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Roy Glashan's Library
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All Around Magazine, January 1916,
with "The Adventure of the Turncoats"
"The Amazing Mr. Bunn," Macdonald & Co., London, 1949,
with "The Adventure of the Turncoats"
MR. BUNN was ever a man who was particular about his meals. Some weeks after his adventure with the Suffragettes, he decided to give himself a really good lunch. Entering a restaurant and seating himself, he took the menu in his hand and subjected it to so profound and lengthy a study that the waiter's off-hand manner put on, as it were, a heavy overcoat of respect. Evidently he was about to serve an epicure. At last Smiler looked up.
"I'll 'ave," he said, "a bit of the pullet of a turkey."
"Pardon, sir?" queried the waiter politely.
"A double portion of the pullet of a turkey," said Mr. Bunn irritably.
The waiter looked perplexed.
"Some of this here!" Mr. Bunn pointed to the menu, and the perplexity vanished from the face of the waiter, together with his air of respect.
"Poulet à la Turque—yes, sir."
"Wait a minute," said Smiler. "I don't like the sound of It. You don't say it the same way as I do, and it don't sound very savoury the way you say it. I want something with some stuffin' in it."
"Stuffin', sir?" repeated the waiter.
"That's it, stuffin'—-sage and onion—" Mr. Bunn began to lose patience. "Look here," he went on, "have you got any duck on?"
"Wild duck, sir? Yes. Only wild duck to-day, sir. Or some snipe. We have got some nice snipe, sir."
"Ah, well; let's have one or two—see? And some mashed potatoes and some turnip-tops and a few parsnips. And some beer—and don't forget the vinegar."
The waiter looked a little dazed, and hurried off, muttering something unlovely about the English. He was French himself.
Mr. Bunn had never tasted snipe, and he sat back, looking forward to a very pleasant lunch.
During the previous three months, business had been exceedingly brisk with him; he had moved into new apartments in Cherry Blossom Street, Tottenham Court Road, and he was hoping henceforward to live on a slightly more elaborate scale than hitherto he had been able to afford.
His sale of the Suffragettes' jewellery and furs for some three hundred pounds to Lazarus Israelstein, the receiver, seemed to have ushered in a series of much smaller but equally successful little coups. It is true that, had the venerable Israelstein paid him only a fifth of the value of the goods, he could have retired from the pocket-picking profession without fear regarding his financial future, but his acquaintance with diamonds and furs had been previously so limited that he was quite content with his price.
He sat thinking as he awaited his snipe.
"Yes," he said presently. "I'll do it. I'll have a fur coat this winter. It's warm and classy. And a bit of class about his clothes does no man no 'arm. I can see as a man's got to be in the swell mob to make big money, and so I'll be one of 'em. I can always pawn a fur coat, anyhow, if I don't fancy it."
His soliloquy was interrupted by the waiter, who placed two snipe and their formidable convoy of vegetables before him, and departed to fetch the beer. Smiler's eyes glistened a little and his lips twitched as he surveyed the repast that was spread for him. He sniffed—and his nostrils twitched and his eyes ceased to glisten.
"Gameyish—very," he said doubtfully, assisting himself liberally to vegetables, "Still, it's a great luxury, I've always heard—snipe is."
He took one on to his plate, cut it in two, hesitated as the piquant odour of the bird assailed him, then placed it in his mouth and bit on it. For the fraction of a second it was difficult to distinguish whether he had broken a tooth or had been suddenly paralysed. He stood up hastily, looking round for the waiter. That unfortunate individual was approaching quickly with the beer. But he put the brake on when he observed the expression on his patron's face, slowed more and more, and finally halted.
Smiler deliberately took a snipe in each hand, "hefting" them for a comfortable grip, as a man about to throw a brick does, and then, even as the waiter turned to run, he threw them in rapid succession at the man.
"These snipes is rotten!" yelled Mr. Bunn furiously, as he threw them. "They've been bad for months!"
One took the waiter on the ear, and the other closed the right eye of the restaurant manager for three clear days. And by the time the confusion had abated, Mr. Bunn was gone, swearing never again to enter any restaurant which sold anything more recherché than a cut off the joint. He went into a bar close by and took three peppermints one after the other to get the taste of the snipe out of his mouth, and then proceeded to the nearest Lockhart's to get a really eatable lunch. But, nevertheless, it was in a very bad temper that, half an hour later, he entered the establishment of one Lewis Hyams, second-hand clothes dealer, of Dutch Street, Paddington.
