilda, built a house thereon, and maintained her revenues by going out a-charing, layings-out, and lyings-in.

Victorian philosophers have proved that Adam and Eve were at the bottom of the deplorable state of things we have endeavoured to depict, so we must bow to the inexorability of fate.

Mrs. Gabbleton had one recreation, which consisted of planting the flowers of her little garden upside down. She was engaged in this favourite pursuit when Mr. Clawby made his visit.

That gentleman was artistically and appropriately disguised as an itinerant nigger minstrel. Leaning over the fence of Mrs. Gabbleton’s little garden, he made a few inviting grimaces, and gave an introductory “Yah, yah.”

“Git out, yer black brute,” shouted Mrs. Gabbleton, hurling her trowel in the intruder’s face.

“Madam,” said Mr. Clawby, applying a gaudy red silk handkerchief to his now gaudy red nose, “as an experienced detective of twenty years standing, I must tell you that I am unused to—”

“Git out,” interrupted Mrs. Gabbleton, “you’re a himposter; you’ve wiped all the paint off you’re nose, you have! Men is brutes, and you know it, drat yer! What d’yer want? and who are yer? and have yer been christened and vaccinated, yer brute?”

“Madam,” said the imperturbable Jehoshophat, “I’m Mr. Clawby, an experienced detective, and I have adopted this disguise in order to conceal my calling—and the object of my calling here.”

“Well?”

“May I have the honour of addressing your ladyship privately for a few moments?”

“Come in, yer brute!” growled the lady. Mr. Clawby was ushered into a neat little room, mainly furnished with antimicassars. The stranger was asked to sit down upon one. He did so. The lady invited herself to sit opposite him upon another. She did so.

“Now then, boss,” said she, pulling a string protruding from her bustle, by which she appeared to control the movements of her jaws.

Mr. Clawby sighed, wiped the perspiration from his painted brow, folded his red pocket-handkerchief into the form of a mitre, put it into his hat, placed his hat upon the floor, took out his spectacles, wiped them carefully, adjusted them on the bridge of his nose, sighed again, and said—with a shrewd twinkle in his sharp grey eyes—watching the effect of his portentous words,

“It’s a very fine morning, madam.”

“ ‘Oo said it war’nt, yer brute?” was the reply to this wily question.

“Mr. Oliver Black did,” (Mr. Clawby scrutinized his interlocutor.)

“Let ‘im show his nose ‘ere, the brute, I’ll give ‘im what for! as he ain’t paid ‘is washing bill, nor ‘is rent, nor ‘is beer—”

“Nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his—” interposed Mr. Clawby, mechanically.

“None of your blasphemy, yer brute; you remind me of my good-for-nothing ‘usbant—”

“Mr. Oliver Black is dead” hissed Mr. Clawby, not heeding this outburst.

Mrs. Gabbleton turned pale with passion. “No!” she cried. “What! without giving me the usual week’s notice. Men is brutes, they is! Did he suicide hisself?”

“Clever in the extreme,” muttered the experienced detective. “She’s been reading Gabaroux evidently. No, my dear madam,” he said aloud, “he was murdered in a wheel-barrow on the St. Kilda Road.”

“What! in a open wheel-barrow in the open street?”

“I must openly confess, madam, that you have divined the truth. Tell me all you know.”

“One moment, boss. A little stimulant is necessary to soothe my heart’s unrest—the same being wildly beating, as it never beat before. Then pass me yonder bottle, boss, in mercy, I implore.” Mr. Clawby, touchcd by this poetic appeal, rose, and taking the bottle of Old Tom, applied his lips to the orifice. “Drink deeply, or touch not” said he, as he took an encouraging swig of the vivifying liquor, and passed the bottle to Lubina.

