CHAPTER III
THE COMPANY'S FIRST OPERATION
I am bound to confess that, admirable and worthy as our scheme for benefiting Humanity seemed to be, eager, too, as I was to double the Children's Hospital, I had never believed that it would find expression in action. I had reckoned without Chelubai. His philanthropic instincts were aroused to the promotion of the Theosophic ideal of Universal Brotherhood; and his sense of humor was not of a character to suggest to him any doubts as to the method of compassing that excellent ideal by the forcible removal of Captains of Industry. His business instincts were aroused to making a practical success of the Company. He had already begun to talk of it with a veritable fatherly affection. His instincts once aroused, he had in him a store of active earnestness which would not let him rest till he had satisfied their legitimate, or illegitimate, cravings. I believe it is the basic trait of his energetic race. Moreover, during his business career so far east of Suez, he had learned to hold human life cheap. He drove Bottiger and me along; and I realized very quickly that whatever else happened we were certainly going to attempt to remove Albert Amsted Pudleigh on the first convenient occasion.
Chelubai kept us hard at work at our preparations; and it was pleasant, healthy work. In the mornings we practised the use of the sand-bag and the noose-bag, as we agreed to call my portable lethal chamber. We banged away at a small mark on the wall with the sand-bag, learning to judge the distance from which to strike with the full swing of it. We took it in turns to slip the noose-bag over each other's heads. It was a much more difficult instrument than the sand-bag, but it worked well. Even the unchloroformed had a lengthy struggle to get it off: twice out of every thrice it proved impossible to get off till the man working the noose chose to loosen it. Above all, we satisfied ourselves that it did not easily mark the neck. On the whole, we were very pleased with it
We practised also the use of the knife and the strangling trick of the thugs which Chelubai had learned from an old member of that brotherhood who was spending his green old age at Singapore. It was much more difficult than either the sandbag or the noose-bag; for we could not practise on each other's necks lest we should diminish the number of the Company. We were forced to make shift to practise on the leg of an inverted armchair, a poor substitute for the human neck, so that we were doubtful of attaining sufficient skill in it to justify its use.
Bottiger had the healthy-minded young Englishman's aptitude for games, and was indeed always playing them. It was little wonder then that, keen fisherman as he was, he soon excelled us at the use of the noose-bag—as early as the third day, when he plied it, there was no getting it off. In the use of the sand-bag Chelubai easily held his own, it being a national weapon. But Bottiger's superiority to us in the use of the noose-bag exercised a happy influence on his disposition, and wore away his gloom—he was eager to remove Pudleigh, but he thought the philanthropic motive an affectation. The noose-bag made him feel, I think, that he was combining sport with philanthropy; and a philanthropic career, thus raised to a practical level, was no longer revolting to his common sense. But even so, he was as yet hardly as enthusiastic a philanthropist as I could have wished.
We also set about arming ourselves with drugs, in case domestic removal should ever come within the scope of the Company's operations. I had set my heart on atropine; but it is no less difficult to obtain than to detect I decided that, as an American, Chelubai had a greater power of sustained application than myself, and I induced him to purchase a book on the diseases of the eye, and set about mastering all the symptoms which demand the use of that drug, that he might feign them, and have it prescribed for him. We needed, too, a good hocussing drug; and while Chelubai and I were debating how to find a doctor of sufficient scientific attainments to be able to give us the formula, Bottiger, in a somewhat shame-faced way, told us that he knew a doctor as able as he was drunken; and he was sure that for a couple of guineas he could get from him what he wanted.
It was an easy enough matter to buy false beards which would look like natural growths in the dusk or the dark; and we also bought noiseless boots, in the soles of which little pads of india-rubber had been fixed to deaden the foot-fall. It went rather against the grain to wear ready-made boots; but we had no time to have them made for us. Indeed, it seemed to me dangerous to have them made to measure, for neither a respectable barrister nor a respectable baronet really needs noiseless boots. These we bought from a strange bootmaker. Chelubai made no bones about it; he assured us that both in the United States and Shanghai it was the custom to wear ready-made boots.
Having thus equipped ourselves for our philanthropic enterprise, and having decided to use the sand-bag, we allowed Fortune to choose who should strike the mere blow. We took a pack of cards, shuffled it in turn, and having decided that, as at the reputable games of chance, the lowest should deal—I mean strike—we cut. For my part, I cut with a singular uneasiness, and turned up the five of clubs with a veritable but unworthy thrill of dismay. Bottiger cut the knave of clubs, and I heard with some disgust his gasp of relief. Then Chelubai cut the three of diamonds, and my heart lifted. It seemed to me that Fortune had shown very good judgment in choosing him, for he was more expert in the use of the sand-bag than I. I took it as a happy omen.
"Chelubai's luck," he said mournfully. "But after all I might have cut a spade; and I shouldn't have liked that. Spades are so unlucky; but diamonds are all right." And his face grew brighter.
I made haste to get us whiskeys and sodas. Both Bottiger and Chelubai were a little pale, and I fancy that I was, too.
