UKRIDGE’S ACCIDENT SYNDICATE
“Half a minute, laddie,” said Ukridge. And, gripping my arm, he brought me to a halt on the outskirts of the little crowd which had collected about the church door.
It was a crowd such as may be seen any morning during the London mating-season outside any of the churches which nestle in the quiet squares between Hyde Park and the King’s Road, Chelsea.
It consisted of five women of cooklike aspect, four nurse-maids, half a dozen men of the non-producing class who had torn themselves away for the moment from their normal task of propping up the wall of the Bunch of Grapes public-house on the corner, a costermonger with a barrow of vegetables, divers small boys, eleven dogs, and two or three purposeful-looking young fellows with cameras slung over their shoulders. It was plain that a wedding was in progress—and, arguing from the presence of the camera-men and the line of smart motor-cars along the kerb, a fairly fashionable wedding. What was not plain—to me—was why Ukridge, sternest of bachelors, had desired to add himself to the spectators.
“What,” I enquired, “is the thought behind this? Why are we interrupting our walk to attend the obsequies of some perfect stranger?”
Ukridge did not reply for a moment. He seemed plunged in thought. Then he uttered a hollow, mirthless laugh—a dreadful sound like the last gargle of a dying moose.
“Perfect stranger, my number eleven foot!” he responded, in his coarse way. “Do you know who it is who’s getting hitched up in there?”
“Who?”
“Teddy Weeks.”
“Teddy Weeks? Teddy Weeks? Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “Not really?”
And five years rolled away.
It was at Barolini’s Italian restaurant in Beak Street that Ukridge evolved his great scheme. Barolini’s was a favourite resort of our little group of earnest strugglers in the days when the philanthropic restaurateurs of Soho used to supply four courses and coffee for a shilling and sixpence; and there were present that night, besides Ukridge and myself, the following men-about-town: Teddy Weeks, the actor, fresh from a six-weeks’ tour with the Number Three “Only a Shop-Girl” Company; Victor Beamish, the artist, the man who drew that picture of the O-So-Eesi Piano-Player in the advertisement pages of thePiccadilly Magazine; Bertram Fox, author ofAshes of Remorse, and other unproduced motion-picture scenarios; and Robert Dunhill, who, being employed at a salary of eighty pounds per annum by the New Asiatic Bank, represented the sober, hard-headed commercial element. As usual, Teddy Weeks had collared the conversation, and was telling us once again how good he was and how hardly treated by a malignant fate.
There is no need to describe Teddy Weeks. Under another and a more euphonious name he has long since made his personal appearance dreadfully familiar to all who read the illustrated weekly papers. He was then, as now, a sickeningly handsome young man, possessing precisely the same melting eyes, mobile mouth, and corrugated hair so esteemed by the theatre-going public to-day. And yet, at this period of his career he was wasting himself on minor touring companies of the kind which open at Barrow-in-Furness and jump to Bootle for the second half of the week. He attributed this, as Ukridge was so apt to attribute his own difficulties, to lack of capital.
“I have everything,” he said, querulously, emphasising his remarks with a coffee-spoon. “Looks, talent, personality, a beautiful speaking-voice—everything. All I need is a chance. And I can’t get that because I have no clothes fit to wear. These managers are all the same, they never look below the surface, they never bother to find out if a man has genius. All they go by are his clothes. If I could afford to buy a couple of suits from a Cork Street tailor, if I could have my boots made to order by Moykoff instead of getting them ready-made and second-hand at Moses Brothers’, if I could once contrive to own a decent hat, a really good pair of spats, and a gold cigarette-case, all at the same time, I could walk into any manager’s office in London and sign up for a West-end production to-morrow.”
It was at this point that Freddie Lunt came in. Freddie, like Robert Dunhill, was a financial magnate in the making and an assiduous frequenter of Barolini’s; and it suddenly occurred to us that a considerable time had passed since we had last seen him in the place. We enquired the reason for this aloofness.
“I’ve been in bed,” said Freddie, “for over a fortnight.”
The statement incurred Ukridge’s stern disapproval. That great man made a practice of never rising before noon, and on one occasion, when a carelessly-thrown match had burned a hole in his only pair of trousers, had gone so far as to remain between the sheets for forty-eight hours; but sloth on so majestic a scale as this shocked him.
“Lazy young devil,” he commented severely. “Letting the golden hours of youth slip by like that when you ought to have been bustling about and making a name for yourself.”
Freddie protested himself wronged by the imputation.
“I had an accident,” he explained. “Fell off my bicycle and sprained an ankle.”
“Tough luck,” was our verdict.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Freddie. “It wasn’t bad fun getting a rest. And of course there was the fiver.”
“What fiver?”
“I got a fiver from theWeekly Cyclistfor getting my ankle sprained.”
“You—what?” cried Ukridge, profoundly stirred—as ever—by a tale of easy money. “Do you mean to sit there and tell me that some dashed paper paid you five quid simply because you sprained your ankle? Pull yourself together, old horse. Things like that don’t happen.”
“It’s quite true.”
“Can you show me the fiver?”
“No; because if I did you would try to borrow it.”
Ukridge ignored this slur in dignified silence.
“Would they pay a fiver toanyonewho sprained his ankle?” he asked, sticking to the main point.
“Yes. If he was a subscriber.”
“I knew there was a catch in it,” said Ukridge, moodily.
“Lots of weekly papers are starting this wheeze,” proceeded Freddie. “You pay a year’s subscription and that entitles you to accident insurance.”
We were interested. This was in the days before every daily paper in London was competing madly against its rivals in the matter of insurance and offering princely bribes to the citizens to make a fortune by breaking their necks. Nowadays papers are paying as high as two thousand pounds for a genuine corpse and five pounds a week for a mere dislocated spine; but at that time the idea was new and it had an attractive appeal.
“How many of these rags are doing this?” asked Ukridge. You could tell from the gleam in his eyes that that great brain was whirring like a dynamo. “As many as ten?”
“Yes, I should think so. Quite ten.”
“Then a fellow who subscribed to them all and then sprained his ankle would get fifty quid?” said Ukridge, reasoning acutely.
“More if the injury was more serious,” said Freddie, the expert. “They have a regular tariff. So much for a broken arm, so much for a broken leg, and so forth.”
Ukridge’s collar leaped off its stud and his pince-nez wobbled drunkenly as he turned to us.
“How much money can you blokes raise?” he demanded.
“What do you want it for?” asked Robert Dunhill, with a banker’s caution.
“My dear old horse, can’t you see? Why, my gosh, I’ve got the idea of the century. Upon my Sam, this is the giltest-edged scheme that was ever hatched. We’ll get together enough money and take out a year’s subscription for every one of these dashed papers.”
“What’s the good of that?” said Dunhill, coldly unenthusiastic.
They train bank clerks to stifle emotion, so that they will be able to refuse overdrafts when they become managers. “The odds are we should none of us have an accident of any kind, and then the money would be chucked away.”
“Good heavens, ass,” snorted Ukridge, “you don’t suppose I’m suggesting that we should leave it to chance, do you? Listen! Here’s the scheme. We take out subscriptions for all these papers, then we draw lots, and the fellow who gets the fatal card or whatever it is goes out and breaks his leg and draws the loot, and we split it up between us and live on it in luxury. It ought to run into hundreds of pounds.”