"I want a fur-lined coat—a good' un!" demanded Smiler of the black-bearded individual with the dull green and old gold complexion and heavy flexible nose, who stood behind the counter cleaning an old pair of trousers with benzine.
The dealer ran his eye over Smiler and gave an excellent imitation of a congratulatory smile.
"Vell, you've come to the right shop. Ve 'ave 'em in qualities except dem cheap vons vit de moths in dem," he informed the prospective customer, smiling like a famished vulture. "Vhat vhas your price?"
"Let's have a look at the coat first," parried Smiler, who had bought a suit from Hyams before.
The dealer crossed the shop to a dim corner, and presently came back with a big overcoat—lined with fur. Rat fur, it looked like.
"Dere's a peautiful ghoat—try it on, mister. It's put aside for a Court gentleman, but he ain't very well—see? You've got it a peautiful figure, mister—try de ghoat on. Give it a chance, mister—'ere, I'll help yer off."
Smiler felt the fur, and a pinch of it came away between his finger and thumb, leaving a bald spot. Hyams angrily snatched the coat away.
"Vhat you doin' it?" he said sourly. "Ain't you know no better for to 'andle a fur ghoat like dat? Talk about de moths. Vhat sort of ghoat yer want, say it?" he said, feverishly.
"Well, I don't want no coat in a moultin' condition," replied Mr. Bunn, with ponderous humour. "You put your dogskin away and let me see a coat. Somethink about five pounds or more."
The dealer raised his hands.
"Vell, vhy didn't yer say it? Dis ghoat's goin' for twenty-five bob! It'll 'ave to be a k'vid now you've spoiled it," he added sadly.
He hung up the "spoiled" coat and looked round the shop doubtfully. There is not much business done in fur coats in Dutch Street, Paddington. Corduroy is too popular there. There was a momentary pause. Then Mr. Hyams suddenly brightened up.
"Vhait a mo'—vhait 'alf a mo'." He clutched Smiler's arm anxiously. "Yer von't go, mister. You'll be it a gentleman, mister, for 'alf a mo'. I've got the very thing."
He darted into a room at the back of the shop, and almost instantly reappeared with a better-looking overcoat, the fur of which was a really excellent imitation of kangaroo, which is said can sometimes be made into a sort of imitation of inferior sable.
"Real sable, mister," he said reverently. He put his hand to his mouth and whispered, "Brought to dis country by poachers vhat get it from de Tsar's own private preserviss at Siberia."
"That's better!" said Smiler. "Let's put it on."
He slipped his arms into it and buttoned it.
"Mister, that's nobby! S'velp me, dat ghoat vhas made for you." He stood back, admiring the really quite reasonable fit of the garment. Then he suddenly raised his voice.
"Izzy!" he cried, and a sleek young vulture of about twenty years came into the shop.
"Look at yer pore grandvater's fur ghoat on de gentleman, Izzy, my poy. Why, it fits him better as it fitted de old man, ain't it—no!"
The younger man walked completely round Smiler and agreed.
"My vord, it's vorth a k'vid more to dis gentleman and anybody else, ain't it?" he said, and having thrown out his valuable suggestion, thrust out his hands, palms upwards, to indicate overwhelming admiration, and went and stood in the doorway, quite artlessly blocking the only exit. Evidently he distrusted the customer.
Smiler regarded himself in a glass which Hyams produced, approved of the fit, and carefully removed the coat, much to the disappointment of a typical British working-man who had just come in.
"Don't like it," said Smiler. "How much is it?"
"Fifteen pound?" said the dealer, in a questioning tone.
"Give you two pound ten," said Smiler. "Take it or leave it."
Hyams's eyes glistened, and he braced up like a war-horse sniffing the fray from afar off. Here was a foeman worthy of him.
"God of Israel!" he said piously, and shook his clenched fists in the air, looked up at the ceiling with fevered eyes. "Vhat ruin!"
He gasped for breath a moment, and, having slightly recovered, quoted fourteen pounds.
Smiler offered two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence, and Mr. Hyams unbuttoned his collar and asked his son to stand aside from the doorway in order to admit more air.
