The Merry Marauders

by Arthur J. Rees

  “You’ll scarcely believe me,” said Mr. Baker, with some indignation; “but I’d just got as far as ‘I’m very sorry,’ when that unmanly foreigner burst into tears and cries:

  ‘Ah, don’ta do it to me! Don’ta do it to me! They all do it to me.’

  “It took me some time to convince him that my word was as good security as a promise to pay by the Bank of England, but eventually we parted good friends. But, do you know, that, through a series of unfortuitous events, too long to relate here, it was five years before I was able to remit that unfortunate Dago his money. When I did send it to him I received the most touching letter of acknowledgment; ill-spelt, with small i’s for capital I’s, and written on a sheet of paper that smelt of fried fish, but the letter of a man. He had never doubted me, he wrote, and never would have, if I had kept him waiting fifty years for his money. I carried that letter about for years, in the cover of my sainted grandmother’s bible, till one day, after reading it in an hotel commercial room, I laid it down while I went into the bar, and when I returned some unhallowed miscreant had used it to light his pipe. Say what you like about old Dan Baker, so long as you do not impugn his honesty, for if you do you leave me poor indeed,” concluded Mr. Baker, not without dignity.

  I expressed regret for having wounded his feelings, and he accepted my apology in the handsomest spirit, remarking that any man in a time of misfortune was liable to regard the rest of his fellows with a jaundiced eye. In order, no doubt, to safeguard me from making the same error in his case again, he related several other instances illustrative of his stubborn honesty, and thus passed the hours till we reached Rotorua.

  That residential centre of the thermal zone—as Rotorua is so aptly described in the Government guide-book—with its business streets, churches and stores, electric light and public buildings, the whole impregnated with a smell like that of sulphur matches, seemed to me like a small London after the little rural townships we had been touring, and my natural optimism reasserted itself after the depressing events of the last few days, as I pictured a week’s season of packed houses in a theatre that held £80, at popular prices. After seeing the company to one of the smaller hotels, I took a stroll round the town, while Barney went to see his friend, the lessee of the theatre. Mr. Baker accompanied me in order to point out what a good place it was for billing. As we returned, we came across a large open-air stadium in course of erection on a vacant allotment, fronting the principal street. While we were speculating what it was being built for, Barney came hurrying across to us. His face was a mask of funereal gloom, and he conveyed the reason in a sentence:

  “The theatre’s been closed by the Board of Health for alterations!”

  This last crushing blow of adversity made me feel sick, but I fought down the feeling, and tried to think what was best to be done. “Isn’t there a hall?” I asked.

  “Only one public hall,” replied Barney; “and a temperance conference is meeting in that day and night for the next week.”

  “I wonder who’s putting up this stadium?” queried Mr. Baker. “It would make a rattling good show place if we could get it.”

  “Why, so it would!” exclaimed Barney, brightening up a little. Then his face fell again. “It’s probably being put up for some travelling show, so we’re shot with two barrels.”

  “It’s not for a travelling show, because there’s no bills out,” decisively replied Mr. Baker.

  “We’ll soon find out from one of the workmen,” said Barney. “That looks like the foreman in charge—that fellow bossing round—I’ll ask him. Why, good heavens! It’s Charlie Adams.”

  “As I live, it is!” ejaculated Mr. Baker, in a tone of stupefaction, as Barney darted towards the man in charge. “Now, what the dickens is he doing here?”

  “Who is Charlie Adams?” I asked.

  Mr. Baker turned a pitying eye on me. “What, do you mean to tell me that you’ve never heard of Charlie Adams? Charlie Adams is at once the glory and the disgrace of the provincial theatrical profession of New Zealand. He hasn’t even a nodding acquaintance with the honesty that has been my life-long companion—in fact, while I couldn’t be dishonest if I tried, Charlie Adams wouldn’t be honest if he could. He has a pachydermatous hide and no moral sense, wedded to a resourcefulness and enterprise that Napoleon would have envied, but he takes you down in such a kindly genial way that you cannot help forgiving him. I can tell you a story about Charlie Adams and a horse and a bag of wheat which reveals him as a master-mind of Machiavellian manipulation!”