A long silence followed. Then Dunhill spoke again. His was a solid rather than a nimble mind.
“Suppose he couldn’t break his leg?”
“My gosh!” cried Ukridge, exasperated. “Here we are in the twentieth century, with every resource of modern civilisation at our disposal, with opportunities for getting our legs broken opening about us on every side—and you ask a silly question like that! Of course he could break his leg. Any ass can break a leg. It’s a little hard! We’re all infernally broke—personally, unless Freddie can lend me a bit of that fiver till Saturday, I’m going to have a difficult job pulling through. We all need money like the dickens, and yet, when I point out this marvellous scheme for collecting a bit, instead of fawning on me for my ready intelligence you sit and make objections. It isn’t the right spirit. It isn’t the spirit that wins.”
“If you’re as hard up as that,” objected Dunhill, “how are you going to put in your share of the pool?”
A pained, almost a stunned, look came into Ukridge’s eyes. He gazed at Dunhill through his lop-sided pince-nez as one who speculates as to whether his hearing has deceived him.
“Me?” he cried. “Me? I like that! Upon my Sam, that’s rich! Why, damme, if there’s any justice in the world, if there’s a spark of decency and good feeling in your bally bosoms, I should think you would let me in free for suggesting the idea. It’s a little hard! I supply the brains and you want me to cough up cash as well. My gosh, I didn’t expect this. This hurts me, by George! If anybody had told me that an old pal would——”
“Oh, all right,” said Robert Dunhill. “All right, all right, all right. But I’ll tell you one thing. If you draw the lot it’ll be the happiest day of my life.”
“I sha’n’t,” said Ukridge. “Something tells me that I shan’t.”
Nor did he. When, in a solemn silence broken only by the sound of a distant waiter quarrelling with the cook down a speaking-tube, we had completed the drawing, the man of destiny was Teddy Weeks.
I suppose that even in the springtime of Youth, when broken limbs seems a lighter matter than they become later in life, it can never be an unmixedly agreeable thing to have to go out into the public highways and try to make an accident happen to one. In such circumstances the reflection that you are thereby benefiting your friends brings but slight balm. To Teddy Weeks it appeared to bring no balm at all. That he was experiencing a certain disinclination to sacrifice himself for the public good became more and more evident as the days went by and found him still intact. Ukridge, when he called upon me to discuss the matter, was visibly perturbed. He sank into a chair beside the table at which I was beginning my modest morning meal, and, having drunk half my coffee, sighed deeply.
“Upon my Sam,” he moaned, “it’s a little disheartening. I strain my brain to think up schemes for getting us all a bit of money just at the moment when we are all needing it most, and when I hit on what is probably the simplest and yet ripest notion of our time, this blighter Weeks goes and lets me down by shirking his plain duty. It’s just my luck that a fellow like that should have drawn the lot. And the worst of it is, laddie, that, now we’ve started with him, we’ve got to keep on. We can’t possibly raise enough money to pay yearly subscriptions for anybody else. It’s Weeks or nobody.”
“I suppose we must give him time.”
“That’s what he says,” grunted Ukridge, morosely, helping himself to toast. “He says he doesn’t know how to start about it. To listen to him, you’d think that going and having a trifling accident was the sort of delicate and intricate job that required years of study and special preparation. Why, a child of six could do it on his head at five minutes’ notice. The man’s so infernally particular. You make helpful suggestions, and instead of accepting them in a broad, reasonable spirit of co-operation he comes back at you every time with some frivolous objection. He’s so dashed fastidious. When we were out last night, we came on a couple of navvies scrapping. Good hefty fellows, either of them capable of putting him in hospital for a month. I told him to jump in and start separating them, and he said no; it was a private dispute which was none of his business, and he didn’t feel justified in interfering. Finicky, I call it. I tell you, laddie, this blighter is a broken reed. He has got cold feet. We did wrong to let him into the drawing at all. We might have known that a fellow like that would never give results. No conscience. No sense of esprit de corps. No notion of putting himself out to the most trifling extent for the benefit of the community. Haven’t you any more marmalade, laddie?”
“I have not.”
“Then I’ll be going,” said Ukridge, moodily. “I suppose,” he added, pausing at the door, “you couldn’t lend me five bob?”
“How did you guess?”
“Then I’ll tell you what,” said Ukridge, ever fair and reasonable; “you can stand me dinner to-night.” He seemed cheered up for the moment by this happy compromise, but gloom descended on him again. His face clouded. “When I think,” he said, “of all the money that’s locked up in that poor faint-hearted fish, just waiting to be released, I could sob. Sob, laddie, like a little child. I never liked that man—he has a bad eye and waves his hair. Never trust a man who waves his hair, old horse.”
Ukridge’s pessimism was not confined to himself. By the end of a fortnight, nothing having happened to Teddy Weeks worse than a slight cold which he shook off in a couple of days, the general consensus of opinion among his apprehensive colleagues in the Syndicate was that the situation had become desperate. There were no signs whatever of any return on the vast capital which we had laid out, and meanwhile meals had to be bought, landladies paid, and a reasonable supply of tobacco acquired. It was a melancholy task in these circumstances to read one’s paper of a morning.
All over the inhabited globe, so the well-informed sheet gave one to understand, every kind of accident was happening every day to practically everybody in existence except Teddy Weeks. Farmers in Minnesota were getting mixed up with reaping-machines, peasants in India were being bisected by crocodiles; iron girders from skyscrapers were falling hourly on the heads of citizens in every town from Philadelphia to San Francisco; and the only people who were not down with ptomaine poisoning were those who had walked over cliffs, driven motors into walls, tripped over manholes, or assumed on too slight evidence that the gun was not loaded. In a crippled world, it seemed, Teddy Weeks walked alone, whole and glowing with health. It was one of those grim, ironical, hopeless, grey, despairful situations which the Russian novelists love to write about, and I could not find it in me to blame Ukridge for taking direct action in this crisis. My only regret was that bad luck caused so excellent a plan to miscarry.
My first intimation that he had been trying to hurry matters on came when he and I were walking along the King’s Road one evening, and he drew me into Markham Square, a dismal backwater where he had once had rooms.
“What’s the idea?” I asked, for I disliked the place.
“Teddy Weeks lives here,” said Ukridge. “In my old rooms.” I could not see that this lent any fascination to the place. Every day and in every way I was feeling sorrier and sorrier that I had been foolish enough to put money which I could ill spare into a venture which had all the earmarks of a wash-out, and my sentiments towards Teddy Weeks were cold and hostile.
“I want to enquire after him.”
“Enquire after him? Why?”
“Well, the fact is, laddie, I have an idea that he has been bitten by a dog.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Ukridge, dreamily. “I’ve just got the idea. You know how one gets ideas.”