The working-man, whose time did not appear valuable, swore admiringly under his breath as Mr. Hyams metaphorically spat on his hands and fell to work. It was a grim struggle. Smiler advanced his bid by half-crowns, and Hyams reduced his price by crowns. Throughout twenty long minutes the dealer wailed and moaned and urged and wept and implored; and Smiler stood starkly still, determined and implacable as the Day of Judgment; and Izzy, the youth, wrung his hair and his hands for pride at his father's business talents; and the working-man rocked to and fro, swearing softly with emotion. Then suddenly a girl appeared at the door behind the counter, presumably attracted by the noise of the conflict. She stood on the threshold looking into the shop, and Smiler's quick eye—a successful pickpocket requires an eye like a condor—instantly took in her remarkable beauty.
It was the face of a beautiful Jewess whose family might have lived three generations in America, and there is no more beautiful type of face in all the world. Serious, mysterious, alluring, of the East. Dark, with no more than the remotest hint of the Christian girl's pink, perfectly-shaped, with fine teeth and superb eyes. There was a suspicion of hardness on the face—but that may have been the shadow.
Smiler drew his breath in suddenly and paused. Then the girl was gone. But she had completely "jacked up" Smiler's side of the bargain, as he expressed it later. He did not want such a girl to hear him haggling in half-crowns for a fur coat.
"Look here, mister," he said with an unmistakable air of finality, "I'll give six quid for the coat, take it or blooming-well leave it."
This was a jump of seventeen and sixpence. Hyams was smitten dumb for a second. Then recognising that Mr. Smiler had said the last word, he swiftly agreed.
"And I'll take a receipt for it, too," said Mr. Bunn, rather sourly. "It'll be useful, perhaps, when I want to pawn the coat."
"Vill you promise to pawn it 'ere vhen you pawn it?" demanded Hyams, always ready to do business.
"I will—'urry up!" said Smiler easily, and began counting out the money.
Mr. Hyams wrote the receipt, took the six pounds, at Smiler's request gave the coat a brush, and handed it over the counter.
Then an astonishing thing befell. It was now quite silent in the shop, and as Smiler seized the coat just below the collar all present heard the crisp and almost unmistakable crackle of bank-notes seemingly right under Smiler's hand.
Hyams grabbed for the coat like lightning, but in a fraction of time Smiler had it rolled up under his arm and in a grip like the grip of the law. Hyams's face had turned a delicate green.
"Ah! Vhat ruin!" he groaned.
Smiler took a step towards the door. But Hyams put out his hands desperately.
"I don't vhant to sell it de ghoat, mister. For God's don't go avay!" he cried.
"Oh, rats to that!" replied Mr. Bunn politely. "It's mine—linin' and all," he continued meaningly. "Ain't it mine, sport? Ain't I paid for it, and got a receipt for it?"
He applied to the working-man, who spoke like a true Briton.
"Course it's yours, mate," he said warmly. "I never eard of such a thing. Whoddyer mean?" he continued in a tone of ferocity to Hyams. "Whoddyer tryin' on? Tryin' to get my mate's coat away from 'im? You let 'im alone—see—or I'll put it acrost you. You can't sell a thing and then take it back. It's agin the lor. You'll get into trouble, you will. That's what you'll get into." He turned to Mr. Bunn. "Come on, mate," he said. "We'll get off out of it. This place ain't any too honest."
Hyams leaned across the counter, trembling.
"I'll give fifty k'vid for de ghoat, mister," he said.
"Not for this coat," replied Smiler, and turned to the shop-door.
If it was worth fifty pounds to Hyams it was worth it to him.
"If dere's money in de lining of de ghoat it's mine!" said 'Hyams. "Izzy, go and fetch in a policeman."
"That's it, Izzy, fetch two—fetch a sergeant while you're at it," said Smiler facetiously, "and he'll tell you that what a man buys and pays for and gets a receipt for in the presence of a witness, belongs to the man. 'Ere, out of the way!"
He strode suddenly to the door and into the street, and Hyams followed him, muttering a few words to Izzy as he went.
It was now about three o'clock. They fell into line, Smiler walking fast with the coat under his arm, the workman slightly behind Mr. Bunn, and Mr. Hyams about a yard behind the workman, his eyes fastened on the coat in a keen and hungry stare. It was perfectly plain to Smiler that Hyams did not intend to let the coat or its new owner out of his sight until he was convinced that it contained nothing more precious than its fur lining. He just clogged the trail of the pickpocket like an elderly and extremely hungry wolf.
