‘Tzee – z – z.’
The fingers of the wireless operator on the packet Miranda bound for Ostend moved swiftly as they jotted down the messages of the buzzing mosquito-swarms.
One of them made him laugh.
‘The Old Man’d better have this, I suppose,’ he said.
The Old Man scratched his head when he read and rang a little bell for the steward. The steward ran down to the little round office where the purser was counting out his money and checking it before he locked it away for the night. On receiving the Old Man’s message, the purser put the money quickly into the safe, picked up the passenger list and departed aft. There was a short consultation, and the bell was rung again – this time to summon the head steward.
‘Tzee – z-z – tzeez-z-z – tzee – tzee – z – tzee.’
All down the Channel, all over the North Sea, up to the Mersey Docks, out into the Atlantic soared the busy mosquito-swarms. In ship after ship the wireless operator sent his message to the captain, the captain sent for the purser, the purser sent for the head steward and the head steward called his staff about him. Huge liners, little packets, destroyers, sumptuous private yachts – every floating thing that carried aerials – every port in England, France, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, every police centre that could interpret the mosquito message, heard, between laughter and excitement, the tale of Mr Budd’s betrayal. Two Boy Scouts at Croydon, practising their Morse with a home-made valve set, decoded it laboriously into an exercise book.
‘Cripes,’ said Jim to George, ‘what a joke? D’you think they’ll get the beggar?’
The Miranda docked at Ostend at 7 a.m. A man burst hurriedly into the cabin where the wireless operator was just taking off his headphones.
‘Here!’ he cried; ‘this is to go. There’s something up and the Old Man’s sent over for the police. The Consul’s coming on board.’
The wireless operator groaned, and switched on his valves.
‘Tzee – z – tzee –’ a message to the English police.
‘Man on board answering to description. Ticket booked name of Watson. Has locked himself in cabin and refuses to come out. Insists on having hairdresser sent out to him. Have communicated Ostend police. Await instructions.’
The Old Man with sharp words and authoritative gestures cleared a way through the excited little knot of people gathered about First Class Cabin No. 36. Several passengers had got wind of ‘something up’. Magnificently he hearded them away to the gangway with their bags and suitcases. Sternly he bade the stewards and the boy, who stood gaping with his hands full of breakfast dishes, to stand away from the door. Terribly he commanded them to hold their tongues. Four or five sailors stood watchfully at his side. In the restored silence, the passenger in No. 36 could be heard pacing up and down the narrow cabin, moving things, clattering, splashing water.
Presently came steps overhead. Somebody arrived, with a message. The Old Man nodded. Six pairs of Belgian police boots came tip-toeing down the companion. The Old Man glanced at the official paper held out to him and nodded again.
‘Ready?’
‘Yes.’
The Old Man knocked at the door of No. 36.
‘Who it is?’ cried a harsh, sharp voice.
‘The barber is here, sir, that you sent for.’
‘Ah!!’ There was relief in the tone. ‘Send him in alone, if you please. I – I have had an accident.’
‘Yes, sir.’
At the sound of the bolt being cautiously withdrawn, the Old Man stepped forward. The door opened a chink, and was slammed to again, but the Old Man’s boot was firmly wedged against the jamb. The policemen surged forward. There was a yelp and a shot which smashed harmlessly through the window of the first-class saloon, and the passenger was brought out.
‘Strike me pink!’ shrieked the boy, ‘strike me pink if he ain’t gone green in the night!’
Green!!
Not for nothing had Mr Budd studied the intricate mutual reactions of chemical dyes. In the pride of his knowledge he had set a mark on his man, to mark him out from all the billions of this overpopulated world. Was there a port in all Christendom where a murderer might slip away, with every hair on him green as a parrot – green moustache, green eyebrows, and that thick, springing shock of hair, vivid, flaring mid-summer green?
Mr Budd got his £500. The Evening Messenger published the full story of his great betrayal. He trembled, fearing this sinister fame. Surely no one would ever come to him again.
On the next morning an enormous blue limousine rolled up to his door, to the immense admiration of Wilton Street. A lady, magnificent in musquash and diamonds, swept into the saloon.
