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Roy Glashan's Library
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Headpiece from The Week, Brisbane, 25 Nov 1898
IT seemed from his face and figure his name must be Prosser, but it was not; his name was Jerry Bilder—Jeremiah Bilder. As he came out of the public house, he wiped his mouth and thick, stubby moustache, and gazed down the street with the bright confidence of a man who has all the world before him. He fell into the stream of people flowing towards Waterloo station; and it was plain that he was an observer, a furtive observer of men.
At Waterloo station he had taken a ticket for Epsom, and was coming out of the booking-office when a hoarse voice said: "Wotcher, Jerry!"
He turned to face two gentlemen whose names seemed plainly Prosser, but he said to them, "'Ello, Warty? 'Ello Scotty!"
"All on your own, Jerry? You'd better come along of hus," said the gentleman whose excrescent fingers gave him a plain right to the name of Warty.
"I'm there," said Jerry, heartily. "Nosey Ricketts 'e was a-comin' with me; but 'e was copped las' night at the 'Orns, Kennington. Six months 'ard for a J's watch it'll be. But I says to myself I'll find a good old pel or two down there. You an' me, an' Scotty, we ought to do a bit of biz."
"'E was a Juggins, a J," sang Warty gaily with one eye shut.
The three gentlemen were uncommonly alike in the checked pattern of their trousers, the dirtiness of their shirts, the gilded labels round their cigars, and a certain fragrance of beer that enhaloed their heads. They straggled to the refreshment bar; Jerry did the honours, and Warty cheered the draught with the sentiment: "Beer for Business, Scotch for Pleasure."
Scotty, a big raw-boned Scotsman, seemed a silent person. They travelled down to Epsom together, and walked to the course, very genial, bubbling over with the milk of human kindness; but an hour later they stood, ugly and disconsolate, at the gate of the ten-shilling ring, and Warty was speaking:
"We must chance it, so fork out the three bob, Scotty. There ain't a mug worth troubling about outside.
"Jerry's the man; 'e 'as the most gentlemanly wyes of us three; I admits it freely; an' 'e'll do best for us in the ring."
Scotty drew, reluctantly three shillings from his pocket, Warty three, and Jerry, who was to have the fun, four. He bade them watch for him, and saying, "What do you think?" to Warty's last adjuration to make sure that the mug was going back by train, he went into the ring and resumed his furtive observation of his fellow men.
THE big race was over; he had marked down several likely persons who had drawn money, and he stood by a young couple, watching one of the lucky ones, when the young man, saying to the girl, "We must follow our luck, Kate," pulled from his trouser's pockets a handful of gold and notes, and laughed.
At the sight Jerry felt a sudden lively interest in this pair. He had been indifferent to them, almost contemptuous; but now he turned to them with his best attention. The young man had a fresh face; a light overcoat, too large for him, gave him a weedy air; the girl was a very pretty, demure creature, with a beautifully developed figure, and brown mischievous eyes.
"From the country," thought Jerry, and turning, said to the young man with his florid, pot-house politeness, "Could you oblige me with a pencil, sir?"
The young man gave him a very keen glance that might have warned him, had not Jerry been bestowing a captivating smile of chivalrous admiration on the girl, said "Certainly," and gave him his pencil. Jerry marked the name of a horse on his card, and said, "I like a little bit of sportin' myself; and when the Derby comes round, I shuts up' my shop an' gives all my hassistants a 'oliday, an' down I comes."
He beamed on the two of them. "I lose a few pounds by it. But what's a few pounds to a man in my position compared to 'ealth—'ealth an' sport, sir?"
He thought it well to establish his position, and he established it with an air.
"Yes, of course," said the young man civilly, and looked at Jerry's boots. They were not the boots of a prosperous tradesman.
"I 'eard you say as you'd 'ad a bit of luck," said Jerry, with unsuspicious frankness. "I've 'ad a bit myself, an' I've followed it up." He went on to tell them that he had backed a horse called Morland for the next race, which was untrue; that he had heard that it was certain to win, which was true, and in the end, since he did not offer to put this money on for them, they made up their minds to back it.
"What will you have on it, Kate?" said the young man.
The girl wrinkled her pretty forehead and said, "Well, I've won twenty-three pounds. I think I'll have three pounds on this time." And she gave him the money. Jerry's eyes opened. If the girl had won twenty-three pounds, what had the young man? He offered to take care of her while the young man put the money on, and the young man slipped into the group round a bookmaker.
While he was gone, Jerry obtained the piece of information he required; they were going back to London by train, and his heart grew warm within him. He talked to the girl with a paternal, admiring kindliness.
The young man came back, and said he had got eight to one about the horse; and they watched the race together. When Morland won easily by two lengths, the girl clapped her hands with delight and laughed, and the young man slapped Jerry on the back, and cried, "By Jove, sir, that was a rattling good tip!"
He hurried away to draw the money; and the girl thanked Jerry very prettily. When the young man came back, he gave the girl five five-pound notes, and while she was putting them away in some recess of her skirts, he held another out to Jerry, saying: "You must really take this, sir, for your fine tip."
