Chapter 15

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THE ex-detective welcomed the newcomer with a smile and a cordial good evening. The latter seemed somewhat surprised, but returned the civility.

“Shall we make room for you by the fire?” Pank suggested. “The young lady and I will move up a little.”

“Very kind of you,” the other replied, with a deprecatory wave of the hand. “I have a weakness for bars myself. Later on, if I may, I’ll bring a chair up. Come on, Harry,” he added, making his way to the small opening. “A pint of stout---and look sharp about it.”

For some reason or other the owner of the little haven seemed depressed.

“A pint of stout,” he repeated thoughtfully.

“What’s the matter?” his prospective customer demanded. “It’s a good enough drink, isn’t it?”

“When you drink my stout or when you drink my beer,” the publican replied, “either of them are good drinks, but there’s one sad point about ’em----”

“And what’s that?”

The landlord leaned across the extemporised counter which divided the two rooms and was the only thing which suggested a public house.

“They want paying for,” he whispered hoarsely. “Look here, Mr. Humble----”

He unhooked a slate which hung in a recess and tapped with a pencil a certain name with a long list of entries underneath. The name was Humble and the list of drinks consumed was formidable. The owner of the name scowled at the slate.

“All that,” he remarked.

“Not to speak of the free drinks you’ve had,” the landlord reminded him. “Now, if you’ve got the price of a pint of stout in your pocket, I won’t take it off your account as many would, but I’ll give you the stout. Could any one say fairer than that?”

The landlord looked around the room as though to challenge comment. Ernest Pank met his eye and plunged into the discussion.

“What’s all this trouble about a pint of stout?” he asked. “My friend, Mr. Humble, will have it on me.”

The latter turned his head. There was something furtive about his expression, as though the sound of his own name had filled him with suspicions.

“How did you know my name?” he enquired.

Ernest Pank smiled. The fact that he had just heard the landlord mention it seemed to have escaped his notice.

“I like that,” he exclaimed. “I’m a Norwich man, aren’t I? I was down where you used to work, not many days ago. Draw a stout, landlord, and give us another drink each. How’s business, Mr. Humble? This is my cousin, Miss Pank.”

“And what may your name be?” Mr. Humble asked, not over graciously.

“Curiously enough,” the ex-detective confided, “my name is Pank too, same as my cousin’s. Plenty of us about the city and all of us more or less related.”

“When were you down at the place where I used to work?” Mr. Humble asked, still suspicious.

“Let me see. It must have been six weeks ago. You were just closing down, I believe.”

This was a desperate venture, but just then Ernest Pank felt like taking chances.

“Whether we were or whether we were not just closing down,” Mr. Humble said with emphasis, “is no business of any stranger’s.”

“Don’t call me a stranger,” Ernest Pank begged good-naturedly. “Why, I’ve known you by sight as a Norwich man for years.”

The drinks made their appearance. Mr. Humble looked with approval at his foaming tankard.

“Well, then, I won’t,” he consented graciously. “Here’s your very good health, Mr. Ernest Pank, and I’m willing enough to be friendly with you and all the world. I’m one of those that’s always more inclined to like people than dislike them---provided they treat me right. But what I don’t hold with is people as tries to interfere in other people’s business. My work may be this or it may be that. That’s nobody’s concern but my own.”

“You are right,” his young acquaintance declared with enthusiasm. “Full of common sense, isn’t he, Amy?” he added, turning to his cousin.

Amy, however, was not sympathetic. She had viewed the entry of Mr. Humble with disappointment and disapproval, and, as an addition to their company, she regarded him as a nuisance. She tossed her head.

“I daresay he is. I don’t know and I don’t care very much. Ern, I think it’s almost time we started, unless you want to be late for supper.”

“Late for supper is what I never am,” Ernest Pank asserted, “but we don’t have supper till eight and it’s only half-past seven. I like this little room,” he went on expansively. “I like the fire. I like our friend, Mr. Humble. Think of the cold outside—the driving rain—”

“It weren’t raining when I came in,” Mr. Humble interrupted.

“Well, it might have been,” the young man corrected himself. “It’s been raining all day, anyway, and the air’s damp. Perhaps you’ll say it’s not comfortable in here?”

“I’ll not go so far as that,” Mr. Humble acknowledged. “The place itself is well enough. I might say that I wish our host had a little more confidence in his fellow creatures, and realised that when an artist is temporarily deprived of his occupation, he needs sympathy and leniency from any one who wants to call himself a pal.”

“You got my sympathy, all right, Mr. Humble,” the landlord declared, leaning amiably across the counter. “You’ve always had that, but you’ve had twenty-six pints of stout and about the same quantity of beer as well, and some day or other a reckoning would not be so bad.”

