Smiling Willie and the Tiger

by John Harris

  ‘You’d think he didn’t trust me,’ Fish said. Once again the situation seemed to call for something big.

  He was peering at a battered copy of Lightning Charlie, the Terror of Texas on his bed in the lodging house. He wasn’t reading, however, and after a while he put the magazine down.

  ‘That bastard he works for,’ he said. ‘He buys diamonds. He keeps his klips in a safe in that bungalow of his at Reinhart. He must be worth a fortune.’

  Willie lifted his eyebrows.

  ‘Good safe, I’m told,’ Fish went on. ‘New. Got it from England.’

  Willie began to clean his nails with a penknife. ‘Where’d you hear that?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Heard the bastard jawing in the bar. Boasting.’ Fish lay back, his hands behind his head.

  ‘Pity to leave it lying around,’ Willie observed.

  Fish nodded. ‘Dynamite’d do it.’

  ‘Know anything about it?’

  ‘Not a goddam thing.’

  They sat in silence for some time, then Willie lifted his head.

  ‘Always the Tiger,’ he pointed out.

  The Tiger was easier to include than they’d expected. The way he could be persuaded into activities of a dubious nature always troubled him and he had come to the reluctant conclusion that he had a latent criminal streak in him. He had even found it possible more than once to steam open Mendel’s sealed envelopes and extract insignificant chips to appease Pansy.

  She was being difficult these days. Not only about the buried pay, but also because the urge to be made an honest woman had been troubling her again. Since their hasty departure from Winifred the matter had been forgotten but, with a settled existence in the small house he’d rented from a disappointed diamond buyer in Paradise, domesticity seemed to have hit her again.

  The Tiger eyed her dubiously. Women were funny. Security was the only thing they thought of. They’d lie for it, cheat for it, thieve for it, even marry for it.

  ‘Why do you want to be married particularly?’ His answers to her questions always followed the same line. ‘It’s just the same, married or unmarried.’

  ‘What happens to me if anything happens to you?’ Pansy said indignantly.

  ‘I expect you’ll take up with some other chap.’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’ Pansy waved her hand round the sparse rooms they occupied and the battered furniture the Tiger had provided. ‘None of this would be mine. Your family could claim every bit of it.’

  ‘My family’s three thousand miles away,’ the Tiger pointed out placidly, as though it were a triumph of skill and management. ‘And they gave me up long since.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Pansy was thinking less of her title to the share of the forty-seven thousand pounds for once than to the brief moment of glory every girl desired, and she was adamant. ‘I want to be married. In white…’

  ‘You’re supposed to be a virgin to be married in white.’

  ‘–in white.’ Pansy insisted, her eyes misty and faraway. ‘With presents and a reception and a service and bridesmaids and a cake and so on. It’d please Aunt Poll. She’s always going on about us.’

  The Tiger stared at her gloomily. He was quite content to go on living in unmarried bliss because he suspected marriage gave a girl claims on a man, and he’d begun to notice lately that wives – even unmarried wives – sometimes seemed to need a lot of money and Mendel wasn’t noted for his generosity.

  Nevertheless, there was always the uncomfortable thought that if he dropped Pansy she would undoubtedly take up with Fish and there was something that appealed to the Tiger about keeping her out of his clutches. Spiriting her away from Brandewyn to Paradise with all their possessions had set him hugging himself with glee for days. He gave up struggling.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘When?’

  ‘Soon as possible.’

  ‘Give me a week or two to work up some cash.’

  ‘All right. Then I want an announcement in the paper.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Nice and big.’ Pansy’s eyes glowed. ‘With a line round and lots of capital letters. Like the toffs do it. You know – The engagement is announced between Miss Pansy Whistlecraft, daughter of – well, we’ve no need to put that in – and Mr Horace Clarence Lavender…’

  ‘You can’t put that in,’ the Tiger said. ‘That feller Mace’ll see it.’

  ‘I want it in,’ Pansy said sullenly.

  ‘Panse, you can’t…’

  Pansy eyed him under her lashes. He’d always been putty in her hands. ‘It’s hot,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  The Tiger didn’t argue and, later, with her arms twined round him, she nuzzled at his ear. ‘Just a little one’, she said. ‘Not many words.’

  ‘No.’