‘You are Mr Budd, aren’t you?’ she cried. ‘The great Mr Budd? Isn’t it too wonderful? And now, dear Mr Budd, you must do me a favour. You must dye my hair green, at once. Now. I want to be able to say I’m the very first to be done by you. I’m the Duchess of Winchester, and that awful Melcaster woman is chasing me down the street – the cat!’
If you want it done, I can give you the number of Mr Budd’s parlours in Bond Street. But I understand it is a terribly expensive process.
BLOOD SACRIFICE
If things went on at this rate, John Scales would be a very rich man. Already he was a man to be envied, as any ignoramus might guess who passed the King’s Theatre after 8 o’clock. Old Florrie, who had sat for so many years on the corner with her little tray of matches, could have given more than a guess, for what she didn’t know about the King’s was hardly worth knowing. When she had ceased to adorn its boards (thanks to a dreadful accident with a careless match and gauze draperies, that had left her with a scarred face and a withered arm) she had taken her stand near the theatre for old sake’s sake, and she watched over its fortunes, still, like a mother. She knew, none better, how much money it held when it was playing to capacity, what its salary list was like, how much of its earnings went in permanent charges, and what the author’s share of the box-office receipts was likely to amount to. Besides, everybody who went in or out by the stage-door came and had a word with Florrie. She shared good times and bad at the King’s. She had lamented over lean days caused by slumps and talkie competition, shaken her head over perilous experiments into highbrow tragedy, waxed tearful and indignant over the disastrous period (now happily past) of the Scorer-Bitterby management, which had ended in a scandal, rejoiced when the energetic Mr Garrick Drury, launching out into management after his tremendous triumph in the name-part of The Wistful Harlequin, had taken the old house over, reconditioned it inside and out (incidentally squeezing two more rows into the reconstructed pit) and voiced his optimistic determination to break the run of ill-luck; and since then she had watched its steady soaring into prosperity on the well-tried wings of old-fashioned adventure and romance. Mr Garrick Drury (Somerset House knew him as Obadiah Potts, but he was none the less good-looking for that) was an actor-manager of the sort Florrie understood; he followed his calling in the good old way, building his successes about his own glamorous personality, talking no nonsense about new schools of dramatic thought, and paying only lip-service to ‘team-work’. He had had the luck to embark on his managerial career at a moment when the public had grown tired of gloomy Slav tragedies of repressed husbands, and human documents about drink and diseases, and was (in its own incoherent way) clamouring for a good, romantic story to cry about, with a romantic hero suffering torments of self-sacrifice through two-and-three-quarter acts and getting the girl in the last ten minutes. Mr Drury (forty-two in the daylight, thirty-five in the lamplight and twenty-five or what you will in a blond wig and the spotlight) was well fitted by nature to acquire girls in this sacrificial manner, and had learnt the trick of so lacing nineteenth-century sentiment with twentieth-century nonchalance that the mixture went to the heads equally of Joan who worked in the office and Aunt Mabel up from the country.
And since Mr Drury, leaping nightly from his Rolls saloon with that nervous and youthful alacrity th
at had been his most engaging asset for the past twenty years, always had time to bestow at least a smile and a friendly word on old Florrie, he affected her head and heart as much as anybody else’s. Nobody was more delighted than Florrie to know that he had again found a winner in Bitter Laurel, now sweeping on to its 100th performance. Night by night she saluted with a satisfied chuckle each board as it appeared: ‘Pit Full’, ‘Gallery Full’, ‘Dress Circle Full’, ‘Upper Circle Full’, ‘Stalls Full’, ‘Standing Room Only’, ‘House Full’. Set to run for ever, it was, and the faces that went in by the stage door looked merry and prosperous, as Florrie liked to see them.
As for the young man who had provided the raw material out of which Mr Drury had built up this glittering monument of success, if he wasn’t pleased, thought Florrie, he ought to be. Not that, in the ordinary way, one thought much about the author of a play – unless, of course, it was Shakespeare, who was different; compared with the cast, he was of small importance and rarely seen. But Mr Drury had one day arrived arm-in-arm with a sulky-looking and ill-dressed youth whom he had introduced to Florrie, saying in his fine, generous way: ‘Here, John, you must know Florrie. She’s our mascot – we couldn’t get on without her. Florrie, this is Mr Scales, whose new play’s going to make all our fortunes.’ Mr Drury was never mistaken about plays; he had the golden touch. Certainly, in the last three months, Mr Scales, though still sulky-looking, had become much better dressed.