We did not spend all our time on practice and equipment. We examined Stoneleigh Street, and at four o'clock in the afternoon we went down to Pudleigh's offices in the city and set ourselves to learn his movements. First we made the reluctant Bottiger call upon him and inquire into the advantage of investing in Amalgamated Fertilizers. Then, when he left his offices at five, Bottiger pointed him out to us.
Even if I had not known him to be a robber of the orphan, his looks afforded every justification for his removal. He was a bulky, fat man, six feet high, with greasy, copper-colored, clean-shaven face, double chinned, hook nosed and thick lipped. All the baseness of the world shone from his little pig's eyes, so that a philanthropist, who had really the courage of his philanthropy, might easily have shot him at sight without a qualm.
He was easy to dog and we dogged hint Since the weather was fine, I even found it an exhilarating task, and filled with a sense of kinship with all the detectives famous in fact and fiction, we followed him to Waterloo Station, journeyed down to East Surbiton in the same train, and conducted him, at a distance, to his pretentious many-gabled villa. We watched over this till ten o'clock, and then, sure that he was domesticated for at least this night, we returned to town and supped with Chelubai.
On the Wednesday and Thursday we did this, shod with our noiseless boots, with our beards and our sand-bags—we all went armed lest Chelubai's blow should fail—in our pockets. On the Friday, when Pudleigh came out of his office carrying a little black bag in his hand, he seemed to me to wear another air, a gay and jaunty air. He blew his nose in a swaggering way, walked to the Mansion House and took a white 'bus. It was a still and muggy evening, but he went inside; we climbed on to the top of it
Chelubai said, "I think our time has come."
"It looks like it," I said.
"I'd better be off then," said Bottiger eagerly. It was his task to go home, send away his man early and sit there, so that, if need were, we should be ready with an alibi.
"Not yet," said I. "Let's be sure that he is not going home."
Our quarry did not get out at Piccadilly Circus as we had expected, but went on to Oxford Circus, and got out there. He stood on the curb looking about him; we looked into two or three shops, and presently a young woman of a trying, suburban type, anæmic and over-dressed, joined him. They turned and walked along Oxford Street
"Now you can go," I said to Bottiger; and he hailed a hansom with a look of joy quite unseemly, seeing that he left us to the harder work.
Chelubai and I followed our quarry and his companion at a distance of twenty paces, and presently I saw that Pudleigh under the stimulus of gratified vanity, induced, doubtless, by his companion's striking appearance, and doubtless, too, by the warming sense of being a devil of a fellow, had begun to strut. I was disgusted, and pointed out to Chelubai that a man who could strut in Oxford Street, and that in the company of an over-dressed female whom he had no definite intention of marrying, had indeed no right to live.
I fancy that my conscience was setting itself at ease by painting Pudleigh in as black colors as possible. It need not have been at the pains; he was destined, and at once, to paint himself in blacker colors than any I could have found for him, for a hundred yards down Oxford Street he turned with his companion into a noxious Italian restaurant of the half-crown dinner type—he was worth two hundred thousand pounds.
Chelubai and I stopped short, exchanged one glance of extreme disgust, and followed them gloomily into it. Confronted by a half-crown Franco-Italian dinner—French cooking by Italians—our fine enthusiasm was clamped, our fine joy in the philanthropic endeavor fled, a cold resignation reigned dully in our hearts. We did not dare to look at the menu, but awaited the coming of the food in a painful silence. For my part, I no longer regarded Albert Amsted Pudleigh from the lofty, impersonal, philanthropic point of view; a savage bitterness against him began to seethe in my heart. I watched him and his inamorata with a cold malignity; and when I saw that she affected "the perfect lady" and minced, I wished that she had been included in our contract with Honest John Driver. The lingering delicacy with which she ate her food was terrible to see. They dallied with that dreadful meal, with the sour soup, the stale fish, the dry hut Siberian pheasant, the thin-set ice; they drank champagne with it. All the while Albert Amsted Pudleigh gurgled and leered at her with a tireless energy, and she minced back at him. Their horrible, undisguised satisfaction with the food, with the plushed and mirrored room, and with one another was as revolting a sight as I have ever seen. As a rule I find the joys of the vulgar infinitely pathetic; the joy of this pair, on the top of the Siberian pheasant, made me loathe the human race I was about to benefit.
We had eaten our dinner, or rather as much of it as the necessity of being fit for our work and our strong sense of our duty to Humanity could thrust down our throats, and were trying to soothe our outraged and clamorous stomachs with some powerful Trichinopoly cheroots I happily chanced to have with me, when we saw Pudleigh paying his bill, paid ours and came out of the restaurant before them. We came out of it with every morsel of human kindliness wrenched from our hearts. We were rather beasts of prey than philanthropists; and I saw Chelubai bare his teeth in the snarl of a tiger, a man-eater, as he felt in his hip pocket to assure himself that the sand-bag was really there.
We crossed the road and watched our enemies come out and walk along the street They insulted us by walking with the air of people who have dined well. We followed them; and so strong was our feeling about that Franco-Italian half-crown dinner that insensibly we fell into the stealthy gait of beasts of prey.