“Men is brutes,” she observed; “ ‘oo told you to ingurgitate my juniper, yer brute?” Without waiting for a reply she absorbed the remainder of the comforting liquid. Mr. Clawby resumed his seat, and the conversation continued in the following manner:—

“I’ll make a clean breast of the whole concern, you being an experienced detective, well up in Gabareau and De Quincey, wich I can’t say as I studies much, tho’ I have heard as they is almost as interesting as Mr. Zoler’s Terre and Mr. Bunyan’s New Pilgrim’s Progress, which Mr. Black used to read of a Sunday—but that ain’t ere nor there. Listen, yer brute. Some months ago, finding’ the lyin’s-in got slack and layin’s-out weren’t so brisk as they used to be, I had an idea that letting out lodgings would increase that monetary increment, without which a solitary gentlewoman like myself, habituated to the aesthetic refinements and cultured ease of polite society, ce monde spirituel où—”

“Drop it, old girl,” implored Mr. Clawby; “please remember that I am a detective of twenty years’ standing, and, in consequence, unused to my present constrained posture. Have the goodness, therefore, to curtail, as far as possible, all unnecessary minutiae savouring of self-aggrandisement. Redundancies and garrulities of speech are particularly obnoxious under existing circumstances,

“Shut it, boss,” interrupted Mrs. Gabbleton; “talk Hinglish. You hain’t the Heditor of the Hargus.”

“Go on,” said Mr. Clawby,

“Well, I put an advertisement in the papers, an’ Mr. Oliver Black took my rooms.”

“Any peculiarity about his appearance, Mrs. Gabbleton?”

“Well, yes; he had a hexcresence like a hairy raspberry on his nose, the brute—”

“The very man,” murmured Clawby. “O triumph of detective skill! Jehoshophat, thou art henceforth famous! Did the corpse have any friends?”

“He warn’t a corpse then, silly.”

“Very true,” said Clawby, “but—”

“He had a hikey lot of acquaintances, such as even my brute of a ‘usband—peace to his ashes!—would have spurned. Mr. Black paid five shillings in advance, and told me he was going to marry a heiress. He had one chum in particular—a Mr. Lessland—just a fair brute, ‘andsome as regards his pusson, but a hikey character, you bet.”

“Ah! When will this gentleman call, d’ye think?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Gabbleton, satirically, “as there’s an experienced detective wanting him, no doubt he’ll come to-night.”

“Exactly. The immortal Gabbèrou would have effected an opportune interview at this very moment. Anything else?”

“Yes. About two weeks ago a tall cove came here in a soft ‘at and dressing-gown.”

“The very man,” again muttered Mr. Clawby. “Jehoshophat, thou art immortal. Well, what did he do?”

“He just went and raised Cain. Mr. Black and him went at it hammer and tongs, and when I went upstairs to hintercede, the dressing-gown cove busts open the door, the brute, and hollers out—‘Mine!’ ”

“You?” exclaimed Clawby.

“No, sonny, I’ve been married. Once shy, twice bit. He hollers out, ‘Mine!’ then Mr. B. calls out, ‘No it ain’t, it’s mine!’ and t’other yells out, ‘Mine, I tell you, you scoundrel; there’s my initials on the tail. Why, if you dared to put it on your carcase I’d murder you in the open street in a wheel-barrow, which is the most unlikely place I can think of at the present moment.’ Then he goes out, banging the door, and Mr. Black shies his boot after him, which it being in the dark, caught me on the nose and shed my gore.”

“Did, Mr. Black make any remark?”

“Modesty forbids me to repeat his repellent expression,” said Mrs. Gabbleton, with a pious air.

“That’ll do,” said Mr. Clawby dryly. “What was the stranger’s name?”

“Ask me another, old hoss.”

Mr. Clawby was satisfied.

He rose to his full height (5 feet 3½ inches in his boots) and blushed with conscious pride.

“Mrs. Gabbleton,” said he, “as a ’tective of twenty years’ standing—an ardent student of the great Gabioreau—a humble worshipper at the shrine of the immortal Lecoq—I thank you! This far-seeing nose, languishing beneath a dissimulating layer of burnt cork and butter, is worthy to rank with the olfactory organ of the greatest gentleman of the profession. Henceforth I am immortal! The man in the dressing-gown—listen, O woman!—the man in the dressing-gown murdered the defunct, and I, the great Clawby, have discovered him!”

“What’s your opinion?”

“Madam,” said Mr. Clawby, with awful majesty of utterance, “there’s something at the bottom of this affair;” and, bowing low, the famous detective passed through the portal of Kangaroo Villa. Mrs. Gabbleton, looking wistfully after him as he strode away, smiled and sighed. “Men is brutes as a rule,” she murmured softly, “but this blessed nigger is just lovely!”