  The Tiger was scared enough of Mace to be adamant and she pushed him away furiously. ‘You rotten swindling pig,’ she wailed, bursting into tears. ‘Getting me into bed on false pretences!’

  The following day, foreseeing the expenditure of vast amounts of money in the near future, the Tiger, in an attempt to find a fortune among the figures in the little notebook he carried, bent over them earnestly while the lop-eared pony limped its way unguided round his customers. He was faintly depressed by the whole business. Suddenly there was too much domestic bliss about.

  Fish was waiting near Poll’s for him and he deliberately halted the pony, tied it to the hitching rail and went into the bar for a drink in the hope of shaking him off. Willie was there, sitting at the piano and singing gaily to himself.

  ‘He thought she was an angel purer than the snow.

  He thought that under her arms a pair of wings would grow.’

  He beamed at the Tiger and raised his voice.

  ‘But when he married the girl she lost her angel ways,

  For the wings were the strings that fastened my lady’s stays.’

  He swung round. ‘Hello, Tiger. Look like there’s been a death in the family. How’s business?’

  ‘No fortunes being made.’

  ‘And Pansy?’

  ‘She wants to get married.’

  Willie’s heart was uplifted by the news. ‘Everybody’s getting married,’ he said. ‘Must be the war ending. Once thought I’d get married myself. Once.’ He plonked on the worn yellow keys of the piano and his voice lifted joyously.

  ‘Here comes the bridegroom

  With his nails brushed clean,

  His in-laws looking mean…’

  He slammed the lid of the piano shut and swung round again. ‘Nothing like wedding bells and the blush of a blue-eyed bride,’ he said. ‘How about a wet?’

  ‘Not half.’

  ‘What’s your poison?’

  ‘Cham and stout. I’m feeling low.’

  Willie ordered the drinks and sat with his face composed to attentive sympathy while the Tiger drank. Then he polished off his own drink and leaned forward. ‘Know anything about building?’ he asked.

  The Tiger gaped. ‘About what?’

  ‘Building.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Possible to find out?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be difficult. Plenty of carpenters and bricklayers about.’

  Willie looked thoughtful. ‘If you had a book about it, could you build a wall?’

  ‘Of course I could.’

  ‘Lay bricks?’

  ‘If I had a book about it, I could lay an egg if I tried.’

  Willie beamed. ‘You’re just the chap we want.’

  ‘Just the chap who want?’

  ‘Me and the Poser.’

  The Tiger remained suspicious. ‘What are you going to build?’

  ‘We’re not going to build anything,’ Willie said. ‘We’re going to knock something down – well sort of. With dynamite.’

  The Tiger was beginning to feel twinges of unease. ‘I don’t know anything about dynamite,’ he said slowly.

  Willie smiled. ‘You just said there was nothing you couldn’t do if you could re
ad it up,’ he pointed out.

  ‘There isn’t.’

  ‘Well, borrow a book.’

  The Tiger hesitated. ‘What were you thinking of blowing up?’

  ‘A safe.’

  The Tiger was silent for a moment or two. ‘You mean, rob it?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘But that’s awful!’

  ‘So’s being short of money.’ Willie’s blue eyes were innocent. ‘Aren’t you short of money?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Tiger’s gaze grew faraway. Mendel’s lady friend, Mrs Pruffer, seemed almost as demanding as Pansy because he never seemed to do any work these days and left it all to the Tiger who had to sweat his heart out for a few meagre shillings a week.

  Willie smiled. ‘Might be profitable,’ he said. ‘Crime is.’

  ‘Like robbing a paymaster,’ the Tiger retorted flatly. ‘We haven’t made much profit out of that yet.’

  ‘This is different.’ Willie was not to be put off. ‘Prosaic necessity. Keep us alive.’

  The Tiger was thinking and Willie went on gaily: ‘House stands on its own,’ he said. ‘Owner’s often out. Got a girl friend. Ought to be easy.’

  The Tiger began to think so, too.

  ‘One big bang to open the door,’ Willie said. ‘Then we pick up the stuff and catch the night train from Bushmansdorp to the Cape. No need to worry any more about the swag at Chichester Junction. Have enough to live on for years. Can come back at our leisure to pick that up.’ He turned on the full power of his smile. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘the Poser’s talking of going back to the States. Money in his pocket might encourage him and that would leave only two of us to share and no second pair of hands after Pansy.’