  The approach of the subject of these encomiums, with Barney, put a stop to the relation of the anecdote in question. Mr. Adams proved to be a fine-looking man of middle age, with a manner so captivating and a glance so open that I found it difficult to believe what Mr. Baker said about his having no moral sense. He would have met the Merry Marauders at the station, he courteously assured me, but our advance man had not got our bills out, so he didn’t know we were coming. When did we open?

  “I didn’t come in advance, so that’s why there are no bills out,” explained Mr. Baker, taking the reply into his own mouth. “The fact is, we’re a bit ahead of our dates, so we have plenty of time for bills. We did so well at Whangatea that we could afford to take a little holiday, which we all needed very much, after playing to crowded houses for a fortnight of the most phenomenally successful business I have ever seen in my forty years’ experience of the New Zealand ‘smalls!’ But what are you doing in Rotorua?”

  “I brought a black giantess through—a splendid country attraction, as you know, Dan—expecting to coin money during the sports week here, but the foolish woman threw away Providence’s munificent gift to her by marrying a local butcher after a few hours’ acquaintance, and can now be seen daily for nothing chopping up meat in his shop, when she might easily have got a shilling for a peep in a town like this under my management. No more giantesses for me.”

  “Was it the giantess you were putting up the stadium for?” asked Barney.

  “Not in your life, Barney,” replied Mr. Adams. “The giantess is a fairly big woman, but she’s not that big. No; the stadium represents a kind of partnership between myself and some of the worthy tradespeople of this town. I supply the enterprise and brains; they furnish the labour and material.”

  “What about capital?” said Barney.

  “They supply the capital also, or, rather, credit—the words are synonymous. It happened like this. When that confounded giantess left me for the butcher’s shop, I was absolutely ‘a broker,’ with not a solitary stiver to my name. Moreover, I was so far from my base that I resembled Napoleon on the road to Moscow—to retreat was as fatal as to advance, though I could have done with a cash advance. As that was not obtainable, I had to draw on the bank that has never failed me yet: my brains. An idea came into my head when I saw this vacant allotment. I grasped its possibilities in a moment, and got to work. I successfully interviewed the largest firm of contractors in the town, the timber yard fellows, some navvies who were carousing at the hotel after finishing a job on the railway line, and others of the working classes necessary to my scheme. Next morning a small army of workmen were engaged on the allotment under my directions, digging, wheeling, sawing, hammering, and carrying planks. Before nightfall the skeleton of the stadium was in place—a monument to my brains and Rotorua industry. Next morning came the first check. An officer of the confounded Government that owns this town waited on me to demand my authority for erecting a building on Government land. I had none, so I had to sign an agreement to pay £5 for a week’s tenancy by the following day, or vacate the land. There was no dodging that promise, so I had to find the money, which I did by advertising for a young man to learn the theatrical profession. I inserted the advertisement in the little rag they call a newspaper in this town, and,—would you believe me?—the newspaper people made more fuss about trusting me with a paltry shilling advertisement than the contractor did about starting this job. However, the trouble was worth it, fo
r I received three replies. The first one I interviewed was so impressed with the dazzling future I painted for him that he fairly insisted on having the job. I asked him could he find a ten pounds guarantee? I pointed out to him that he would be in a very responsible position in my employ, and it was necessary that I should have some pecuniary safeguard of my interests. He replied that he hadn’t such a sum on him, but that he would go home and get it, if I promised not to see the other applicants till he returned. I promised to hold open the position that long, and he covered the two miles to his home and back in half an hour. I heard his return before I saw him, by the rattling of the silver—he brought the ten pounds all in silver—in his pockets, which he held with both hands as he ran to prevent it tumbling out. Heavens! How it galls me to think that this country must be full of men like him who never ‘part’ simply because they are not discovered. Pigeons who go to their graves unplucked.”

