The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  Mr. Bunn felt dazed. Lilian Carroway! He knew now with whom he had to deal. The Suffragette who knew more about jiu-jitsu than any European and most Japanese. The woman who a few months previously had wrestled her way into the House of Commons over the bodies of many half-stunned and wholly astonished policemen, and had threatened to put a strangulation lock on the Prime Minister himself if he did not promise to answer a plain question. Taken by surprise, he had promised, and Lilian, rather flurried, had put the following question to him:

  “VOTES FOR WOMEN?”

  “I must have notice of that question,” had been the suave, non-committal reply of the Prime Minister, and before the Suffragette had quite thought it out, the police had taken her by storm and removed her.

  Smiler Bunn remembered the incident well and congratulated himself on not having annoyed her.

  She called a taxicab, and commanded him to get in. She gave the driver the address of the headquarters of the particular branch of the movement to which she belonged, and sat down beside the dazed pickpocket.

  “Your fortune is made,” she said briefly.

  Mr. Bunn muttered “Certainly,” in a very uncertain voice, and relapsed into a gloomy silence.

  “I have no doubt that you consider yourself to be in a singularly unfortunate position, Mr.—er—what is your name?”

  “Connaught,” said Smiler, absently reading the first name he saw over a shop window, “Louisy Connaught.”

  “Louise Connaught! What an extraordinary name! How do you spell it? Louise is a woman’s name.”

  “Well, some spell it one way and some another. I don’t mind much.”

  “But it is a woman’s name.”

  “Well, I was one of a twin,” lied Mr. Bunn uncomfortably, wishing he had taken a name from some other shop window. “We was mixed a little at the christenin’, and me sister’s name is Thomas.”

  “I see. How unfortunate!” said the Suffragette. Then she spoke the name over to herself several times: “Louise Connaught—Louis Connaught. Why, it’s a splendid name—Louis Connaught. It has a royal sort of ring. Mr. Louis Connaught, I really congratulate you upon your name.”

  “Louis” smiled uneasily and avoided meeting her eye.

  Then the “taxi” turned suddenly into a courtyard at the side of a big block of flats near Whitehall, and pulled up.

  “Here we are, Mr. Connaught,” said the Suffragette, and paying the driver she gently impelled her captive into the building. He was not quite so anxious to bolt as he had been. That mention of payment had interested him, and, in any case, there seemed to be an uncomfortably large number of police in the neighbourhood. Mr. Bunn had recognised two plain-clothes men at the entrance to the side court.

  He passively followed Mrs. Carroway into the lift, and from the lift into a large room on the second floor. This apartment was furnished like the board-room of a big company, but its business appearance was made slightly less severe by one or two little feminine touches here and there—a few flowers, a mirror or so, and some rather tasteful pictures. There were a dozen women of different ages scattered about the room.

  Mrs. Carroway greeted them impulsively.

  “My dears, I have discovered a Brain!” she cried.

  The Brain blushed as he removed his hat, for he knew what was coming.

  “Look at his forehead,” said the enthusiastic Lilian. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Wall, it’s all right as regards quantity—there’s a good square foot of it—if the quality is there,” answered a rather obvious spinster of uncertain age, with a Scotch face and a New England accent. “What’s the Brain’s name?”

  “Louis Connaught,” announced Mrs. Carroway importantly, and several of the younger and less angular of the Suffragettes looked interested. It was certainly a high-sounding name.

  “Wall, Louis, I’m glad you’re here,” said the American lady, “and the vurry fact of your being here shows that there’s something behind that frontal freeboard of yours. Most men avoid this place as though it was a place of worship. You mustn’t mind my candour; this strenuous pursuit of the Vote makes a girl candid.”

  The Brain bowed awkwardly. It was one of his few assets that he was not afraid of women. He was not even nervous with them, except when they were in a position, and looked likely to hand him over to the police. Some instinct deeply buried behind what the “girl” was pleased to term his “frontal freeboard” told him that Mrs. Carroway would not explain to the others the circumstances in which she had made his unwilling acquaintance.

  A young and pretty girl came forward, smiling, offering her hand. It was hard to believe that such a lovely slip of feminine daintiness had done, to use a popular expression, “her two months in the second division,” with the best of them. She was Lady Mary de Vott.

  “We are very glad to have you fighting in our Cause, Mr. Connaught,” she said charmingly.

