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All Around Magazine, December 1915,
with "The Adventure of 'The Brain'"
"The Amazing Mr. Bunn," Macdonald & Co., London, 1949,
with "The Adventure of 'The Brain'"
"I SHALL now proceed to give my celebrated imitation of a gentleman pinching a blood-orange," mused Mr. "Smiler" Bunn, the gifted pickpocket of Garraty Street, King's Cross, to himself, as he stood thoughtfully before a fruiterer's shop in a small street off Oxford Street. "A real gent hooking of the biggest blood-orange in the bunch!"
With this laudable intention he turned his gaze upon a fine pineapple that reposed aristocratically upon pink paper behind the plate-glass window, as the shopman came out and stood for a moment near the door, leaning against the shopfront extension, which was piled with fruit—chiefly oranges, "blood" and otherwise. This part of the shop was in front of the window, and was unprotected save by the watchful care of the shopman.
"Nice little pineapple, that," said Mr. Bunn casually.
"Pretty fair for the time of year," replied the shopman. "Will you take it?"
"Well, 'ow much is it?"
"Half a guinea," said the shopman.
Mr. Bunn shook his head. His resources at the moment totalled sevenpence only.
"Too dear," he decided, both hands plunged deep into his coat-pockets. "What's the little black-looking thing that keeps on running round the pineapple? Not a mouse, is it?"
The shopman plunged inside suddenly, with a frightful threat against all mice, and—Mr. Bunn's right hand flickered. Only flickered. Few people watching him would have cared to wager that his hand had left his pocket at all. Then he moved tranquilly away, and the biggest blood-orange on the shop-front went with him. The celebrated imitation was over, and the performer had strolled calmly round an adjacent corner before the shopman had given up his search for the mouse.
"Very well done, old man," muttered Mr. Bunn. "I ain't sure but what you ain't improving. Your 'and has not lost its cunning, nor your heye its quickness."
HE turned into Oxford Street, feeling distinctly encouraged by
this small success, and mingled unobtrusively with the crowd of
women who were looking at the shop windows and wondering why
their husbands did not earn as much as other women's
husbands.
Mr. Bunn had skilfully worked his way through the thickest of the crowd for over a hundred yards before he marked a lady who seemed sufficiently careless in the handling of her bag to call for his closer attention. He moved quickly to her. She was a handsome woman of middle age, with a determined face, and rather too strong a chin. She was exceedingly well-dressed, and carried her bag in the bend of two fingers. At first she did not appear to be interested in the shops, but a hat dashingly displayed in a corner window suddenly caught her attention, and she stopped to look at it. Mr. Bunn paused for the fraction of a second immediately behind her. Then he went quietly on—round the corner (corners were a speciality of Smiler Bunn's). He did not look behind—he knew better. He simply lounged very slowly on, hoping the bag did not make too pronounced a bulge in his pocket. He looked quite the most unconcerned man in London, until he heard a sudden rustle of skirts behind him and felt a quick, firm grip on his arm.
"You are very unintelligent," said a sharp voice, and he turned to see the well-dressed woman who had been carrying her bag carelessly.
"Give me what you have in your right-hand coat-pocket at once," she requested him coldly.
"I dunno what you mean. I don't know you. What d'you mean?" asked Smiler, rather nervously.
"Do not let us have any nonsense, please," was her chilly comment. "Give it to me at once."
Smiler put his hand in his pocket with desperate calmness and drew out—a remarkably fine blood-orange.
"It's the only one I got, but you can have it——" he began; but she interrupted.
"Do you want me to call the police?" she said. "Give me the bag instantly."
Smiler gave a sickly smile, put his hand into the other pocket, and, with a badly-feigned start of surprise, produced the bag.
"Why, what's this? However did this get there? This ain't mine—it don't belong to me!" he began, making the best of a very bad job.