  Mr. Adams remained silent for some moments, either lost in a dream of what might have been, or engaged in a mental calculation of the number of pigeons (from his point of view) to the square mile in New Zealand. He sighed deeply once or twice before resuming his story:

  “Strangely enough, this particular fool, after parting with his money so soon, displayed a belated sign of common sense when he read the agreement I had drawn up for his signature. And yet, it was a very simple document, setting forth in unvarnished words my pledge to pay him £2 per week as salary, on condition that he did whatever I directed him to do. ‘I don’t think, after all, that I’m the kind of man you’re looking for,’ he said timidly, after spelling through the agreement with the aid of a dirty forefinger. I assured him he was wrong, inasmuch as he was the kind of man I had been looking for during the last fifteen years. On receiving this emphatic assurance he signed without further protest, and I immediately set him to work digging post-holes, first sacking a nine-shillings-a-day navvy to make room for him. Then I went and paid for my tenancy, and here I am in undisputed possession.”

  “What show are you putting into the place?” Mr. Baker asked.

  “Well, that’s just the one thing that hasn’t been fixed up yet,” replied Mr. Adams, with a laugh. “But it’s going to be now. I was so absorbed in surmounting the obstacles in the way of getting the building up that it didn’t occur to me till this morning that I had no show to put in it now it was up. But as soon as I heard from Barney that you fellows had struck the town, I was relieved of any little anxiety on that score. I was just coming to hunt you up if you hadn’t dropped across me.”

  Here was a happy and providential solution of the Merry Marauders’ difficulties! My surprise and joy at this unexpected relief actually deprived me of the power of speech for the moment.

  “Here I am with a theatre and no show,” continued Mr. Adams. “Here you are with a show, but no theatre. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us join forces and share profits.”

  “Half shares isn’t a fair deal, Charlie,” protested Barney; “and you know it isn’t. It is true we haven’t got a theatre, but your stadium isn’t the only other place of amusement in the town—don’t forget that. As a matter of fact we are in negotiation for a hall now.”

  “God bless my soul, the boy is actually trying to work a bluff on me!” exclaimed Mr. Adams, in a tone of amused wonder; “and such a crude bluff, too! Why, Barney, of course I knew you hadn’t any trumps in your hand before I showed you mine. You came in here two days’ ahead of your time, with nobody in front and no bills out. Therefore, you must have come a cropper at Whangatea, and left a sorrowing landlord behind you. And you’ve jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, by coming here when the theatre’s closed up and there’s not a hall to be had for love or money. I really shall get angry with you, Barney, if you try any more of your baby bluff, which is’nt calculated to cheat a barrel organ monkey out of a peanut.”

  I thought it time to take a hand in the conversation at this stage, which I did by accepting Mr. Adams’s offer. It was arranged that the Merry Marauders should play a five nights’ season in Mr. Adams’s stadium, for a half share of the gross receipts. A proposal by Barney that this agreement should be put in writing was airily waived aside by Mr. Adams.

  “My bond is no better than my word,” he said, “and if I wanted to take you down you wouldn’t be any better off for a few lines in writing. But dog doesn’t eat dog. I admit I have taken down a few fools in my time, and hoped to do a few more before I die, but that’s a different thing. Life is a game in which the legs of the multitude are pulled by a few, and fools are created in myriads to work so that wise men may enjoy. After all, I’m but a humble practitioner of an art successfully plied by politicians and preachers, who persuade the fools to do the hard work of the world without doing any themselves. I’m sure it’s all for the best. I defy anybody to say, however, that I ever took down a brother of the profession.”

  “I will do you the justice, Charlie,” remarked Mr. Baker, in a dignified tone, “to support that statement. So far as I know, you never have.”