  Smiler shook hands as though he meant never to leave off.

  “Glad—proud!” he said heavily. “Glad to oblige. Any little thing like that—any time.”

  Mrs. Carroway broke in.

  “There is a rather curious little story to tell about Mr. Connaught,” she said, “and in case anyone should notice and misconstrue any little mannerisms he may possess, I should like to tell his story, which explains them. Mr. Connaught probably will prefer not to be present. If so”—she turned to Smiler—“will you go to the waiting-room?”

  She touched a bell, and a trim typist appeared.

  “Show this gentleman into the waiting-room,” ordered Lilian, and Smiler went out, feeling that, on the whole, he was travelling in the direction of a rich streak of luck. He dropped into a big, luxurious lounge, and gracefully lying at full length, proceeded, with many sounds of enjoyment, to demolish the large blood-orange he had so deftly acquired an hour before. He then took a little nap, and woke, thoroughly refreshed, to find Mrs. Carroway by the side of the lounge, staring with a rapt and wondering expression at his towering forehead.

  “Ah, this is splendid!” she said. “I see that in common with many other great brains you have the knack of snatching an hour’s rest at odd moments. Napoleon possessed it also, I believe.”

  “Napoleon who?” inquired Mr. Bunn, who could have beaten any brain in the world at the gentle art of resting.

  “Bonaparte, my dear man!” said Mrs. Carroway good-humouredly. “Haven’t you ever heard of Napoleon Bonaparte?”

  Mr. Bunn thought.

  “Heard the name somewhere or other. Hasn’t he got a shop down by the Holborn end of Shaftesbury Avenue—fried fish and chips? Little dark man?”

  Mrs. Carroway stared.

  “I do not think so,” she answered.

  “Ah, some relation of his, I expect!” said Smiler airily, and dismissed the matter. He stood up. After his reception in the big committee-room he had lost much of his trepidation as to the result of his unfortunate little contretemps with the Suffragette leader’s hand-bag.

  “Well, how about this little lot?” He tapped his forehead significantly. “Was any offer made?”

  “Ah, that is quite settled. We have agreed unanimously that—after a cursory examination by a skilled phrenologist—you shall be entered at once as a Special Organiser. Why, are you disappointed, Mr. Connaught?”

  She had noticed his face fall.

  “No; only I don’t know a note of music. I can’t tell one tune from another. I admit it don’t want much thinking about, just turning a handle; but even a organ-grinder——”

  Mrs. Carroway laughed.

  “Oh, I see!” she smiled. “I said ‘Organiser.’ ”

  “Oh!” said Smiler, with an air of intense relief, wondering what an organiser was.

  “Of course,” the Suffragette continued, “I shall not expect big things from you at first. I think you had better begin by reading up the question of Women’s Suffrage. Every morning you shall report to me at, say, ten, and we will talk over the chapters you have read. You will
be able to tell me what conclusions you have come to, and what opinions you have formed on the subject, and I shall be able to correct any false impressions made upon you, and, no doubt, your intellect, as it becomes familiar with the question, will soon be discovering new and valuable interpretations of the old ideas, and giving new ideas and plans for the advancement of the Cause. After a few weeks of careful reading you will have to begin practising public speaking, and we all expect that by that time your own great natural gifts will assert themselves, and from being a—novice, let us say—you will become a leader both in thought and in action. During the first few weeks your remuneration will be three pounds a week—the League has plenty of funds—if that is agreeable to you.”

  She seemed to expect an answer, and Smiler managed to get his breath back in time to say that he thought three pounds a week would do “for a start.”

  “Well, that being settled, let us go into the committee-room. We’ve sent for a phrenologist, and he is waiting there for you; and, by the way, I’ve explained to our comrades that you were of almost noble birth, but, owing to a series of misfortunes, your education—both socially and—er—scholastically, has been slightly neglected. And now, Mr. Connaught, before we join the others, let me say that I believe in you, and I think you will prove a tremendous acquisition to the Cause. I do not see how one with so noble a forehead as yours can prove otherwise.”

  Mr. Bunn was almost touched.

  “Lady,” he said, with a singular emphasis, “you do me proud, strike me pink all over, if you don’t. You’re a lady, that’s what you are, and I know when I’m dealing with a lady and I treat her as a lady. You’ll see. Don’t you worry about me. I shall be all right, once I get started. When I’m just joggin’ along in my own quiet way, kids can play with me; but once I get started, I’m a rum ’un, and don’t you forget it, lady. I only want to get started.” He extended his hand. “Put it there, Mrs. Carroway!”