But she cut him short. She took the bag, her quick grey eyes playing over him in a singularly comprehensive glance. She saw a clean-shaven, rather stout, butlerish-looking man of about thirty-eight, with a good-humoured mouth and a solid chin. He was extremely shabby, but neat, and obviously was in a state of considerable embarrassment. She was about to speak, when Mr. Bunn pushed back his hat and passed his hand across his brow—a gesture evidently unconscious, and born of the mental stress of the moment. But her eyes brightened suddenly as they lighted upon his forehead, and her lips relaxed a little. For it was unquestionably a fine frontal development—a Brow among Brows. Assisted somewhat by a slight premature baldness, the forehead of Mr. Bunn was a feature of which its owner was acutely conscious. There was too much of it, in his opinion. It had never been of much use to him, and he was in the habit of considering its vast expanse a deformity rather than a sign of intellect. He was quite aware that it saved his features from being commonplace—he fancied it made them ridiculous instead. But evidently the lady of the bag did not think so. She was actually smiling to him.
"I should like to ask you a few questions," she said, "if you have no objection."
Mr. Bunn did not answer.
"Have you any objection?" she inquired sweetly, glancing across the road, where a dozen policemen were solemnly walking in Indian file towards their beats. Smiler regarded them for a moment—a most unpleasant sight, he considered.
Then, "No, no objection—not at all—not by no means," he said.
"Be good enough to accompany me, then," continued the woman, in a singularly businesslike way. She moved slowly on, and Mr. Bunn walked by her side.
"Why are you a pickpocket?" she said curtly.
Mr. Bunn muttered to the effect that he was not—strike him lucky if he was. But the woman ignored his denial.
"It is so foolish," she said. "So obviously unsuitable a profession for a man with your intellect. Why, with your forehead you should be carving out a great future, a career, a reputation."
Smiler stared suspiciously at her.
"You leave my forrid alone," he requested her. "I can't help having a thing more like a balloon than a 'eadpiece on my shoulders, can I?"
"But, my good person, don't you see what a great thing it is to have such a brain, and what a terrible thing it is for such an intellect to lie dormant? If all men had such intellect as your forehead tells me plainly you possess, you do not think we women would ever have asked for votes? Certainly not. It is because not one man in a hundred thousand possesses such a brain as yours that we have decided to fight for our rights. And when I think of the possibilities of yours, when I think of the latent power in your glorious head, that only needs training and shaping to the Idea. When I think, here I have in its practically fallow state a Brain of Brains which belongs to me, and is my own to mould as I like—unless its owner wishes to be sent to prison for six months in the third division with hard labour—can you wonder that my whole spirit takes fire, and I cry aloud, yet again—'VOTES FOR WOMEN!'"
It was a truly lusty yell, and it gave Mr. Bunn an unpleasant shock. Everyone within hearing turned to stare at the woman, but she seemed blandly unconscious of their scrutiny. She gripped the unnerved Smiler's arm and became business-like again.
"Understand me," she said. "I consider you a Find, and I propose to keep you—unless, of course, you prefer to be handed over to the police. I can see that you are a man with immense possibilities, and those possibilities I intend to develop with the ultimate aim of devoting them to the Cause. Do you understand me? I propose to educate you. You shall become a lecturer, a champion of women's rights, a pursuer of the Vote. You shall be paid while you are being taught—and paid well—and when, in the course of time, I have stirred that great Brain out of its present inaction, it shall be devoted to our service and rewarded in proportion. No—not a word. Come with me. I am Lilian Carroway."
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?"
"Well, 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, directly 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?"
"Well, the old girl thought I been picking her pocket," said Smiler, grinning, and the other scoundrel's eyes glittered with satisfaction.
"Why, that's great. Oh, you're sure enough gun; you got a gun's hand, all right. Say, shake. I knew you was a crook first glimp, and when I see your hands I wondered whether it was forgin' or picking pockets. Well now, that's settled. Now, I got a little place just off the Strand, here. You send this cab on with your books, and come to this office of mine, and we'll have a talk."
Smiler was willing; he was fascinated with his new acquaintance, and within five minutes the pair were closeted in the phrenologist's den in a back street off the Strand.
IT took the "palm-reader" precisely ten minutes to outline the
idea of a coup which he and Smiler could work together as
partners.