In their state of exaltation they seemed inclined to take exercise, for they walked to the Charing Cross Road and turned down it. I saw Pudleigh tilt his hat to a more rakish angle, and he put his arm through that of his companion. Suddenly a horrible foreboding seized me that he was going to deal us another blow. It was only too well founded: they turned into the King's Theatre of Varieties.
A drawing-room entertainment on the top of a Franco-Italian dinner was too much for us. I groaned in my anguish, and the sulphurous language of Shanghai came bubbling from Chelubai's lips. We must have been the best part of a minute pulling ourselves together; then we went into the grand circle. We stopped in it long enough to assure ourselves that our enemies had found seats, and that the perfect lady was mincing still; then Chelubai led the way to the American bar. Three whiskey sours braced us to the point of returning to our duty, and standing within hearing of that drawing-room entertainment. Then at the end of a song I was caught up short by hearing Pudleigh laugh—it sounded like a man gargling with salad oil.
I turned to Chelubai and said: "Is the rascal never going to get into a quiet corner where we can knock him on the head?"
I must have spoken with impatient ferocity, for Chelubai said: "For God's sake, do nothing rash! You can't expect an exalted mission like ours to be easy."
"Easy!" I groaned. "The King's Palace of Varieties on the top of a Franco-Italian dinner!"
"After all, it might have been Slatty and Gaiter's," said Chelubai.
I had not thought of that, and it quieted me. A succession of gymnasts and the ventriloquist of my childhood reduced me after a while to a state of apathy not far removed from imbecility. But at last the entertainment came to an end, and the jostling crowd revived me again to the philanthropic pitch.
Our enemies came out before us and stood on the curb waiting for a hansom. I took Chelubai by the arm, thrust him into the first that came, and bidding the driver drive to Vauxhall Station, jumped in after him.
As the cab started Chelubai said: "I don't like this. We ought not to lose sight of them."
"Tell the driver to follow their cab, I suppose, and provide a witness who could not only swear to our being near the scene of the removal, but to our having followed the removed man there," I growled.
"You're right," said Chelubai.
I sat back in the cab nursing my grudge against Pudleigh; and, thanks to the exasperating evening he had forced on me, I found myself very much less moved and excited than I had expected, now that the hour of strenuous action was upon me. As for Chelubai, the admirable national coolness stood him in good stead. He took the sand-bag from his pocket, and dandled it fondly while he made sure that it was fit for use.
When we came to Vauxhall Station, we paid the cabman, walked sharply through the station, came out on the other side into the Harleyf ord Road, went up it to the Oval, and turned into Stoneleigh Street.
It was empty, and Chelubai said: "Suppose they took a faster cab, and Pudleigh's gone?"
"No chance of it," I said, with assurance.
We took our stand at the mouth of the little lane in the middle of the street, for we did not know the house in which the inamorata of Pudleigh lived, put on our false beards and waited. Seven or eight minutes dragged by, and for all that I had made up my mind that the world would be better without Pudleigh; they were the slowest and most uncomfortable minutes of my life. Now and again Chelubai jerked nervously on his feet, and every time my heart jumped into my mouth. I wanted very badly to say something cheerful, but for the life of me I could not find words. Besides, my mouth was too dry.
Then a cab clattered into the street, and drew up only a few doors from us. Our enemies got out of it, and a bitter altercation about sixpence followed. I found it very tiresome indeed, for I was burning to get the business over, and it had the happy effect of making me again furiously angry with Pudleigh. At last the cabman, worsted, whipped up his horse and went up the street; half way up it he stopped his cab and shouted back: "Eyetalian! Dirty Eyetalian!"
"What impudence!" we heard the lady say.
"I don't notice those fellers," said Pudleigh superbly.
"How brave you are, Albert!" said the lady. "I am always afraid of them."
"I fancy that I can take care of meself," said Pudleigh. And though I could not see him, I knew well that he spoke with the great air.
"I'm sure you can," said the lady.
Some embracing followed. Then the lady opened the door with her latch-key.
"One more 'ug, ducky," said Pudleigh. We heard the sound of a smacking kiss, and the door was shut.
We peeped out, and saw Pudleigh looking at the door. He chuckled greasily, turned on his heel and went down the street.
"It's up to papa," said Chelubai in a shaky whisper; and we came out, and followed him swiftly on noiseless feet.
He waddled along, and we caught him up under the palings of the Oval. As I passed him I knocked off his hat with a smart tap of my cane. He turned his face to me, and said, "What the"
There was a thud, and down he went.
I stood staring at him stupidly, and Chelubai hissed in my ear: "Be smart! You go that way, I'll go this."
I looked at Chelubai, and with some half-formed notion of preventing the identification of Pudleigh, stooped down, caught up his bag and strode off down towards the Harleyford Road, dimly aware that Chelubai was hurrying round the Oval the other way.
At the corner I looked back, and saw that Pudleigh, lying in the shadow of the Oval palings, was hardly visible.