  The Suffragette leader put her hand in his, and they shook in silence.

  There were about thirty Suffragettes in the committee-room when the two re-entered, and a lean man in a frock coat and a flannel shirt, who was delivering a sort of lecture on phrenology. Smiler, with the instinct of one “crook” for another, glanced at his sharp, famished eyes and summed him up instantly as a charlatan—only “charlatan” was not the exact word which occurred to the new Organiser.

  Mrs. Carroway introduced the two men, and the phrenologist indicated a chair, which Smiler took. In five minutes’ talk with the ladies the phrenologist had gleaned precisely what they wanted for their money, and he proceeded to give it to them unstintingly.

  He took Smiler’s head in his hungry-looking hands and pressed it. He said:

  “This is indeed a brain—a most unusual, indeed, an amazing brain. I have not often ’andled a brain of this description. This head which I hold in my ’and is an astonishing head!” He slid a clammy palm across the gratified Mr. Bunn’s forehead. “I should term this head a phenomenal head. It is perplexing—it is what we call an Unexpected Head. It has every indication of being wholly undeveloped, while its natural force is stupendous. I consider it puzzling; it is a very difficult cranium!” He frowned, looked thoughtful, and finally dropped his hands suddenly. “Ladies,” he said glibly, “I really couldn’t afford to read this head for a guinea. This is as good a three-guinea head as ever I see under my ’and. This head should be charted properly; usually I charge a guinea extra for a No. 1 chart, but if you’ll take a three-guinea readin’ of this head, I’ll throw in the chart, marked out in two colours, and framed in black oak, with pale green mount, with signed certificate and seal at the back, complete, with half-hour’s verbal readin’, any questions answered, for three pounds ten, cash, usual charge five guineas. Crowned heads twenty guineas and expenses. And that’s a bargain.”

  Naturally, it being a bargain, every lady in the room agreed on the “three-pounds-ten readin’,” and considered it cheap.

  And then, to his intense astonishment and profound gratification, Mr. Bunn learnt among other things that he would, with a little practice, develop into an orator of a brilliance surpassing that of the late Mr. W. E. Gladstone, and rivalling that of Mark Antony, a statesman whose statecraft would be as iron-handed as that of Bismarck, as subtle as that of Abdul the Damned, as fearless as that of Nero, and as dazzling as that of the German Emperor; a lawgiver as unbiased and careful as Moses, a diplomat as finished as Talleyrand, a thinker as profound as Isaac Walton (the phrenologist probably meant Isaac Newton), a champion of rights as persuasive as Oliver Cromwell, and, finally, a politician “as honest as”—here the phrenologist faltered for a moment—“as honest a politician as—as—the best of them.” A great deal of useful and equally valuable information having been imparted, the phrenologist announced that the sitting was at an end, drew his cheque, promised to send on the chart and certificate, volunteered to read the palms of any ladies present for five shillings per palm, offered to throw himself into a trance and communicate with the spirit of any dead relative of anyone present for two guineas per spirit, dealt round a pack of his business cards with the air of a pretty good poker-player, and finally took his departure.

  The curious thing was that every woman—and there were many intelligent women there—seemed to believe in this shabby, flannel-shirted liar, and to respect him. Their congratulations as they surrounded the Brain were unmistakably genuine. Then, suddenly, the telephone-bell rang shrilly, and a message was received to the effect that the Prime Minister had been seen motoring in the direction of Walton Heath with a bag of golf clubs in the car. Mrs. Carroway gave a few swift instructions, and the room emptied like magic. In ten minutes Mr. Bunn was alone with the Suffragette leader. Smiler was a little dazed.

  “Where’ve they all gone?” he asked.

  “To Walton Heath, in taxicabs.”

  “Why?”

  “To ask the Prime Minister when he’s going to give Votes for Women, of course.”

  “Well, but that American woman took a darn great axe,” said Smiler. “Surely she ain’t going to ask with that!”

  “One never knows,” replied Mrs. Carroway darkly.

  Mr. Bunn looked grieved.

  “Pore bloke!” he said, with extraordinary earnestness. “Pore, pore bloke! It ain’t all beer and skittles being Prime Minister, is it?”