Half-way down the street they passed an antique furniture shop, at the door of which was standing the proprietor—a gentleman named Abraham Cohenstein. He was polishing a gimlet (of a size suitable for making worm-holes), but at sight of Hyams he paused a second to regard the little procession.
Without taking his eyes off Smiler Bunn, Mr. Hyams said a few rapid words in Yiddish, and, shouting to someone at the back of the shop, Mr. Cohenstein tripped forth and joined Hyams on his money trail. Cohenstein's air was that of a fasting hyena. He and Hyams muttered swiftly together as they followed in the steps of Smiler Bunn.
At the end of the street the bloodhounds were reinforced by another—one Moses Morris—who at a few words from Hyams cheerfully left a small jewellery establishment in charge of a boy, and took up the trail, with something in his appearance reminiscent of a starving raven attracted by a dead sheep.
Something peculiar about the three Jews seemed to strike another of the race who was looking into a shop-window round the corner, and he came running across the street and joined them. At this point Smiler turned to the working-man. "You keep with me, mate, and it'll be worth a five quid to you when I've shook 'em off. They'll be accusing me of stealing the coat if I don't keep a witness, and in case we get parted, give us your name and address."
"Me name's Bill Welch, and I lives in Paradise Court, Bishop's Mews, Paddington," said the man; "and I stick to you as long as you've got the price of a pint."
"That's the talk!" said Smiler, and they ambled steadily on—and the bloodhounds ambled steadily after them.
IT is necessary to explain here that the coat which Smiler Bunn had just purchased from the amiable Hyams had originally belonged to Hyams's father, a patriarchal old Israelite, who was reputed to be wealthy. Some three months before he had died, and to the extreme grief of his son he had left nothing behind worth inheriting but the secondhand-clothing establishment. Hyams the younger had searched everywhere and inquired everywhere, but he had not been able to find that the man had left anything at all resembling real money behind him. But he could not have taken it with him. And Hyams knew that he had possessed at least eight hundred pounds. But he had not been able to find more than the few pounds which had been in his father's pocket at the time of his decease, and ha had almost resigned himself to go through life with a broken heart, when he had heard, too late, that musical crackle of bank-notes in the fur coat which had belonged to his father. And then, with stunning force, it had occurred to him that the only thing he had not searched was the fur coat. It was then that he lost his head and grabbed for the coat, and, worse than that, had offered fifty pounds for it.
He could have wept with rage as he followed Mr. Bunn—indeed, he wanted to, but dared not get his eyes blurred. Smiler might dodge them at any moment. Mr. Hyams had good eyesight, and just then he was requiring all of it.
He was afraid to call the police, for he was not quite clear It to the law dealing with money found in fur coats. Did it belong to the vendor, the purchaser, or was it appropriated by the Government? He did not know—nor did his friends, and he was proposing to take no risks beyond offering to pay a small percentage on the profits of the expedition. But all his friends had known of the money which Hyams the elder had been said to possess, and they were only too glad to participate at a percentage.
Curiously enough, Smiler Bunn was refraining from calling the police in to protect him and his property for precisely the same reason as Hyams. Smiler wanted what he termed "the lot" and he was taking what, in his opinion, were the necessary steps to obtain it. As for Bill Welch, he wanted anything he could get—and was, he flattered himself, on the way to getting it.
THE chase began at about three o'clock. After about twenty minutes' quick walking Smiler Bunn began to weary and hailed a hansom. Bill Welch, who climbed in after him, announced that the bloodhounds had hailed a taxicab. Smiler peered through the little window at the back of the hansom and saw for himself that a taxi was following the cab so closely that the bonnet of the motor almost touched the back of the cabman's seat. Eight hungry eyes were staring at him from the taxi.
"Why don't you rip the darn coat open here?" said the well-intentioned William. But Smiler shook his head.
"No fear," he replied. "As long as the notes axe in the coat they're mine, and I've got a receipt for them. Once they're out of the coat I've got to account for where and how I got 'em if them Yiddisher gents call in the police. And I ain't popular with the police. No police would believe I found 'em in a fur coat if them Yids said I pinched 'em out of their pockets. And if they knew who I was, no police would accept any explanation of mine anyhow. I don't mean to say I ain't honest—I'm as straight as a gun-barrel—but what I mean is, it ain't convenient for me to go about offering explanations for being in possession of a lot of bank-notes just now. See?" (Smiler was thinking of the proceeds of several little hauls he had made recently, for which he was still "wanted.")