Jerry took the note with an alacrity as inappropriate as his boots to a prosperous tradesman, and declared the young man was a sportsman after his own heart. They had a drink together; and for the rest of the afternoon Jerry's friendliness grew. The young people did not seem, indeed, to desire any friends; they had plenty to say to one another, and their talk ran on furnishing; there was a happy flush on the girl's cheeks, and the young man's eyes were bright and shining.
But Jerry kept running up against them; and his gratitude, excessive in a prosperous tradesman who had had a bit of luck, was almost picturesque. Now and again he might have been seen regarding them from a distance, over the shoulders of other sportsmen, with the benevolent air of a proprietor—a proprietor of innocent, fattening lambs. He found time to go out and explain matters to Warty and Scotty; and to Warty's outcry against mixing business and a woman, he set forth that it was "fifty quid apiece," the amiable Scotchman only remarking, "Ah'll twist her—throttle.
A little while before the last race Jerry's young couple left the course. They walked along briskly, arm in arm, affectionately oblivious of the crowd, and the three gentlemen followed them. At the station the eddying of the throng brought Jerry to the girl's side. It also brought Warty and Scotty; but Jerry did not introduce them, he did not seem, indeed, to know them; he talked of having escaped a lonely journey amongst strangers by chancing on his young friends.
There was inrush and, a scramble for seats when the train came in; when it left the station, there were only the five of them in the first-class compartment. Jerry was congratulating the young pair at length on having so much room and being so comfortable, when Warty pulled out a pack of cards, and broke in, "What d'yer sye to a little gime of nap, genelmen, just to pass the time awye? Perhaps the young lidy would like to tike a 'and too?"
"I'm agreeable; we're sportsmen all," said Jerry, heartily. "We've 'ad a bit of luck, me and my young friends, and we can do with a bit more."
The young man nudged the girl quickly with his elbow, and said after a pause, "Very well; I don't mind. But tho young lady will look on; she will help me play my hand."
"Yes, yes," said Jerry. "It's too exciting for a lidy."
There was a shifting of seats which left Warty in the corner, the young man next to him, the girl next to the young man, and Jerry and Scotty. facing them. The young man pulled off his overcoat for a card-table with great readiness; and had the three gentlemen been in a humour to notice trifles, they would have seen that he took off his weediness along with it.
They fixed shilling points, and had played for five minutes, the three gentlemen carelessly and nervously, the young man cool, making little jokes to the girl, when Jerry said, "This ain't a very sporting gime, gentlemen, let's have a few rounds at a fiver the trick."
"I'm agreeable," paid Warty; and the Scotchman mumbled an assent.
"No," said the young man, quietly; "this'll do."
"You surprise me," said Jerry in a sorrowful tone; "I thought you was a sportsman. I've seed you win a 'andful of notes. Come"—his voice rose blustering—"show a bit of spirit. Don't go shiming me before these gentlemen; hout with your flimsies, and plye like a man."
"I'd like to see your fiver first," said the young man, quietly.
There was a pause for fully ten seconds, and the air of the carriage was of a sudden electric with storm. The mask fell from Jerry's face; he turned a very ugly, dangerous, bare-teethed beast, and snarled "Shut it! 'And over the boodle—quick, or you and yer tatt'll get bashed and chucked out of the trine!"
"Rats! Look out, Kate!" cried the young man, as Warty and the Scotchman threw themselves on him in a flash. Jerry clutched the girl; she twisted out of his arms with surprising strength, got to her feet, and as he rose, he did not know what happened, but as he phrased it some months later, when he came out of prison, "Somethin' like a 'arf-brick took me on the p'int of the jaw, an' knocked me silly."
It was the girl's fist. He went down like a log, senseless; and that was a pity; for he missed seeing and feeling her set one foot firmly on his face, and land the Scotchman, who was striking viciously at her lover's head, a terrific smash behind the ear. He missed seeing the Scotchman sink down with a grunt, and the young man, who had looked weedy, get Warty's throat in a grip of iron, and drive his head through the carriage window. He missed seeing the young man and the young girl, with flushed triumphant faces, shake hands, and then, remembering, throw their arms round one another and kiss.
WHEN he came to himself, feeling faint and sick, his head very loose on his shoulders, he was first conscious of a familiar feeling, as of handcuffs about his wrists. Then he saw the young man at the further end of the carriage binding up the girl's cut knuckles, and heard Warty groaning. He tried to move, only to discover that he and his two friends were bound by the wrists, with their own dirty handkerchiefs, in a helpless, vicious circle.
His movement drew the young man's attention.
"You've come to, my friend, have you?" he said in a brisk, cheerful voice, with an official ring in it that Jerry knew well. "Let me introduce ourselves; perhaps if I had done it before it would have prevented this little misunderstanding. I am Detective Inspector Ramsay, of the Birmingham police and this is my intended—alias Kate Morton, the lady champion middleweight boxer."
Jerry lay quietly back; he felt that he had made a mistake.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.