"Now, brother," he began, "what you got to understand is that you ain't going to last with that bunch of vote-sharps longer than about a fortnight—if that. They got a lot of brains among 'em, and the old girl, she's got the brightest. But she's just happened to get hung up on your forrid, and her own idea of her physiognomy skill. But by the time you've read one or two of them books she'll have lost her interest. You'll give yourself away, sure, and then it'll be the street for yours, and the salary'll fold its tent and silently steal away—see? You see that, don't you?"
Smiler nodded. He had known that all along.
"Well, so what you get, you got to get quick. And now, listen to me——"
The palm-reader's voice dropped to a dry and rapid whisper.
"Now, my name's Mesmer La Touche, and my title's Perfessor, and I'm a man you can trust," he began, and straightway unfolded his scheme.
PRECISELY a week later the Suffragette cohort, under command
of Mrs. Carroway, gave a greatly-boomed demonstration at King
James's Hall. This demonstration had been enormously advertised.
Entrance was free to all people of reasonably respectable
appearance, and promised to be successful, if only because of the
fact that the proceedings were not to consist of speeches but
chiefly of a series of limelight illuminated tableaux. The idea
of the tableaux was to re-enact on the platform various scenes
which had marked the progress of the Women's Suffrage Movement,
and with which scenes the Suffragettes were associated in the
mind's eyes of the public.
For instance, Tableau No. 1 on the programme was to consist of about thirty Suffragettes clothed in prison raiment with feeding-bottles being held to their mouths by savage-looking men, their arms being held by brutal wardresses. The curtain would go up, revealing the "atrocity" in full swing against a back curtain painted to resemble masonry and prison bars. Tableau No. 2 again depicted the devoted thirty, chained and padlocked to a row of iron railings, staring defiantly at a back curtain painted like a Cabinet Minister's house, while, rapidly approaching, the heavy sound of the feet of a large body of reckless police could be heard—thanks to the energy of a shirt-sleeved scene-shifter in the wings, who was to manipulate various wood and drum contrivances built for the purpose of imitating the march of many men. And so on, through a series of about twenty similar tableaux. The first item on the programme was to be the singing of the famous Suffragette song:
"Women of England, arise in your might,
For the tyrant has nigh burnt his boats;
Man has done wrong too long, let him now do aright
And give women votes."
by the thirty Suffragettes, who would, in this scene, wear
their choicest evening toilets and all their jewels, in order to
let the public see that, despite their desperate deeds, they were
women of consequence, wealth, and position.
It was a well-conceived plan of entertainment, and advertisement, and the deadheads of London—and London is practically populated by deadheads—flocked to this free evening with a unanimity beyond either praise or blame. The doors opened at seven o'clock, and at 7:15 there was not even standing-room left. The curtain was due to go up at 7:30.
Behind the scenes there was a rushing sound of many silk skirts, wafts of expensive perfumes, the odour of flowers, excited whisperings of feminine tongues, the flash and flicker of diamonds, giggles and squirks and bubblings of mirth. The place was alive with women. Here and there a scene-shifter slouched in and out of dark angles and nooks, concerned with ropes and canvas frames. In a big dressing-room at the back was an uncomfortable-looking man in evening dress—Mr. Smiler Bunn. He seemed to be the only man in the place.
IT may be explained that The Brain had not been fruitful of
results during the previous week of study, and the development of
his intellect appeared to be less than the improvement in his
manners and speech. His ideas about Women's Suffrage were about
where they were before he became the Brain; if anything, they
were rather more confused on the subject than otherwise. He had
disappointed Mrs. Carroway a little, but, thanks to a few points
praising her book, which had been taught him by the phrenologist,
she continued to expect big things from him.
But Smiler knew perfectly well that it was only a question of a week or two before his association with the Suffragettes would cease. He was a good pickpocket, but he was no political organiser, and he knew it. "Professor" La Touche had explained that to him too frequently for him to forget it. But Smiler did not care; he and the phrenologist had made their arrangements, and long before the tableaux were ended that night they would be carried out.