"What we got to do," continued Smiler, "is to make a good get-away with the coat and open her up nice and quiet when we're alone in my room."
He looked out of the window again.
"It ain't no good tryin' to get away from a taxicab in this hansom. Let's go and have a drink and a snack of something." He lifted the little trap-door in the roof. "Pull up at the first eatin' house," he instructed the cabman.
They were in Oxford Street, and a few doors farther on the cab stopped at a small Italian restaurant. Smiler paid the cabman, and they went inside, Hyams and Co. not three yards behind them.
Smiler stood in the middle of the hot, stuffy restaurant and deliberately put on the fur coat, turned up the collar, carefully put the flaps down over the pockets, and buttoned himself up.
"Now they'll only get rags off me if they get anything at all," he announced, and ordered some chops.
The Jews held a whispered conference, at the end of which Hyams got up and approached the couple with the chops.
"If you lay as much as a finger on me or my coat, Hyams," said Smiler swiftly, "I'll punch your face round under your left earhole, and Bill Welch here'll punch it on round down the back of your neck, so as your collar-band'll choke you."
But the dealer only gave a ghastly smile.
"Vill you do business?" he said. "What you want cash down for de ghoat?"
"What'll you give?"
"Seventy k'vid."
Smiler grinned and shook his head. Hyams, who knew that Smiler could not have any idea as to why the coat was likely to contain anything approaching that sum, groaned and spread out his hands in a kind of despair.
"Vell, eighty k'vid—and two per cent. of what I find it in de linin'."
"Oh, cheese it!" said Mr. Bunn vulgarly, and Hyams sat down. There was another excited conference, which ended in Hyams getting up and leaving the restaurant.
"'Ullo!" said Bill Welch. "Gone for the police."
"Don't you believe it," remarked Smiler cheerfully. "Gone to fetch a few more of the tribe more likely."
But, as a matter of fact, Hyams had gone to the nearest telephone to call up reinforcements of a kind which would appeal to Mr. Bunn more than all the Jews in London ranged in battle-array.
Smiler decided to counter the move.
He called the manager of the restaurant and the three waiters.
"Gents all," he said loudly. "I have reason to believe I'm being followed by a gang of sharps. I don't know for certain, but I have me suspicions. Now I want you gents to understand that when you're dealing with me you're dealing with a gent and if I should be set upon in your cafy I consider it to be your duty to protect your customers."
He put on the table three half-sovereigns and a sovereign, and the waiters pouched the smaller coins with an expertness which was only equalled by that of the manager as he pouched the sovereign. Then, obviously restraining with difficulty from cheering Mr. Bunn, they retreated to their various positions to scowl at the occupants of the other table.
The manager himself attended to the requirements of Smiler and his friend, gritting his teeth at the Jews, who had ordered coffee only.
In about ten minutes Hyams returned—alone, but with a slightly more animated expression. He rejoined his companions, and they all sat on silently, patiently, at the table next to Smiler's—exactly like four birds of prey sitting by a dying koodoo on an African plain.
Smiler and Bill Welch were just lighting two pallid cigars which the manager had recommended, when the door of the restaurant swung open and a woman came in.
She was well, but rather flashily, dressed, and was unusually good-looking in a dark, brilliant, Eastern fashion. Her age might have been about thirty. She was rouged considerably, and the pencil had obviously assisted Nature in the regions of her eyebrows and lashes. She had fine eyes, very bright.
"Bit Jewish, I reckon," muttered Smiler to himself as she swept past, apparently without seeing the waiters or Hyams and Co., and took the table next to Mr. Bunn's. Rather to Smiler's astonishment she flashed a glance in his direction, which she repeated immediately she was seated at her table.
Smiler hesitated a moment, then, for he was not and never had been diffident with fair unknowns, risked a half-smile.
The lady bowed, and with her bold expressive eyes indicated the vacant chair at her table. Smiler rose. Neither he nor Mr. Welch noticed the faint gleam of triumph that suddenly lit up the eyes of Hyams and Co.
"Bill," said Mr. Bunn, "order what you fancy, and wait at this table for us. I've got an appointment meself."