The mere contemplation of this beautiful event was so inspiring that for awhile it held me silent. In each of the ten journals in which we had invested dog-bites were specifically recommended as things which every subscriber ought to have. They came about half-way up the list of lucrative accidents, inferior to a broken rib or a fractured fibula, but better value than an ingrowing toe-nail. I was gloating happily over the picture conjured up by Ukridge’s words when an exclamation brought me back with a start to the realities of life. A revolting sight met my eyes. Down the street came ambling the familiar figure of Teddy Weeks, and one glance at his elegant person was enough to tell us that our hopes had been built on sand. Not even a toy Pomeranian had chewed this man.
“Hallo, you fellows!” said Teddy Weeks.
“Hallo!” we responded, dully.
“Can’t stop,” said Teddy Weeks. “I’ve got to fetch a doctor.”
“A doctor?”
“Yes. Poor Victor Beamish. He’s been bitten by a dog.”
Ukridge and I exchanged weary glances. It seemed as if Fate was going out of its way to have sport with us. What was the good of a dog biting Victor Beamish? What was the good of a hundred dogs biting Victor Beamish? A dog-bitten Victor Beamish had no market value whatever.
“You know that fierce brute that belongs to my landlady,” said Teddy Weeks. “The one that always dashes out into the area and barks at people who come to the front door.” I remembered. A large mongrel with wild eyes and flashing fangs, badly in need of a haircut. I had encountered it once in the street, when visiting Ukridge, and only the presence of the latter, who knew it well and to whom all dogs were as brothers, had saved me from the doom of Victor Beamish. “Somehow or other he got into my bedroom this evening. He was waiting there when I came home. I had brought Beamish back with me, and the animal pinned him by the leg the moment I opened the door.”
“Why didn’t he pin you?” asked Ukridge, aggrieved.
“What I can’t make out,” said Teddy Weeks, “is how on earth the brute came to be in my room. Somebody must have put him there. The whole thing is very mysterious.”
“Why didn’t he pin you?” demanded Ukridge again.
“Oh, I managed to climb on to the top of the wardrobe while he was biting Beamish,” said Teddy Weeks. “And then the landlady came and took him away. But I can’t stop here talking. I must go and get that doctor.”
We gazed after him in silence as he tripped down the street. We noted the careful manner in which he paused at the corner to eye the traffic before crossing the road, the wary way in which he drew back to allow a truck to rattle past.
“You heard that?” said Ukridge, tensely. “He climbed on to the top of the wardrobe!”
“Yes.”
“And you saw the way he dodged that excellent truck?”
“Yes.”
“Something’s got to be done,” said Ukridge, firmly. “The man has got to be awakened to a sense of his responsibilities.”
Next day a deputation waited on Teddy Weeks.
Ukridge was our spokesman, and he came to the point with admirable directness.
“How about it?” asked Ukridge.
“How about what?” replied Teddy Weeks, nervously, avoiding his accusing eye.
“When do we get action?”
“Oh, you mean that accident business?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Teddy Weeks.
Ukridge drew the mackintosh which he wore indoors and out of doors and in all weathers more closely around him. There was in the action something suggestive of a member of the Roman Senate about to denounce an enemy of the State. In just such a manner must Cicero have swished his toga as he took a deep breath preparatory to assailing Clodius. He toyed for a moment with the ginger-beer wire which held his pince-nez in place, and endeavoured without success to button his collar at the back. In moments of emotion Ukridge’s collar always took on a sort of temperamental jumpiness which no stud could restrain.
“And about time youwerethinking about it,” he boomed, sternly.
We shifted appreciatively in our seats, all except Victor Beamish, who had declined a chair and was standing by the mantelpiece. “Upon my Sam, it’s about time you were thinking about it. Do you realise that we’ve invested an enormous sum of money in you on the distinct understanding that we could rely on you to do your duty and get immediate results? Are we to be forced to the conclusion that you are so yellow and few in the pod as to want to evade your honourable obligations? We thought better of you, Weeks. Upon my Sam, we thought better of you. We took you for a two-fisted, enterprising, big-souled, one hundred-per-cent. he-man who would stand by his friends to the finish.”
“Yes, but——”
“Any bloke with a sense of loyalty and an appreciation of what it meant to the rest of us would have rushed out and found some means of fulfilling his duty long ago. You don’t even grasp at the opportunities that come your way. Only yesterday I saw you draw back when a single step into the road would have had a truck bumping into you.”
“Well, it’s not so easy to let a truck bump into you.”
“Nonsense. It only requires a little ordinary resolution. Use your imagination, man. Try to think that a child has fallen down in the street—a little golden-haired child,” said Ukridge, deeply affected. “And a dashed great cab or something comes rolling up. The kid’s mother is standing on the pavement, helpless, her hands clasped in agony. ‘Dammit,’ she cries, ‘will no one save my darling?’ ‘Yes, by George,’ you shout, ‘Iwill.’ And out you jump and the thing’s over in half a second. I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about.”
“Yes, but——” said Teddy Weeks.
“I’m told, what’s more, it isn’t a bit painful. A sort of dull shock, that’s all.”
“Who told you that?”
“I forget. Someone.”
“Well, you can tell him from me that he’s an ass,” said Teddy Weeks, with asperity.
“All right. If you object to being run over by a truck there are lots of other ways. But, upon my Sam, it’s pretty hopeless suggesting them. You seem to have no enterprise at all. Yesterday, after I went to all the trouble to put a dog in your room, a dog which would have done all the work for you—all that you had to do was stand still and let him use his own judgment—what happened? You climbed on to——”
Victor Beamish interrupted, speaking in a voice husky with emotion.
“Was it you who put that damned dog in the room?”
“Eh?” said Ukridge. “Why, yes. But we can have a good talk about all that later on,” he proceeded, hastily. “The point at the moment is how the dickens we’re going to persuade this poor worm to collect our insurance money for us. Why, damme, I should have thought you would have——”
“All I can say——” began Victor Beamish, heatedly.
“Yes, yes,” said Ukridge; “some other time. Must stick to business now, laddie. I was saying,” he resumed, “that I should have thought you would have been as keen as mustard to put the job through for your own sake. You’re always beefing that you haven’t any clothes to impress managers with. Think of all you can buy with your share of the swag once you have summoned up a little ordinary determination and seen the thing through. Think of the suits, the boots, the hats, the spats. You’re always talking about your dashed career, and how all you need to land you in a West-end production is good clothes. Well, here’s your chance to get them.”
His eloquence was not wasted. A wistful look came into Teddy Weeks’s eye, such a look as must have come into the eye of Moses on the summit of Pisgah. He breathed heavily. You could see that the man was mentally walking along Cork Street, weighing the merits of one famous tailor against another.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said, suddenly. “It’s no use asking me to put this thing through in cold blood. I simply can’t do it. I haven’t the nerve. But if you fellows will give me a dinner to-night with lots of champagne I think it will key me up to it.”
A heavy silence fell upon the room. Champagne! The word was like a knell.
“How on earth are we going to afford champagne?” said Victor Beamish.
“Well, there it is,” said Teddy Weeks. “Take it or leave it.”
“Gentlemen,” said Ukridge, “it would seem that the company requires more capital. How about it, old horses? Let’s get together in a frank, business-like cards-on-the-table spirit, and see what can be done. I can raise ten bob.”
“What!” cried the entire assembled company, amazed. “How?”
“I’ll pawn a banjo.”