Mr. Bunn's duty that evening was to act as a sort of stage attendant to the thirty Suffragettes. He was to chain them to the railings, for instance, to help arrange the prison feeding scene, and so on. Mrs. Carroway had drilled him well, and she had no doubt he would do the thing thoroughly.
Now, there are about four back entrances to King James's Hall, three of which are in different streets, and as half-past seven drew near there rolled unobtrusively up to one of these entrances a neat one-horse brougham. Nobody got out of the brougham, nor did the coachman descend. He just pulled up and waited. A policeman strolled up and remarked that it was a "perishin' cold night." The coachman, in a voice curiously resembling that of Mesmer La Touche, palm reader and phrenologist, agreed with him, and volunteered the information that presently he had to take away a big dress-basket of costumes belonging to a titled Suffragette who was inside the hall. The intelligent constable gathered that if anybody happened to be about to lend a hand when the basket came down there would probably be a "dollar" floating about (Mesmer believed in boldness). The policeman decided to remain and lend a hand. This was one of the reasons why neither that efficient officer nor Mesmer La Touche saw a laundry-van —driven by a small and curiously unimportant-looking man—pull up at one of the back entrances farther round the building, and wait there in very much the same way as the brougham was waiting.
Inside the hall the opening song had been sung, and the Suffragettes were now posing in the prison scene, much to the appreciation of a sympathetic audience. Smiler Bunn, with an armful of short chains, was waiting in the wings with a group of scene-shifters bearing sections of strong iron railings. The curtain went down on the first tableau, and the women came pouring off the stage, hurrying to their dressing-rooms to change for the great "Chains" scene. In three minutes the railings were fixed, and Smiler Bunn was chaining the Suffragettes to the bars. And it was noticeable that while all the evening he had been wearing a distinctly worried look, now, as one by one the padlocks clicked, that worried look was replaced by a gradually widening smile. Mrs. Carroway noticed it, and wondered why The Brain was smiling.
The last Suffragette chained up, Mr. Bunn made a bolt for the back. He had about three minutes to work in, and a lot to do in that three minutes. He ran in and out of the dressing-rooms, exactly like a weasel working a rabbit warren. Each time he came out of a room he brought an armful of furs. In a minute and a half he had run through all the dressing-rooms, and was literally staggering under his bundle of furs. He dropped them all into a big dress-basket at the end of the corridor, jammed down the lid, and whistled softly. Instantly a man—the driver of the laundry-van—appeared, running silently to him, took one end of the basket, and Smiler taking the other end, the pair of them vanished. In twenty seconds the basket was in the laundry-van.
"Hurry up, for pity's sake!" sobbed Mr. Bunn, as he scrambled up beside his confederate. "Nearly half of 'em had left their diamonds on their dressing-tables"—his voice cracked with excitement—"and by Gawd! I've got 'em all!"
THE van rolled down the back street and round a
corner—corners, it has been explained, were a specialty of
Mr. Smiler Bunn. He peered back as the van swung round, and
caught a fleeting glimpse of a one-horse brougham waiting
patiently outside another back door. And he grinned.
"Poor old Mesmer!" he chuckled. "He's a clever man, is Mesmer, but if he don't get off out of it, 'im and his brougham, he'll stand a darn good chance of getting copped. He's a good man at ideas, Mesmer is, but he's no good at carryin' of 'em out. Ah, well—round the corner, mate. The sooner we get this lot to Israelstein's the better I shall be pleased. I wonder what Lilian will say? It'll take 'em a good twenty minutes to file them chains!"
There was a sudden sound of galloping hoofs. Smiler turned, looking back just in time to see the brougham tear down the street they had just left, and a few yards behind it half a dozen policemen running like hares.
"There goes Mesmer—poor chap! The town certainly owes him a living, same as he said, but I don't reckon he'll be collecting any of it tonight—not tonight, I don't reckon," muttered The Brain.
And the laundry-van rumbled comfortably on towards the business-place of that genial receiver of stolen goods, Mr. Israelstein.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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