On this particular night – Saturday, 15th April, when Bitter Laurel was giving its 96th performance to a full house after a packed matinée – Mr Scales and Mr Drury arrived together, in evening dress and, Florrie noted with concern, rather late. Mr Drury would have to hurry, and it was tiresome of Mr Scales to detain him, as he did, by arguing and expostulating upon the threshold. Not that Mr Drury seemed put out. He was smiling (his smile, one-sided and slightly elfin in quality, was famous), and at last he said, with his hand (Mr Drury’s expressive hands were renowned) affectionately upon Mr Scales’s shoulder, ‘Sorry, old boy, can’t stop now. Curtain must go up, you know. Come round and see me after the show – I’ll have those fellows there.’ Then he vanished, still smiling the elfin smile and waving the expressive hand; and Mr Scales, after hesitating a moment, had turned away and came down past Florrie’s corner. He seemed to be still sulky and rather preoccupied, but, looking up, caught sight of Florrie and grinned at her. There was nothing elfin about Mr Scales’s smile, but it improved his face very much.
‘Well, Florrie,’ said Mr Scales, ‘we seem to be doing pretty well, financially speaking, don’t we?’
Florrie eagerly agreed. ‘But there,’ she observed, ‘we’re getting used to that. Mr Drury’s a wonderful man. It doesn’t matter what he’s in, they all come to see him. Of course,’ she added, remembering that this might not sound very kind, ‘he’s very clever at picking the right play.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Scales. ‘The play. I suppose the play has something to do with it. Not much, but something. Have you seen the play, Florrie?’
Yes, indeed, Florrie had. Mr Drury was so kind, he always remembered to give Florrie a pass early on in the run, even if the house was ever so full.
‘What did you think of it?’ enquired Mr Scales,
‘I thought it was lovely,’ said Florrie. ‘I cried ever so. When he came back with only one arm and found his fiancée gone to the bad at a cocktail parry—’
‘Just so,’ said Mr Scales.
‘And the scene on the Embankment – lovely, I thought that was, when he rolls up his old army coat and says to the bobby, “I will rest on my laurels” – that was a beautiful curtain line you gave him there, Mr Scales. And the way he put it over—’
‘Yes, rather,’ said Mr Scales. ‘There’s nobody like Drury for putting over that kind of a line.’
‘And when she came back to him and he wouldn’t have her any more and then Lady Sylvia took him up and fell in love with him—’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Scales. ‘You found that part moving?’
‘Romantic,’ said Florrie. ‘And the scene between the two girls – that was splendid. All worked-up, it made you feel. And then in the end, when he took the one he really loved after all—’
‘Sure-fire, isn’t it?’ said Mr Scales. ‘Goes straight to the heart. I’m glad you think so, Florrie. Because, of course, quite apart from anything else, it’s very good box-office.’
‘I believe you,’ said Florrie. ‘Your first play, isn’t it? You’re lucky to have it taken by Mr Drury.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Scales, ‘I owe him a lot. Everybody says so, and it must be true. There are two fat gentlemen in astrakhan coats coming along tonight to settle about the film-rights. I’m a made man, Florrie, and that’s always pleasant, particularly after five or six years of living hand-to-mouth. No fun in not having enough to eat, is there?’
‘That there isn’t,’ said Florrie, who knew all about it. ‘I’m ever so glad your luck’s turned at last, dearie.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Scales. ‘Have something to drink the health of the play.’ He fumbled in his breast-pocket. ‘Here you are. A green one and a brown one. Thirty bob. Thirty pieces of silver. Spend it on something you fancy, Florrie. It’s the price of blood.’
‘What a thing to say!’ exclaimed Florrie. ‘But you writing gentlemen will have a bit of a joke. And I know poor Mr Milling, who wrote the book for Pussycat, Pussycat and The Lipstick Girl always used to say he sweated blood over every one of ’em.’