“You haven’t got a banjo.”
“No, but George Tupper has, and I know where he keeps it.”
Started in this spirited way, the subscriptions came pouring in. I contributed a cigarette-case, Bertram Fox thought his landlady would let him owe for another week, Robert Dunhill had an uncle in Kensington who, he fancied, if tactfully approached, would be good for a quid, and Victor Beamish said that if the advertisement-manager of the O-So-Eesi Piano-Player was churlish enough to refuse an advance of five shillings against future work he misjudged him sadly. Within a few minutes, in short, the Lightning Drive had produced the impressive total of two pounds six shillings, and we asked Teddy Weeks if he thought that he could get adequately keyed up within the limits of that sum.
“I’ll try,” said Teddy Weeks.
So, not unmindful of the fact that that excellent hostelry supplied champagne at eight shillings the quart bottle, we fixed the meeting for seven o’clock at Barolini’s.
Considered as a social affair, Teddy Weeks’s keying-up dinner was not a success. Almost from the start I think we all found it trying. It was not so much the fact that he was drinking deeply of Barolini’s eight-shilling champagne while we, from lack of funds, were compelled to confine ourselves to meaner beverages; what really marred the pleasantness of the function was the extraordinary effect the stuff had on Teddy. What was actually in the champagne supplied to Barolini and purveyed by him to the public, such as were reckless enough to drink it, at eight shillings the bottle remains a secret between its maker and his Maker; but three glasses of it were enough to convert Teddy Weeks from a mild and rather oily young man into a truculent swashbuckler.
He quarrelled with us all. With the soup he was tilting at Victor Beamish’s theories of Art; the fish found him ridiculing Bertram Fox’s views on the future of the motion-picture; and by the time the leg of chicken with dandelion salad arrived—or, as some held, string salad—opinions varied on this point—the hell-brew had so wrought on him that he had begun to lecture Ukridge on his mis-spent life and was urging him in accents audible across the street to go out and get a job and thus acquire sufficient self-respect to enable him to look himself in the face in a mirror without wincing. Not, added Teddy Weeks with what we all thought uncalled-for offensiveness, that any amount of self-respect was likely to do that. Having said which, he called imperiously for another eight bobs’-worth.
We gazed at one another wanly. However excellent the end towards which all this was tending, there was no denying that it was hard to bear. But policy kept us silent. We recognised that this was Teddy Weeks’s evening and that he must be humoured. Victor Beamish said meekly that Teddy had cleared up a lot of points which had been troubling him for a long time. Bertram Fox agreed that there was much in what Teddy had said about the future of the close-up. And even Ukridge, though his haughty soul was seared to its foundations by the latter’s personal remarks, promised to take his homily to heart and act upon it at the earliest possible moment.
“You’d better!” said Teddy Weeks, belligerently, biting off the end of one of Barolini’s best cigars. “And there’s another thing—don’t let me hear of your coming and sneaking people’s socks again.”
“Very well, laddie,” said Ukridge, humbly.
“If there is one person in the world that I despise,” said Teddy, bending a red-eyed gaze on the offender, “it’s a snock-seeker—a seek-snocker—a—well, you know what I mean.”
We hastened to assure him that we knew what he meant and he relapsed into a lengthy stupor, from which he emerged three-quarters of an hour later to announce that he didn’t know what we intended to do, but that he was going. We said that we were going too, and we paid the bill and did so.
Teddy Weeks’s indignation on discovering us gathered about him upon the pavement outside the restaurant was intense, and he expressed it freely. Among other things, he said—which was not true—that he had a reputation to keep up in Soho.
“It’s all right, Teddy, old horse,” said Ukridge, soothingly. “We just thought you would like to have all your old pals round you when you did it.”
“Did it? Did what?”
“Why, had the accident.”
Teddy Weeks glared at him truculently. Then his mood seemed to change abruptly, and he burst into a loud and hearty laugh.
“Well, of all the silly ideas!” he cried, amusedly. “I’m not going to have an accident. You don’t suppose I ever seriously intended to have an accident, do you? It was just my fun.” Then, with another sudden change of mood, he seemed to become a victim to an acute unhappiness. He stroked Ukridge’s arm affectionately, and a tear rolled down his cheek. “Just my fun,” he repeated. “You don’t mind my fun, do you?” he asked, pleadingly. “You like my fun, don’t you? All my fun. Never meant to have an accident at all. Just wanted dinner.” The gay humour of it all overcame his sorrow once more. “Funniest thing ever heard,” he said cordially. “Didn’t want accident, wanted dinner. Dinner daxident, danner dixident,” he added, driving home his point. “Well, good night all,” he said, cheerily. And, stepping off the kerb on to a banana-skin, was instantly knocked ten feet by a passing lorry.
“Two ribs and an arm,” said the doctor five minutes later, superintending the removal proceedings. “Gently with that stretcher.”
It was two weeks before we were informed by the authorities of Charing Cross Hospital that the patient was in a condition to receive visitors. A whip-round secured the price of a basket of fruit, and Ukridge and I were deputed by the shareholders to deliver it with their compliments and kind enquiries.
“Hallo!” we said in a hushed, bedside manner when finally admitted to his presence.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” replied the invalid.
I must confess even in that first moment to having experienced a slight feeling of surprise. It was not like Teddy Weeks to call us gentlemen. Ukridge, however, seemed to notice nothing amiss.
“Well, well, well,” he said, buoyantly. “And how are you, laddie? We’ve brought you a few fragments of fruit.”
“I am getting along capitally,” replied Teddy Weeks, still in that odd precise way which had made his opening words strike me as curious. “And I should like to say that in my opinion England has reason to be proud of the alertness and enterprise of her great journals. The excellence of their reading-matter, the ingenuity of their various competitions, and, above all, the go-ahead spirit which has resulted in this accident insurance scheme are beyond praise. Have you got that down?” he enquired.
Ukridge and I looked at each other. We had been told that Teddy was practically normal again, but this sounded like delirium.
“Have we got that down, old horse?” asked Ukridge, gently.
Teddy Weeks seemed surprised.
“Aren’t you reporters?”
“How do you mean, reporters?”
“I thought you had come from one of these weekly papers that have been paying me insurance money, to interview me,” said Teddy Weeks.
Ukridge and I exchanged another glance. An uneasy glance this time. I think that already a grim foreboding had begun to cast its shadow over us.
“Surely you remember me, Teddy, old horse?” said Ukridge, anxiously.
Teddy Weeks knit his brow, concentrating painfully.
“Why, of course,” he said at last. “You’re Ukridge, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. Ukridge.”
“Of course. Ukridge.”
“Yes. Ukridge. Funny your forgetting me!”
“Yes,” said Teddy Weeks. “It’s the effect of the shock I got when that thing bowled me over. I must have been struck on the head, I suppose. It has had the effect of rendering my memory rather uncertain. The doctors here are very interested. They say it is a most unusual case. I can remember some things perfectly, but in some ways my memory is a complete blank.”
“Oh, but I say, old horse,” quavered Ukridge. “I suppose you haven’t forgotten about that insurance, have you?”
“Oh, no, I remember that.”
Ukridge breathed a relieved sigh.