“Harry!” Ernest Pank expostulated, addressing the landlord. “Harry Chittock, I don’t think you quite realise who our friend is. You don’t realise his importance.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t know much about his job,” the landlord agreed. “Not since he came back to these parts, at any rate. He’s what I call darned secretive about himself. What I says is, I don’t care what a man does so long as he behaves and I see the colour of his money.”

“To show you what I think of Mr. Humble,” Ernest Pank continued, thrusting his hands into his pockets, “I’ll tell you this, Chittock. If Mr. Humble were to come to me and say ‘I have unfortunately become indebted to this house for a trifle like two or three pounds for necessary refreshment,’ I would say---‘Mr. Humble, as a Norwich man and an old acquaintance, do me the favour of accepting that sum as a loan.’ ”

The landlord rubbed his hands. This sort of talk might lead to something. Mr. Humble was too much astonished to indulge in the simplest of gestures. His small, crafty eyes seemed to have disappeared in folds of flesh. His shaggy hair seemed more unkempt than ever.

“Well,” the former remarked. “There is some in this world fortunately has money to throw away on their friends, and there is some as is born so generous they don’t know what to do with it.”

Amy clasped her cousin’s hand. Wealth like this must not be allowed out of the family.

“Ernest,” she insisted, “that clock is slow, and I don’t wish to stay here any longer. Please come.”

Ernest Pank rose at once to his feet. The man in the grey suit scowled.

“Going off, are you?” he scoffed bitterly. “After all that fine talk!”

“Only to supper,” his new friend confided. “This is a hungry city, you know, Mr. Humble. One must eat here as well as drink. This way, my dear.”

He opened the door and Amy passed unsuspectingly into the passage. Her cousin touched Mr. Humble on the shoulder.

“What about a glass at ten o’clock this evening?” he whispered. “We could have a little chat then. . . .”

The walk home was pleasant enough. Amy was inclined to be petulant at first, but at the touch of her cousin’s arm around her waist she was a different person. They passed underneath an avenue of trees leading to the close, and under every third one they paused for an embrace.

“You are a one for kissing,” Amy rallied him, as they emerged into the civilised spaces.

“When I find something worth kissing,” was the gallant reply.

---

Supper was a thoroughly enjoyable meal. Ernest did his best to make himself agreeable, and a reawakened Amy was, to her mother’s mind, the personification of charm and light-hearted wit. The young man, who was in no need of further information, was most careful to avoid all reference to the departed lodger, and any faint suspicions which his relatives might have possessed were soon dispelled. He told them, instead, of his commercial triumphs and hinted at a prospective order so large that he might have to leave the city for a couple of days to make sure of its prompt execution. At the conclusion of the repast, he gallantly invited Amy to share with him the large easy-chair, where they sat hand in hand, to his aunt’s delighted approval. Mr. Pank thrust his feet upon the fender and became absorbed in the morning paper. Presently his better half glanced at the clock.

“Half-past nine,” said she. “What about it, Amy?”

Amy rose with a sigh.

“I wish it was Saturday,” she muttered. “I hate going to bed early and I hate getting up early.”

“Some day perhaps,” her cousin commented, as he kissed her, “you won’t have to. Marry the man with the dibs, my dear. That’s all you have to do.”

She very nearly blushed, and Mrs. Pank’s expansiveness warned her nephew that he had better be careful. He looked across at his uncle.

“Do you ever turn out these nights?” he asked.

“I don’t often,” Mr. Pank observed thoughtfully, as though the idea were a new one to him. “There’s the Blue Dragon almost opposite.”

“Come on,” his nephew invited. “We’ll have just one. You don’t mind, do you, Aunt?”

Mrs. Pank was not in the humour to object to anything. Hats and coats were produced, and uncle and nephew crossed the broad street to where the bright lights of a large public house invited their visit. Mr. Pank seated himself heavily upon the leather-covered divan.

“Kind of running away with us, ain’t you, young man?” he remarked shrewdly, as his nephew ordered him a double whisky.

“Oh, I don’t know,” was the friendly reply. “We relatives don’t see enough of one another.”

“I’m a man of few words,” Mr. Pank said, as he watched the arrival of his whisky, a small jug of hot water and a piece of lemon as per command, “a man of few words I am, but you be careful about Amy, young fellow. She’s a good girl and I don’t want her head turned. If you’ve done a bit better in the world than we have and you’re thinking of amusing yourself---”

The young man patted him on the shoulder.

“Don’t be silly, Uncle,” he enjoined lightly. “Young people understand one another nowadays. They have a bit of fun and there you are.”