The working-man nodded, and Smiler took the chair next to the unknown.
"Excuse me," she said, with a slight American accent. "But aren't you Captain Wilkinson Laker? We met at Monte Carlo last year, I think."
"No, lady, that was me brother," lied Smiler readily. "I'm Major Luke Laker—retired."
"Ah, I thought I saw the resemblance!" She paused to order coffee. "You have served with your regiment in India, have you not?"
"How did you know that?" questioned Mr. Bunn, temporising.
She laughed quite naturally.
"Why, by your wearing a heavy fur coat indoors on a moist close day like this. Officers who have served in India take a long time to become accustomed to the climate of England again."
It was skilfully done. Put as she had put it, the bringing of the coat into the conversation was entirely natural. Indeed, anyone but a person of almost ultra-refined taste would on such a day have remarked upon the wearing of a heavy fur coat indoors.
But just then Smiler Bunn was electric with suspicion, and some vague instinct of self-protection stirred in his heart like a little live thing waking from sleep.
He stared rudely into the woman's eyes, and even as he stared saw a strange and menacing change come into them. They grew suddenly hard and cold and threatening, and Smiler drew back.
"Ah, I know who you are, all right!" he said, "You were in Hyams's shop when I bought the coat—only you've altered yourself a bit since then—paint and stuff. But it's all right, Gertie. Don't waste no time trying to come no confidence trick on me. Your pals is sitting at the other table. Hadn't you better kite across to 'em and tell 'em it's no go?"
He started to rise.
"Sit down!" she whispered sibilantly, and there was that in her voice which caused Mr. Bunn to resume his chair. If her eyes had been hard before, they were like black diamonds now. She looked dangerous and snakish. Smiler was not afraid, but he was a little—superstitious.
"What do you want?" he said sourly.
"I want to make a trade with you—and we've got to do it quick. Listen here!"
"I'm listenin'," said Smiler.
"Last week you were pointed out to me by a man named Israelstein."
Smiler winced. Israelstein was a receiver with whom he did business.
"Israelstein told me you were a gun—a pickpocket. And Israelstein knows."
"Never heard of the man——" began Smiler, but she broke in swiftly.
"Ah, cut it out!" she snapped. "What's the good? I'm telling you what you are. I'm not shooting off a sermon at you. Well now—see here! Have you ever heard tell of the Chicago Kitten—a woman pickpocket across the water? Some folk call her Kate the Gun."
Smiler opened his eyes. In common with most pickpockets he had heard of her—and he knew that she was considered to be at the very top of her criminal profession. And apart from her extraordinary skill, he also knew that she was said to be a desperate enemy, but a fine friend. That she was desperate enough, Smiler, like the Chicago and New York police, knew. That she was a useful friend was knowledge that he had yet to acquire.
"I've heard of her," he said sullenly.
"She's me—I'm Kate the Gun!" said the woman simply. "And, say, don't make me lose my temper. They call me the Kitten at home, but I ain't feeling very kittenish just now. Say, keep friendly."
Smiler remembered hearing of two dead men in the States, the manner of whose deaths had never yet been accounted for, although Kate the Gun had twice been asked the question—by the Law. Twice she had proven her lack of knowledge concerning the deaths—but there was a grim and sinister significance attaching to the fact that they had gone to her for explanation of the murders, and had put her on trial for them, that gave Mr. Bunn an uneasy thrill. His glance wavered for a second. Then he pulled himself together.
"All right—I'll make a note of it," he said jauntily. "What do you want?"
She favoured him with a hard little smile.
"That's better," she murmured. "Well, now, I don't like butting into the business of a brother gun, I want you to understand, but this business is different. Now, you've just bought a coat from Hyams, and he wants to buy it back—see? He reckons there's something in the lining. Well, in the ordinary way, if any grafter came to me and asked me to get away with what a brother gun had bought or even hooked, it would be the stony stare for his, and rapid, too. Hyams is a useful man to me and my gang—never mind why. He is, and I want to oblige him. You get that, don't you? Well, I don't go much on coat linings, and, for all I know, Hyams is hunting for trouble. Anyway, he's willing to give you ninety pounds for the coat, and, say "—she fixed him with an eye like a stiletto—"unless you're crazy you'll take it. Now don't you say 'No.' Remember who I am—and add to that the little fact that I've got over here with me two Chicago plug-uglies that'd sandbag you like a dog the first time you went out alone at night and drifted more than a dozen yards from the nearest cop. They're what I call my guard of honour, and they're the two toughest propositions that ever came out of the States. Now, don't think this is a dream nor a vaudeville act either. It's cold business, in London, in the year one nine one nit, and if you think it's safe, why, go right ahead and keep the coat. But you'll be plugged, sure. I'm doing this to oblige Hyams, you understand, not because I want to knock you. If you'll sell the coat you'll oblige me, and you're not the man to refuse to oblige a lady anyway. Are you?" she concluded sardonically.