  “No, and I never will,” replied Mr. Adams, “till the public cow runs dry. Now that everything is settled you fellows had better get your bills out as soon as possible, and open to-morrow night. This place will be finished by the morning, providing everything goes well. I’m a bit frightened about the head plumber though, for he has been sulking ever since I was compelled to refuse him a slight advance. It would be particularly awkward if he turned us down before the lighting is fixed.”

  “Then why not give him his small advance?” I hazarded.

  Mr. Adams laughed. “For the best of all reasons—I haven’t got a bean in the world.”

  It seemed impossible to doubt him, yet I could not help remembering that, according to his own story, he had received £10 the day before when he required only half of that sum. Barney clothed this doubt for me in the most forcible words by asking Mr. Adams what he had done with the balance of the tenner he had rooked from the rustic.

  It was with a look of mingled surprise and scorn that Mr. Adams answered the question. “If you had any sense left, Barney,” he said, “you would have known that the balance of that much-needed windfall went in establishing my reputation firmly in this town. Look at those navvies toiling so industriously. Do you think they would be working like that if they hadn’t been drunk at my expense last night? They would do anything in the world for me, those fellows. But the thing at the present moment is to smooth over the plumber. Lend me a shilling, Barney, my son, and I’ll go and invite him to have a drink.”

  After his frankness to us we had not much difficulty in admitting that the Merry Marauders had not a shilling between them, but Barney redeemed us from utter beggary by the discovery of a battered sixpence in his waistcoat pocket. Mr. Adams gladly accepted the coin, remarking that it was fortunate that Rotorua was one of the few towns in New Zealand where threepenny beers were obtainable. “Though if that plumber calls for a sixpenny drink I’m a goner,” he added, as he departed to allay the man’s suspicions.

  We did not wait to hear how he succeeded, for Barney assured me that we could consider the plumber’s doubts completely removed when Charlie Adams had the job in hand, so we set about arranging for our own performance. By night-time we had the town well billed, and I went to bed satisfied, by the attention the bills attracted, that we had a reasonable prospect of a good house the following evening.

  Next morning Mr. Adams, debonnair and well-groomed, with a flower in his button-hole, burst into my room before I was up. “Met another fool last night!” he gaily announced. “He’s putting in £50 to run a baby show with me at the stadium. I’ve got the bills out already. Pretty smart work, eh? The thing is bound to coin money with all the farmers and their families in town for show week. We’ll open the day of your last night, and I want you to announce it from the stage every night of your season.”

  “But you cannot possibly hold a baby show and a theatrical show in the same building at the same time,” I objec
ted.

  “Cast your eye over the bill,” said Mr. Adams, unfolding a gaudy-coloured streamer, and indicating a paragraph in large black lettering at the foot, which read:

  ‘In accordance with the truest principles of humanity and the scientific treatment of children, and knowing full well the inestimable value of child life in a young country like New Zealand, where the crying need is population, the management has decided, in spite of the pecuniary loss thereby entailed, not to open the Baby Show at night. This wise and humane provision will be strictly adhered to.’

  “That’s a good idea,” said Mr. Adams, when I had finished the perusal. “It appeals to our common humanity. So you see, the show won’t clash with yours. Now I must go. I heard one of the grocers here complaining yesterday that a large quantity of some patent baby food had gone mouldy on him, and I want to try and buy it up cheap for consolation prizes. We shall not quarrel about the price, however. I can afford to stretch a point on that head, seeing that I am not likely ever to pay for the stuff.”

  I did not set eyes on Mr. Adams again till the evening, when he came down to the stadium just before the curtain went up on the first act of The Unkissed Bride. He was accompanied by a meagre, elderly man of pimpled aspect, who looked a cross between a Methodist lay preacher and an undertaker. Mr. Adams introduced him as Mr. Bodger, and it appeared that he was the partner in the baby show venture.