A nice young gentleman, thought Florrie, as Mr Scales passed on, but queer and, perhaps, a little bit difficult in his temper, for them that had to live with him. He had spoken very nicely about Mr Drury, but there had been a moment when she had fancied that he was (as they said) registering sarcasm. And she didn’t quite like that joke about the thirty pieces of silver – that was New Testament, and New Testament (unlike Old) was blasphemous. It was like the difference between saying, ‘Oh, God!’ (which nobody minded) and ‘Oh, Christ!’ (which Florrie had never held with). Still, people said all kinds of things nowadays, and thirty bob was thirty bob; it was very kind of Mr Scales.
Mr John Scales, slouching along Shaftesbury Avenue and wondering how he was going to put in the next three hours or so, encountered a friend just turning out of Wardour Street. The friend was a tall, thin young man, with a shabby overcoat and a face, under a dilapidated soft hat, like a hungry hawk’s. There was a girl with him.
‘Hullo, Mollie!’ said Scales. ‘Hullo, Sheridan!’
‘Hullo!’ said Sheridan. ‘Look who’s here! The great man himself. London’s rising dramatist. Sweet Scales of Old Drury.’
‘Cut it out,’ said Scales.
‘Your show seems to be booming,’ went on Sheridan. ‘Congratulations. On the boom, I mean.’
‘God!’ said Scales, ‘have you seen it? I did send you tickets.’
‘You did – it was kind of you to think of us amid your busy life. We saw the show. In these bargain-basement days, you’ve managed to sell your soul in a pretty good market.’
‘See here, Sheridan – it wasn’t my fault. I’m just as sick as you are. Sicker. But like a fool I signed the contract without a controlling clause, and by the time Drury and his producer had finished mucking the script about—’
‘He didn’t sell himself,’ said the girl, ‘he was took advantage of, your worship.’
‘Pity,’ said Sheridan. ‘It was a good play – but he done her wrong. But,’ he added, glancing at Scales, ‘I take it you drink the champagne that she sends you. You’re looking prosperous.’
‘Well,’ said Scales, ‘what do you expect me to do? Return the cheque with thanks?’
‘Good lord, no,’ said Sheridan. ‘It’s all right. Nobody’s grudging you your luck.’
‘It’s something, after all,’ said Scales defensively, ‘to get one’s foot in at all. One can’t always look a gift horse in the mouth.’
‘No,’ said Sheridan. ‘Good lord, I know that. Only I
’m afraid you’ll find this thing hangs round your neck a bit if you want to go back to your own line. You know what the public is – it likes to get what it expects. Once you’ve made a name for sob-stuff, you’re labelled for good – or bad.’
‘I know. Hell. Can’t do anything about it, though. Come and have a drink.’
But the others had an appointment to keep, and passed on their way. The encounter was typical. Damnation, thought Scales, savagely, turning in to the Criterion Bar, wasn’t it enough to have had your decent play cut about and turned into the sort of thing that made you retch to listen to it, without your friends supposing you had acquiesced in the mutilation for the sake of making money?
He had been a little worried when he knew that George Philpotts (kindly, officious George, who always knew everybody) had sent Bitter Laurel to Drury. The very last management he himself would have selected; but also the very last management that would be likely to take so cynical and disillusioned a play. Miraculously, however, Drury had expressed himself as ‘dead keen’ about it. There had been an interview with Drury, and Drury, damn his expressive eyes, had – yes, one had to admit it – Drury had ‘put himself across’ with great success. He had been flattering, he had been charming. Scales had succumbed, as night by night pit and stalls and dress circle succumbed to the gracious manner and the elfin smile. ‘A grand piece – grand situations,’ Garrick Drury had said. ‘Of course, here and there it will need a little tidying up in production.’ Scales said modestly that he expected that – he knew very little about writing for the stage – he was a novelist – he was quite ready to agree to alterations, provided, naturally, nothing was done to upset the artistic unity of the thing. Mr Garrick Drury was pained by the suggestion. As an artist himself, he should, of course, allow nothing inartistic to be done. Scales, overcome by Drury’s manner, and by a flood of technicalities about sets and lighting and costing and casting poured out upon him by the producer, who was present at the interview, signed a contract giving the author a very handsome share of the royalties, and hardly noticed that he had left the management with full power to make any ‘reasonable’ alterations to fit the play for production.
In the Teeth of the Evidence Page 18