"Not under the circumstances," said Smiler, rather gracefully, he thought.
"No, I had a kind of idea you were a polite sport when you were really up against it. Well, then, it's a trade? And if anyone was to drive up in a chariot and ask my opinion I should say you've got a wad of easy money, and that Hyams is on a gold brick that'll break his heart like a camel's back. But that's his funeral anyway."
She rose and went across to the expectant quartet at the other table. Bill Welch stolidly continued to order and swallow Benedictine—a liqueur he had never encountered before, and with which he had fallen in love at first sight.
After another bout of whispering, Smiler saw the Jews search themselves with very serious faces, and finally pool a number of bank-notes, which Kate the Gun took and counted. Evidently Hyams's heart had failed him, and instead of taking the whole risk, he had formed, as it were, a miniature limited liability company with his three friends, so that each put up a share of the purchase money, and would receive a proportionate share of the concealed bank-notes.
Kate the Gun brought over the money to Mr. Bunn, and, having counted it, that gentleman slipped off the fur coat and surrendered it to the Jews. Then he joined Bill Welch, and the pair of them went down the restaurant and paid the bill. They lingered a moment at the door to see what Hyams Ltd. would do with the coat. They were not left long in doubt.
Hyams had borrowed a penknife from Cohenstein, and very carefully was opening the seams. They were all standing round, craning over. In a few minutes Hyams took out the fur lining—he was not the sort of man to waste it—and they all leaned eagerly forward.
There were no bank-notes there—not even a postal-order.
Cohenstein fainted on the spot. With a howl of despair Hyams tore a fistful of hair from his head. Mr. Morris silently laid his head upon the table and cried like a child. The remaining Jew frantically re-examined the coat.
"But de notes vhas dere," moaned Hyams. "I heard 'em kerackle when de man took de ghoat. Like it as if der vhas dozens and dozens of notes."
He grasped himself at the back of the neck with both hands and lamented.
Kate the Gun, who was looking on with an air of disdain —she would have made less outcry over the loss of ten times the total loss of the four—suddenly gave a hard little enlightened laugh.
"Say that again, Hyams!" she said sharply. "Did you say you heard a rustle like dozens of notes when that skate took the coat?"
"Yes—like a fortune of notes," lamented Hyams, gripping himself like a man wringing his own neck.
The Chicago Kitten laughed again, opened her bag, and turned her back.
"Listen, you clams!" she said politely.
Her hands moved quickly, and into the sudden silence of the restaurant stole a quick, dry, crackling rustle—unmistakable, electric, alluring, and altogether lovely—the rustle of "fivers" and "tenners" and "fifties."
From where they stood Messieurs Smiler Bunn and William Welch could see what she was doing—merely rapidly counting a rather thick packet of notes.
If you hold a number of notes in your left hand without resting it on a table or support, and, wetting the tips of the right-hand fingers, count the notes, you will create a quite noisy rustling.
Kate the Gun wheeled round on Hyams.
"Why, you muttonhead," she said cheerfully, "that rustling you heard in the shop was made by this mother's pet. I was counting my wad when you were selling that coat; it came out of the room behind the coat. The door was open—I left it open myself."
A thought struck her, and her eyes narrowed like those of a wild cat.
"Say, yeh don't think these notes are yours, do yeh?" she said in terrific American.
But they hastily shook their heads and spread out their palms.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" she demanded, obviously more from curiosity than because she cared whether the quartet got back their losses.
Instinctively they turned towards Smiler Bunn.
But Mr. Bunn had turned also instinctively, half a minute before—turned out of the restaurant door, round the nearest corner, and into a taxi.
That was a happy, happy day for Smiler Bunn. Also William Welch.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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