“I was a subscriber to a number of weekly papers,” went on Teddy Weeks. “They are paying me insurance money now.”
“Yes, yes, old horse,” cried Ukridge. “But what I mean is you remember the Syndicate, don’t you?”
Teddy Weeks raised his eyebrows.
“Syndicate? What Syndicate?”
“Why, when we all got together and put up the money to pay for the subscriptions to these papers and drew lots, to choose which of us should go out and have an accident and collect the money. And you drew it, don’t you remember?”
Utter astonishment, and a shocked astonishment at that, spread itself over Teddy Weeks’s countenance. The man seemed outraged.
“I certainly remember nothing of the kind,” he said, severely. “I cannot imagine myself for a moment consenting to become a party to what from your own account would appear to have been a criminal conspiracy to obtain money under false pretences from a number of weekly papers.”
“But, laddie——”
“However,” said Teddy Weeks, “if there is any truth in this story, no doubt you have documentary evidence to support it.”
Ukridge looked at me. I looked at Ukridge. There was a long silence.
“Shift-ho, old horse?” said Ukridge, sadly. “No use staying on here.”
“No,” I replied, with equal gloom. “May as well go.”
“Glad to have seen you,” said Teddy Weeks, “and thanks for the fruit.”
The next time I saw the man he was coming out of a manager’s office in the Haymarket. He had on a new Homburg hat of a delicate pearl grey, spats to match, and a new blue flannel suit, beautifully cut, with an invisible red twill. He was looking jubilant, and; as I passed him, he drew from his pocket a gold cigarette-case.
It was shortly after that, if you remember, that he made a big hit as the juvenile lead in that piece at the Apollo and started on his sensational career as amatineeidol.
Inside the church the organ had swelled into the familiar music of the Wedding March. A verger came out and opened the doors. The five cooks ceased their reminiscences of other and smarter weddings at which they had participated. The camera-men unshipped their cameras. The costermonger moved his barrow of vegetables a pace forward. A dishevelled and unshaven man at my side uttered a disapproving growl.
“Idle rich!” said the dishevelled man.
Out of the church came a beauteous being, leading attached to his arm another being, somewhat less beauteous.
There was no denying the spectacular effect of Teddy Weeks. He was handsomer than ever. His sleek hair, gorgeously waved, shone in the sun, his eyes were large and bright; his lissome frame, garbed in faultless morning-coat and trousers, was that of an Apollo. But his bride gave the impression that Teddy had married money. They paused in the doorway, and the camera-men became active and fussy.
“Have you got a shilling, laddie?” said Ukridge in a low, level voice.
“Why do you want a shilling?”
“Old horse,” said Ukridge, tensely, “it is of the utmost vital importance that I have a shilling here and now.”
I passed it over. Ukridge turned to the dishevelled man, and I perceived that he held in his hand a large rich tomato of juicy and over-ripe appearance.
“Would you like to earn a bob?” Ukridge said.
“Would I!” replied the dishevelled man.
Ukridge sank his voice to a hoarse whisper.
The camera-men had finished their preparations. Teddy Weeks, his head thrown back in that gallant way which has endeared him to so many female hearts, was exhibiting his celebrated teeth. The cooks, in undertones, were making adverse comments on the appearance of the bride.
“Now, please,” said one of the camera-men.
Over the heads of the crowd, well and truly aimed, whizzed a large juicy tomato. It burst like a shell full between Teddy Weeks’s expressive eyes, obliterating them in scarlet ruin. It spattered Teddy Weeks’s collar, it dripped on Teddy Weeks’s morning-coat. And the dishevelled man turned abruptly and raced off down the street.
Ukridge grasped my arm. There was a look of deep content in his eyes.
“Shift-ho?” said Ukridge.
Arm-in-arm, we strolled off in the pleasant June sunshine.
THE DÉBUT OF BATTLING BILLSON
It becomes increasingly difficult, I have found, as time goes by, to recall the exact circumstances in which one first became acquainted with this man or that; for as a general thing I lay no claim to the possession of one of those hair-trigger memories which come from subscribing to the correspondence courses advertised in the magazines. And yet I can state without doubt or hesitation that the individual afterwards known as Battling Billson entered my life at half-past four on the afternoon of Saturday, September the tenth, two days after my twenty-seventh birthday. For there was that about my first sight of him which has caused the event to remain photographically lined on the tablets of my mind when a yesterday has faded from its page. Not only was our meeting dramatic and even startling, but it had in it something of the quality of the last straw, the final sling or arrow of outrageous Fortune. It seemed to put the lid on the sadness of life.
Everything had been going steadily wrong with me for more than a week. I had been away, paying a duty visit to uncongenial relatives in the country, and it had rained and rained and rained. There had been family prayers before breakfast and bezique after dinner. On the journey back to London my carriage had been full of babies, the train had stopped everywhere, and I had had nothing to eat but a bag of buns. And when finally I let myself into my lodgings in Ebury Street and sought the soothing haven of my sitting-room, the first thing I saw on opening the door was this enormous red-headed man lying on the sofa.
He made no move as I came in, for he was asleep; and I can best convey the instantaneous impression I got of his formidable physique by saying that I had no desire to wake him. The sofa was a small one, and he overflowed it in every direction. He had a broken nose, and his jaw was the jaw of a Wild West motion-picture star registering Determination. One hand was under his head; the other, hanging down to the floor, looked like a strayed ham congealed into stone. What he was doing in my sitting-room I did not know; but, passionately as I wished to know, I preferred not to seek first-hand information. There was something about him that seemed to suggest that he might be one of those men who are rather cross when they first wake up. I crept out and stole softly downstairs to make enquiries of Bowles, my landlord.
“Sir?” said Bowles, in his fruity ex-butler way, popping up from the depths accompanied by a rich smell of finnan haddie.
“There’s someone in my room,” I whispered.
“That would be Mr. Ukridge, sir.”
“It wouldn’t be anything of the kind,” I replied, with asperity. I seldom had the courage to contradict Bowles, but this statement was so wildly inaccurate that I could not let it pass. “It’s a huge red-headed man.”
“Mr. Ukridge’s friend, sir. He joined Mr. Ukridge here yesterday.”
“How do you mean, joined Mr. Ukridge here yesterday?”
“Mr. Ukridge came to occupy your rooms in your absence, sir, on the night after your departure. I assumed that he had your approval. He said, if I remember correctly, that ‘it would be all right.’”
For some reason or other which I had never been able to explain, Bowles’s attitude towards Ukridge from their first meeting had been that of an indulgent father towards a favourite son. He gave the impression now of congratulating me on having such a friend to rally round and sneak into my rooms when I went away.
“Would there be anything further, sir?” enquired Bowles, with a wistful half-glance over his shoulder. He seemed reluctant to tear himself away for long from the finnan haddie.
“No,” I said. “Er—no. When do you expect Mr. Ukridge back?”
“Mr. Ukridge informed me that he would return for dinner, sir. Unless he has altered his plans, he is now at amatinéeperformance at the Gaiety Theatre.”
The audience was just beginning to leave when I reached the Gaiety. I waited in the Strand, and presently was rewarded by the sight of a yellow mackintosh working its way through the crowd.