  The Tiger nodded, convinced. ‘I’ll find out about the dynamite,’ he said.

  Fifteen

  Inevitably it was Instant who, three weeks later, brought The Winifred Examiner to Mace.

  Mace was sitting at his desk with his hands in his pockets staring at a new map of the district he’d made. He’d drawn it carefully in large scale and had placed neat rings in red ink round several of the small towns. They represented the places where his quarry had been seen, but there were so many they dazzled him. His hand was straying over his neck where a crop of new pimples had broken out and he didn’t see Instant at first. Instant coughed to draw his attention. He looked up with a start, then wearily pushed the map aside.

  ‘There are too many damn little towns round here, Instant,’ he said.

  ‘Yessir.’ Instant nodded sympathetically. Then he drew a deep breath and waited for the blast. ‘Sir, Wooden’s back.’

  ‘What!’ Mace leapt to his feet so abruptly, his papers went flying.

  ‘Sir’ – Instant flinched but stood his ground – ‘it wasn’t nothing to do with me. He just came. With a snotty note for you from the Engineers.’

  He placed the note on the table. Mace stared at it, flushing at the words it contained.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked in a small voice.

  ‘It seems he let go the wrong rope, sir. They ’aven’t seen the balloon since. Or the man in it.’

  Mace drew a deep breath. ‘I don’t want him near me, Instant,’ he said in a low angry voice. ‘Keep him out of my sight or I’ll probably shoot him.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, sir.’ Instant paused. ‘There is one thing, sir, that might brighten our day.’

  Mace glared at him as he laid the newspaper on the desk.

  ‘Births, deaths and marriages, sir,’ Instant suggested. ‘Hatches, matches and despatches, they call ’em, I believe, in the profession.’

  Mace peered at the paper. ‘“On July 17th, to Jemima and Timothy Aldred,”’ he read aloud, ‘“a daughter, Daisy. One insertion.”’

  He looked up, startled, and Instant gave a cackle of laughter. ‘I saw that, sir,’ he said merrily. ‘The bit on the end’s the clerk’s instructions to the editor. To let ’em know how many times it’s to appear in the paper. They always do it when you ’and in your advert. It’s that old bastard in the typesetting department. It must have slipped through.’

  Mace stared again at the paper. ‘Well, come on, Instant,’ he said. ‘What’s the point? I haven’t all day to fiddle about laughing at your coarse jokes.’

  Instant looked pityingly at him. Sometimes these days he considered Mace a pain in the neck. How much better, he thought, if their positions had been reversed and he’d been the officer. On the other hand, of course, everybody knew the army was run by its sergeants and with Mace as a sergeant it would have been God help the British Empire.

  ‘Forthcoming marriages, sir,’ he pointed out patiently. ‘There’s only one.’

  Mace stared at him for a second then his eyes jerked down to the smudged columns of badly set type. Pansy had put it across the Tiger when he wasn’t looking.

  ‘“The engagement is announced,”’ Mace read slowly, ‘“of Miss Pansy Whistlecraft, of Paradise, to Mr Horace Clarence Lavender, of the same town.”’ By the time he finished, his eyes were sticking out so far they seemed in danger of rolling on the floor at his feet.

  ‘That’s one of those swine!’ he choked.

  ‘Thought you’d be interested,’ Instant said smugly.

  Mace gazed at the announcement as though it were Holy Writ. ‘Paradise,’ he breathed. ‘The bastards are in Paradise now!’ He reached for his lap and scrawled a hasty ring round the name.

  Instant coughed. ‘One of ’em, sir,’ he corrected. ‘We don’t know about the others.’

  Mace’s head jerked up. ‘He’ll lead us to ’em,’ he said. ‘Instant, we’ll go to Paradise.’

  Instant smiled. ‘I thought we might, sir,’ he said. ‘I expect them bastards are up to something again.’

  Them bastards certainly were. At that moment they were holding a conference round a table in the Grand Hotel at Reinhart, which was small, insignificant and not a place where they might be seen.

  ‘Have you got it, Tiger?’ Willie was asking.