  “We do our best to see that it isn’t!” said Mrs. Carroway modestly. “And now about your books. I’ve looked out a few to begin with. Here they are.”

  She indicated a pile of massive volumes on the floor at the foot of a big bookcase. Smiler’s jaw fell.

  “Well,” he said, without enthusiasm, “brain or no brain, that little lot’ll give me a thundering headache before I’m through ’em. They’d better be sent by Carter Paterson or Pickford, hadn’t they?”

  Mrs. Carroway thought a cab would be better, and sent for one. Then she produced her purse, and Smiler became more interested.

  “You must not mind my mentioning it, Mr. Connaught, but it has just occurred to me that possibly you may be short of ready money. Are you?”

  “Yes,” replied Smiler, with manly simplicity. “I am, somethink astonishin’.”

  “In that case, then”—Mrs. Carroway opened the purse—“you may like to take two pounds of your first week’s salary in advance. Would you?”

  “I would,” answered Smiler straightforwardly, and without false pride.

  “Very well then”—she handed him two sovereigns. “Will you write your address on this envelope, and I will enter your name in the book of the League?”

  Smiler did so.

  “Garraty Street. What a quaint old name!” commented the lady as she read the address.

  “Yes, ain’t it?” said Smiler. “And it’s a quaint, old-fashioned sort of street, too,” he went on, “where everybody lives on fried fish, and the landlord’s got to chain down the window sills to stop ’em from using ’em for firewood. I shall be leaving there pretty soon, di
rectly I’ve developed me brain a little bit. And now I’ll sling me hook. What time will you be expecting me tomorrow?”

  “I think at two o’clock. You had better begin on this book.” She handed him a somewhat massive volume entitled, The Vote: What It Means and Why We Want It, by Lilian Carroway. “You must make notes as you read, and we can discuss your notes tomorrow.”

  Smiler took the book and weighed it in his hand.

  “Ye—es,” he said, rather feebly, and turned to help the cabman carry the remaining books to the cab.

  So Mr. Smiler Bunn, alias Louis Connaught, alias The Brain, became a Suffragette, and only the phrenologist seemed to know that he could never be more than a suffrajest at most.

  He shook hands with Mrs. Carroway and went down to the cab. Waiting on the kerb near the entrance to the mansion was a man whose appearance seemed familiar to Mr. Bunn. This man stepped forward as Smiler entered the cab. It was the phrenologist.

  “Excuse me, Brain,” he said jauntily. “I’ll give you a lift,” and followed Smiler into the cab, closing the door behind him.

  Smiler stared, then recollected the illuminated address the man had given him half an hour before, and grinned.

  “All right,” he said.

  The phrenologist surveyed him with alert, black eyes that played over him like searchlights. He was a young man, painfully thin, hawk-nosed, and his movements were curiously deft and swift. He drew two long, thin, black, leathery-looking cigars from his breast-pocket, and handed one to Mr. Bunn.

  “Hide behind that,” he said, “if you like flavour and bite to a cigar.”

  Smiler did so, and waited for his companion to speak. The phrenologist lost no time.

  “This has got to be worked properly, Mr. Connaught,” he said. “There’s lots of lovely money back there”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the Suffragettes’ headquarters—“and you and me’s got to magnetise it before any of the other grafters in this town gets on to it. Now, I’m going to play fair with you, Mr. Connaught. You got a pull with that bunch somehow; thanks to me, they reckon you’ll be able to put King Solomon and all his wisdom in your ticket pocket after a week or two’s study. On account of the shape of your head, I make it. Well, you and me’s men of the world, and we can be frank where others fall out, and as a man of the world, I can tell you right away, Mr. Connaught, that the Brain idea is a dream. Why, say, the minute I feels your head under my ’and I found myself saying, ‘Well, this is a High Brow all right, but it’s hollow behind. There’s nothin’ to it—nix—vacant.’ I mean nothing special. Of course there’s brain there—about the average. Very near up to the average, say. But you ain’t no Homer, any more than me or them daffy-down-dillies back to the mansions. The old girl seems to fancy herself at physiognomy, but she’s trod on a banana-skin all right if she’s risking real money on your dial. Well, now, I want to be friendly with you, Mr. Connaught. This town owes us both a living, and the only rule in the game is that we got to collect it. Well, now, let’s put our cards on the table. I’m a palm-reader and phrenologist just now, but I’m going solid for bigger business bimeby. Now, what’s your lay?”