“Hallo, laddie!” said Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, genially. “When did you get back? I say, I want you to remember this tune, so that you can remind me of it to-morrow, when I’ll be sure to have forgotten it. This is how it goes.” He poised himself flat-footedly in the surging tide of pedestrians and, shutting his eyes and raising his chin, began to yodel in a loud and dismal tenor. “Tumty-tumty-tumty-tum, tum tum tum,” he concluded. “And now, old horse, you may lead me across the street to the Coal Hole for a short snifter. What sort of a time have you had?”
“Never mind what sort of a time I’ve had. Who’s the fellow you’ve dumped down in my rooms?
“Red-haired man?”
“Good Lord! Surely even you wouldn’t inflict more than one on me?”
Ukridge looked at me a little pained.
“I don’t like this tone,” he said, leading me down the steps of the Coal Hole. “Upon my Sam, your manner wounds me, old horse. I little thought that you would object to your best friend laying his head on your pillow.”
“I don’t mind your head. At least I do, but I suppose I’ve got to put up with it. But when it comes to your taking in lodgers——”
“Order two tawny ports, laddie,” said Ukridge, “and I’ll explain all about that. I had an idea all along that you would want to know. It’s like this,” he proceeded, when the tawny ports had arrived. “That bloke’s going to make my everlasting fortune.”
“Well, can’t he do it somewhere else except in my sitting-room?”
“You know me, old horse,” said Ukridge, sipping luxuriously. “Keen, alert, far-sighted. Brain never still. Always getting ideas—bing—like a flash. The other day I was in a pub down Chelsea way having a bit of bread and cheese, and a fellow came in smothered with jewels. Smothered, I give you my word. Rings on his fingers and a tie-pin you could have lit your cigar at. I made enquiries and found that he was Tod Bingham’s manager.”
“Who’s Tod Bingham?”
“My dear old son, you must have heard of Tod Bingham. The new middle-weight champion. Beat Alf Palmer for the belt a couple of weeks ago. And this bloke, as opulent-looking a bloke as ever I saw, was his manager. I suppose he gets about fifty per cent. of everything Tod makes, and you know the sort of purses they give for big fights nowadays. And then there’s music-hall tours and the movies and all that. Well, I see no reason why, putting the thing at the lowest figures, I shouldn’t scoop in thousands. I got the idea two seconds after they told me who this fellow was. And what made the thing seem almost as if it was meant to be was the coincidence that I should have heard only that morning that theHyacinthwas in.”
The man seemed to me to be rambling. In my reduced and afflicted state his cryptic method of narrative irritated me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “What’s theHyacinth? In where?”
“Pull yourself together, old horse,” said Ukridge, with the air of one endeavouring to be patient with a half-witted child. “You remember theHyacinth, the tramp steamer I took that trip on a couple of years ago. Many’s the time I’ve told you all about theHyacinth.She docked in the Port of London the night before I met this opulent bloke, and I had been meaning to go down next day and have a chat with the lads. The fellow you found in your rooms is one of the trimmers. As decent a bird as ever you met. Not much conversation, but a heart of gold. And it came across me like a thunderbolt the moment they told me who the jewelled cove was that, if I could only induce this man Billson to take up scrapping seriously, with me as his manager, my fortune was made. Billson is the man who invented fighting.”
“He looks it.”
“Splendid chap—you’ll like him.”
“I bet I shall. I made up my mind to like him the moment I saw him.”
“Never picks a quarrel, you understand—in fact, used to need the deuce of a lot of provocation before he would give of his best; but once he started—golly! I’ve seen that man clean out a bar at Marseilles in a way that fascinated you. A bar filled to overflowing with A.B.’s and firemen, mind you, and all capable of felling oxen with a blow. Six of them there were, and they kept swatting Billson with all the vim and heartiness at their disposal, but he just let them bounce off, and went on with the business in hand. The man’s a champion, laddie, nothing less. You couldn’t hurt him with a hatchet, and every time he hits anyone all the undertakers in the place jump up and make bids for the body. And the amazing bit of luck is that he was looking for a job ashore. It appears he’s fallen in love with one of the barmaids at the Crown in Kennington. Not,” said Ukridge, so that all misapprehension should be avoided, “the one with the squint. The other one. Flossie. The girl with yellow hair.”
“I don’t know the barmaids at the Crown in Kennington,” I said.
“Nice girls,” said Ukridge, paternally. “So it was all right, you see. Our interests were identical. Good old Billson isn’t what you’d call a very intelligent chap, but I managed to make him understand after an hour or so, and we drew up the contract. I’m to get fifty per cent. of everything in consideration of managing him, fixing up fights, and looking after him generally.”
“And looking after him includes tucking him up on my sofa and singing him to sleep?”
Again that pained look came into Ukridge’s face. He gazed at me as if I had disappointed him.
“You keep harping on that, laddie, and it isn’t the right spirit. Anyone would think that we had polluted your damned room.”
“Well, you must admit that having this coming champion of yours in the home is going to make things a bit crowded.”
“Don’t worry about that, my dear old man,” said Ukridge, reassuringly. “We move to the White Hart at Barnes to-morrow, to start training. I’ve got Billson an engagement in one of the preliminaries down at Wonderland two weeks from to-night.”
“No; really?” I said, impressed by this enterprise. “How did you manage it?”
“I just took him along and showed him to the management. They jumped at him. You see, the old boy’s appearance rather speaks for itself. Thank goodness, all this happened just when I had a few quid tucked away. By the greatest good luck I ran into George Tupper at the very moment when he had had word that they were going to make him an under-secretary or something—I can’t remember the details, but it’s something they give these Foreign Office blokes when they show a bit of class—and Tuppy parted with a tenner without a murmur. Seemed sort of dazed. I believe now I could have had twenty if I’d had the presence of mind to ask for it. Still,” said Ukridge, with a manly resignation which did him credit, “it can’t be helped now, and ten will see me through. The only thing that’s worrying me at the moment is what to call Billson.”
“Yes, I should be careful what I called a man like that.”
“I mean, what name is he to fight under?”
“Why not his own?”
“His parents, confound them,” said Ukridge, moodily, “christened him Wilberforce. I ask you, can you see the crowd at Wonderland having Wilberforce Billson introduced to them?”
“Willie Billson,” I suggested. “Rather snappy.”
Ukridge considered the proposal seriously, with knit brows, as becomes a manager.
“Too frivolous,” he decided at length. “Might be all right for a bantam, but—no, I don’t like it. I was thinking of something like Hurricane Hicks or Rock-Crusher Riggs.”
“Don’t do it,” I urged, “or you’ll kill his career right from the start. You never find a real champion with one of these fancy names. Bob Fitzsimmons, Jack Johnson, James J. Corbett, James J. Jeffries——”
“James J. Billson?”
“Rotten.”
“You don’t think,” said Ukridge, almost with timidity, “that Wildcat Wix might do?”
“No fighter with an adjective in front of his name ever boxed in anything except a three-round preliminary.”
“How about Battling Billson?”
I patted him on the shoulder.
“Go no farther,” I said. “The thing is settled. Battling Billson is the name.”