  The Tiger tapped a small battered book he’d borrowed from the diggings. ‘All here,’ he said. He began to read. ‘“Burns quietly when ignited but may be exploded by a fairly vigorous percussion. Explodes with great rapidity, requires very little ramping, and has great shattering power if simply laid upon the ground.” You can run a fuse to it,’ he ended enthusiastically. ‘I found out. Gives you time to get away.’

  ‘How much would we need?’

  The Tiger gestured airily. He’d had a couple of drinks. ‘I think if we fastened a sort of lump to each hinge of the safe and a bit to the lock, the door’ll just fall off. Where’s the safe?’

  ‘Here.’

  The Tiger looked around the threadbare interior of the Grand Hotel. If ever a place had been wrongly named, the Grand Hotel had. It was built of corrugated iron and wood, and residents – when they had any – slept in tents at the back. ‘Here?’

  ‘Not here, you goddam fool,’ Fish said. ‘In Reinhart.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Mendel’s.’

  The Tiger stared, then he swallowed what was left of his drink, reached for his hat and rose to his feet. ‘I work for Mendel,’ he said haughtily.

  ‘For a pittance,’ Willie pointed out calmly. ‘Slaving all day in the hot sun.’

  The Tiger said nothing, but he put his hat down again.

  ‘And when did that smouse shuffler last give you a goddam rise?’ Fish added. ‘Sit down, you’re jumping about like a dog with a weak bladder.’

  Accepting the inevitable in his usual realistic way, the Tiger sat down. He knew it now. There must be a criminal streak running through his gentle nature somewhere.

  ‘Suppose he guesses it’s me?’ he asked.

  Willie smiled. ‘He won’t. Whole area’s full of queer types.’

  The Tiger considered for a moment. He had always done his business with Mendel in bars and had never visited his house. The chances of being suspected were slender.

  ‘I don’t know where he
keeps his safe,’ he said.

  Willie beamed. ‘I do. It’s in the living room. We can get in easy.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll get Joby to slip his house-boy half a sovereign. He’ll clear off to spend it.’

  The Tiger leaned forward and Willie outlined his plans. ‘Place backs up to an aloe hedge,’ he pointed out. ‘We could run the fuse from there through a window.’

  ‘Suppose we’re seen?’

  ‘Won’t be. Wear dark clothes and darken our phizzes.’

  ‘What with?’

  Willie beamed. ‘Still got Nagel’s make-up box.’

  During these exchanges Fish had been sitting quietly, his eyes on the Tiger.

  ‘There’s just one thing,’ he said. ‘We ought to get rid of anything that makes us easily recognisable. You’ve been riding that moth-eaten pinto for weeks now and the Tiger’s always got that goddam pony of his. Everybody knows it. It’s lost an ear and it limps.’

  ‘It fought in the war,’ the Tiger said proudly.

  Fish smiled. ‘I know a feller wants a pony used to shafts,’ he pointed out. ‘Setting up in business making pies.’

  ‘How much would he give me?’

  ‘Fiver.’

  ‘It’s only worth thirty bob. I’ll sell.’

  ‘I’ll get him to come round to your place and collect it.’

  The Tiger smiled, suspecting one of Fish’s tricks. ‘No,’ he said with deep and mature cunning. ‘I’ll come round to his.’

  Because he had come to the conclusion that his face was becoming too well known to his quarry, Captain Mace made his enquiries around Paradise in disguise. He wore old clothes and a wideawake hat to shade his face and allowed his beard to remain unshaven. It wasn’t much, but it seemed better than his normal smart appearance.

  He left Instant and his small troop in Winifred and went on his own to avoid being noticed. Unfortunately, Paradise was a wooded area near the river and comprised a large number of scattered houses owned by speculators and diamond buyers. These houses, because of some apparent shyness or discretion on the part of the occupants, were hidden among the clumps of trees and bushes and down lost and winding unpaved roads and lanes that appeared and disappeared like demons in a pantomime and were entirely without names. Though a few of the residents had heard of the Tiger, had even seen him, no one appeared to know which one of the hidden houses he occupied, and, heavy with bitterness, Mace halted for a drink in Reinhart on his way back to Winifred. The hotel was just a wooden building with tents at the back for bedrooms, and looked the last place on God’s earth where he might get a sensible answer to a question. Nevertheless, he decided to try. He was surprised at the reaction.