“Laddie,” said Ukridge in a hushed voice, reaching across the table and grasping my hand, “this is genius. Sheer genius. Order another couple of tawny ports, old man.”
I did so, and we drank deep to the Battler’s success.
My formal introduction to my godchild took place on our return to Ebury Street, and—great as had been my respect for the man before—it left me with a heightened appreciation of the potentialities for triumph awaiting him in his selected profession. He was awake by this time and moving ponderously about the sitting-room, and he looked even more impressive standing than he had appeared when lying down. At our first meeting, moreover, his eyes had been closed in sleep; they were now open, green in colour, and of a peculiarly metallic glint which caused them, as we shook hands, to seem to be exploring my person for good spots to hit. What was probably intended to be the smile that wins appeared to me a grim and sardonic twist of the lip. Take him for all in all, I had never met a man so calculated to convert the most truculent swashbuckler to pacifism at a glance; and when I recalled Ukridge’s story of the little unpleasantness at Marseilles and realised that a mere handful of half a dozen able-bodied seamen had had the temerity to engage this fellow in personal conflict, it gave me a thrill of patriotic pride. There must be good stuff in the British Merchant Marine, I felt. Hearts of oak.
Dinner, which followed the introduction, revealed the Battler rather as a capable trencherman than as a sparkling conversationalist. His long reach enabled him to grab salt, potatoes, pepper, and other necessaries without the necessity of asking for them; and on other topics he seemed to possess no views which he deemed worthy of exploitation. A strong, silent man.
That there was a softer side to his character was, however, made clear to me when, after smoking one of my cigars and talking for awhile of this and that, Ukridge went out on one of those mysterious errands of his which were always summoning him at all hours and left my guest and myself alone together. After a bare half-hour’s silence, broken only by the soothing gurgle of his pipe, the coming champion cocked an intimidating eye at me and spoke.
“You ever been in love, mister?”
I was thrilled and flattered. Something in my appearance, I told myself, some nebulous something that showed me a man of sentiment and sympathy, had appealed to this man, and he was about to pour out his heart in intimate confession. I said yes, I had been in love many times. I went on to speak of love as a noble emotion of which no man need be ashamed. I spoke at length and with fervour.
“R!” said Battling Billson.
Then, as if aware that he had been chattering in an undignified manner to a comparative stranger, he withdrew into the silence again and did not emerge till it was time to go to bed, when he said “Good night, mister,” and disappeared. It was disappointing. Significant, perhaps, the conversation had been, but I had been rather hoping for something which could have been built up into a human document, entitled “The Soul of the Abysmal Brute,” and sold to some editor for that real money which was always so badly needed in the home.
Ukridge and hisprotégéleft next morning for Barnes, and, as that riverside resort was somewhat off my beat, I saw no more of the Battler until the fateful night at Wonderland. From time to time Ukridge would drop in at my rooms to purloin cigars and socks, and on these occasions he always spoke with the greatest confidence of his man’s prospects. At first, it seemed, there had been a little difficulty owing to the other’s rooted idea that plug tobacco was an indispensable adjunct to training: but towards the end of the first week the arguments of wisdom had prevailed and he had consented to abandon smoking until after his début. By this concession the issue seemed to Ukridge to have been sealed as a certainty, and he was in sunny mood as he borrowed the money from me to pay our fares to the Underground station at which the pilgrim alights who wishes to visit that Mecca of East-end boxing, Wonderland.
The Battler had preceded us, and when we arrived was in the dressing-room, stripped to a breath-taking semi-nudity. I had not supposed that it was possible for a man to be larger than was Mr. Billson when arrayed for the street, but in trunks and boxing shoes he looked like his big brother. Muscles resembling the hawsers of an Atlantic liner coiled down his arms and rippled along his massive shoulders. He seemed to dwarf altogether the by no means flimsy athlete who passed out of the room as we came in.
“That’s the bloke,” announced Mr. Billson, jerking his red head after this person.
We understood him to imply that the other was his opponent, and the spirit of confidence which had animated us waxed considerably. Where six of the pick of the Merchant Marine had failed, this stripling could scarcely hope to succeed.
“I been talkin’ to ’im,” said Battling Billson.
I took this unwonted garrulity to be due to a slight nervousness natural at such a moment.
“’E’s ’ad a lot of trouble, that bloke,” said the Battler.
The obvious reply was that he was now going to have a lot more, but before either of us could make it a hoarse voice announced that Squiffy and the Toff had completed their three-round bout and that the stage now waited for our nominee. We hurried to our seats. The necessity of taking a look at our man in his dressing-room had deprived us of the pleasure of witnessing the passage of arms between Squiffy and the Toff, but I gathered that it must have been lively and full of entertainment, for the audience seemed in excellent humour. All those who were not too busy eating jellied eels were babbling happily or whistling between their fingers to friends in distant parts of the hall. As Mr. Billson climbed into the ring in all the glory of his red hair and jumping muscles, the babble rose to a roar. It was plain that Wonderland had stamped our Battler with its approval on sight.
The audiences which support Wonderland are not disdainful of science. Neat footwork wins their commendation, and a skilful ducking of the head is greeted with knowing applause. But what they esteem most highly is the punch. And one sight of Battling Billson seemed to tell them that here was the Punch personified. They sent the fighters off to a howl of ecstasy, and settled back in their seats to enjoy the pure pleasure of seeing two of their fellow-men hitting each other very hard and often.
The howl died away.
I looked at Ukridge with concern. Was this the hero of Marseilles, the man who cleaned out bar-rooms and on whom undertakers fawned? Diffident was the only word to describe our Battler’s behaviour in that opening round. He pawed lightly at his antagonist. He embraced him like a brother. He shuffled about the ring, innocuous.
“What’s the matter with him?” I asked.
“He always starts slow,” said Ukridge, but his concern was manifest. He fumbled nervously at the buttons of his mackintosh. The referee was warning Battling Billson, He was speaking to him like a disappointed father. In the cheaper and baser parts of the house enraged citizens were whistling “Comrades.” Everywhere a chill had fallen on the house. That first fine fresh enthusiasm had died away, and the sounding of the gong for the end of the round was greeted with censorious cat-calls. As Mr. Billson lurched back to his corner, frank unfriendliness was displayed on all sides.
With the opening of the second round considerably more spirit was introduced into the affair. The same strange torpidity still held our Battler in its grip, but his opponent was another man. During round one he had seemed a little nervous and apprehensive. He had behaved as if he considered it prudent not to stir Mr. Billson. But now this distaste for direct action had left him. There was jauntiness in his demeanour as he moved to the centre of the ring; and, having reached it, he uncoiled a long left and smote Mr. Billson forcefully on the nose. Twice he smote him, and twice Mr. Billson blinked like one who has had bad news from home. The man who had had a lot of trouble leaned sideways and brought his right fist squarely against the Battler’s ear.
All was forgotten and forgiven. A moment before the audience had been solidly anti-Billson. Now they were as unanimously pro. For these blows, while they appeared to have affected him not at all physically, seemed to have awakened Mr. Billson’s better feelings as if somebody had turned on a tap. They had aroused in Mr. Billson’s soul that zest for combat which had been so sadly to seek in round one. For an instant after the receipt of that buffet on the ear the Battler stood motionless on his flat feet, apparently in deep thought. Then, with the air of one who has suddenly remembered an important appointment, he plunged forward. Like an animated windmill he cast himself upon the bloke of troubles. He knocked him here, he bounced him there. He committed mayhem upon his person. He did everything to him that a man can do who is hampered with boxing-gloves, until presently the troubled one was leaning heavily against the ropes, his head hanging dazedly, his whole attitude that of a man who would just as soon let the matter drop. It only remained for the Battler to drive home the final punch, and a hundred enthusiasts, rising to their feet, were pointing out to him desirable locations for it.
But once more that strange diffidence had descended upon our representative. While every other man in the building seemed to know the correct procedure and was sketching it out in nervous English, Mr. Billson appeared the victim of doubt. He looked uncertainly at his opponent and enquiringly at the referee.
The referee, obviously a man of blunted sensibilities, was unresponsive. Do It Now was plainly his slogan. He was a business man, and he wanted his patrons to get good value for their money. He was urging Mr. Billson to make a thorough job of it. And finally Mr. Billson approached his man and drew back his right arm. Having done this, he looked over his shoulder once more at the referee.
It was a fatal blunder. The man who had had a lot of trouble may have been in poor shape, but, like most of his profession, he retained, despite his recent misadventures, a reserve store of energy. Even as Mr. Billson turned his head, he reached down to the floor with his gloved right hand, then, with a final effort, brought it up in a majestic sweep against the angle of the other’s jaw. And then, as the fickle audience, with swift change of sympathy, cheered him on, he buried his left in Mr. Billson’s stomach on the exact spot where the well-dressed man wears the third button of his waistcoat.
Of all human experiences this of being smitten in this precise locality is the least agreeable. Battling Billson drooped like a stricken flower, settled slowly down, and spread himself out. He lay peacefully on his back with outstretched arms like a man floating in smooth water. His day’s work was done.
A wailing cry rose above the din of excited patrons of sport endeavouring to explain to their neighbours how it had all happened. It was the voice of Ukridge mourning over his dead.
At half-past eleven that night, as I was preparing for bed, a drooping figure entered my room. I mixed a silent, sympathetic Scotch and soda, and for awhile no word was spoken.
“How is the poor fellow?” I asked at length.
“He’s all right,” said Ukridge, listlessly. “I left him eating fish and chips at a coffee-stall.”
“Bad luck his getting pipped on the post like that.”
“Bad luck!” boomed Ukridge, throwing off his lethargy with a vigour that spoke of mental anguish. “What do you mean, bad luck? It was just dam’ bone-headedness. Upon my Sam, it’s a little hard. I invest vast sums in this man, I support him in luxury for two weeks, asking nothing of him in return except to sail in and knock somebody’s head off, which he could have done in two minutes if he had liked, and he lets me down purely and simply because the other fellow told him that he had been up all night looking after his wife who had burned her hand at the jam factory. Inferanal sentimentalism!”
“Does him credit,” I argued.
“Bah!”
“Kind hearts,” I urged, “are more than coronets.”
“Who the devil wants a pugilist to have a kind heart? What’s the use of this man Billson being able to knock out an elephant if he’s afflicted with this damned maudlin mushiness? Who ever heard of a mushy pugilist? It’s the wrong spirit. It doesn’t make for success.”
“It’s a handicap, of course,” I admitted.
“What guarantee have I,” demanded Ukridge, “that if I go to enormous trouble and expense getting him another match, he won’t turn aside and brush away a silent tear in the first round because he’s heard that the blighter’s wife has got an ingrowing toenail?”
“You could match him only against bachelors.”
“Yes, and the first bachelor he met would draw him into a corner and tell him his aunt was down with whooping-cough, and the chump would heave a sigh and stick his chin out to be walloped. A fellow’s got no business to have red hair if he isn’t going to live up to it. And yet,” said Ukridge, wistfully, “I’ve seen that man—it was in a dance-hall at Naples—I’ve seen him take on at least eleven Italians simultaneously. But then, one of them had stuck a knife about three inches into his leg. He seems to need something like that to give him ambition.”
“I don’t see how you are going to arrange to have him knifed just before each fight.”
“No,” said Ukridge, mournfully.
“What are you going to do about his future? Have you any plans?”
“Nothing definite. My aunt was looking for a companion to attend to her correspondence and take care of the canary last time I saw her. I might try to get the job for him.”
And with a horrid, mirthless laugh Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge borrowed five shillings and passed out into the night.
I did not see Ukridge for the next few days, but I had news of him from our mutual friend George Tupper, whom I met prancing in uplifted mood down Whitehall.
“I say,” said George Tupper without preamble, and with a sort of dazed fervour, “they’ve given me an under-secretaryship.”
I pressed his hand. I would have slapped him on the back, but one does not slap the backs of eminent Foreign Office officials in Whitehall in broad daylight, even if one has been at school with them.
“Congratulations,” I said. “There is no one whom I would more gladly see under-secretarying. I heard rumours of this from Ukridge.”
“Oh, yes, I remember I told him it might be coming off. Good old Ukridge! I met him just now and told him the news, and he was delighted.”
“How much did he touch you for?”
“Eh? Oh, only five pounds. Till Saturday. He expects to have a lot of money by then.”
“Did you ever know the time when Ukridge didn’t expect to have a lot of money?”
“I want you and Ukridge to come and have a bit of dinner with me to celebrate. How would Wednesday suit you?”
“Splendidly.”
“Seven-thirty at the Regent Grill, then. Will you tell Ukridge?”
“I don’t know where he’s got to. I haven’t seen him for nearly a week. Did he tell you where he was?”
“Out at some place at Barnes. What was the name of it?”
“The White Hart?”
“That’s it.”
“Tell me,” I said, “how did he seem? Cheerful?”
“Very. Why?”
“The last time I saw him he was thinking of giving up the struggle. He had had reverses.”
I proceeded to the White Hart immediately after lunch. The fact that Ukridge was still at that hostelry and had regained his usual sunny outlook on life seemed to point to the fact that the clouds enveloping the future of Mr. Billson had cleared away, and that the latter’s hat was still in the ring. That this was so was made clear to me directly I arrived. Enquiring for my old friend, I was directed to an upper room, from which, as I approached, there came a peculiar thudding noise. It was caused, as I perceived on opening the door, by Mr. Billson. Clad in flannel trousers and a sweater, he was earnestly pounding a large leather object suspended from a wooden platform. His manager, seated on a soap-box in a corner, regarded him the while with affectionate proprietorship.
“Hallo, old horse!” said Ukridge, rising as I entered. “Glad to see you.”
The din of Mr. Billson’s bag-punching, from which my arrival had not caused him to desist, was such as to render conversation difficult. We moved to the quieter retreat of the bar downstairs, where I informed Ukridge of the under-secretary’s invitation.
“I’ll be there,” said Ukridge. “There’s one thing about good old Billson, you can trust him not to break training if you take your eye off him. And, of course, he realises that this is a big thing. It’ll be the making of him.”
“Your aunt is considering engaging him, then?”