“Whisky and soda, eh?” his uncle commented, watching his nephew’s drink being served. “So you really make money out of those heels, eh, Ernest? There must be a powerful lot of them used in the city.”

“About four times as much as I did being policeman,” was the enthusiastic reply. “If the offer I have got to-day is accepted, I shan’t want to do any more business here this visit.”

“Ever think of marrying and settling down, eh?”

“That might be.”

A friend and fellow bowler came in and was greeted by Mr. Pank with open arms. Their conversation became intimate and technical. Ernest Pank paid for the drinks and rose stealthily to his feet.

“I won’t be long, Uncle,” he said. “I’ve got an appointment with a customer at ten o’clock. Leave the door open if you get home before me.”

“We shall be home,” Mr. Pank Senior told him with emphasis, “at the same time. You’ll leave where you are at closing time. I shall do the same thing. We shall probably meet upon the doorstep. It will be as well.”

Mr. Humble was waiting a little dejectedly in the still deserted sitting room. He greeted his generous young friend with acclamation.

“So you’re here again,” he remarked.

“Looks like it,” the newcomer assented. “Draw your chair up to the fire. Landlord, take the orders and don’t forget yourself. Give it a name, Mr. Humble.”

Mr. Humble elected to follow his host’s example.

“You’re a very free young fellow,” he observed. “What’s your business, if one might make so bold as to ask?”

The ex-detective drew a leather heel from his pocket.

“That’s my business,” he explained, handing it out. “Sold enough of ’em to-day to fill this room and more.”

Mr. Humble turned it over carefully between his yellow-stained and not too clean fingers.

“A heel,” he remarked, with the air of one who has made a great discovery.

“A heel for a woman’s shoe,” the landlord added, not to be outdone.

“You are both of you right,” Ernest Pank assented.

“Made of leather,” Mr. Humble put in triumphantly.

“And goodish leather too,” the landlord agreed, raising it to his nose and smelling it.

“Two clever chaps, aren’t you?” their companion observed approvingly. “Well, my business is selling those heels, and as there’s no one else present in the same line of business, I don’t mind telling you that I do pretty well with them. Now, what might be your job nowadays, Mr. Humble?”

The latter moved uneasily in his chair. He watched his questioner suspiciously.

“I’m not in business at all for the present,” he confided. “I’m thinking of branching out in a new line.”

“An artist, perhaps, when you’re at it,” Pank suggested.

“I might be called that,” the latter acknowledged. “Landlord, don’t slop my drink over.”

The conversation passed from heels to canaries. It appeared that the landlord was in possession of the champion bird of the city, and in the discussion which followed, the ex-detective seemed to lose all his curiosity as to Mr. Humble’s profession.

“Closing time in ten minutes, gentlemen,” the landlord announced.

“That being so,” Ernest Pank said, with a grandiloquent gesture, “and I having had one of the best days of my life, we’ll say the same again, Harry.”

The latter chuckled as he rose.

“You may make the money, all right, young man,” he commented, “but I will say this, you do know how to spend it!”

“I spend it on good stuff,” was the smiling reply. “Mind you that, landlord. I spend it on good stuff. That’s why I come along here, instead of to one of those big, glaring palaces. A comfortable place like this and a pal. . . . Here, steady on.”

Mr. Humble had slipped down in his chair, but was promptly assisted back again.

“By-the-by,” he said, not quite steadily and blinking out of his close-set eyes, “that little loan we were speaking of?”

“Quite so,” his young friend murmured, searching for his pocket-book. “A pleasure, Mr. Humble, I can assure you. When you are working again, I’m sure you will be glad to repay me, but don’t hurry. Three pounds, eh?”

“I’ll take it,” the landlord suggested.

“No, you don’t,” Mr. Humble declared, suddenly very much soberer. “You may have two off the account and I’ll take one. I have matters of my own to look after. My young friend, I am obliged to you---I am greatly obliged to you. But let me ask you one question: what do you mean about my working again? I work when I choose, when the fancy takes me, when a job which is absolutely in my line is offered. That’s when I work.”

“Sounds like the way these artists talk,” Pank observed.

Mr. Humble looked at him suspiciously and there was something in those shifty little eyes that the ex-detective scarcely liked.

“I wish to hell I knew what your job really was,” he muttered. “Selling heels, eh? I wonder.”

Fortunately that was the end of Mr. Humble’s brief relapse into sobriety. Once more he collapsed in his chair and went to sleep, breathing stertorously. The landlord would have awakened him but Pank intervened, holding up his glass.

“I hate a man who can’t hold his liquor,” he declared. “Here’s the best until to-morrow, Harry.”

“And the best to you, sir,” was the hearty response.

The ex-detective glanced over his shoulder. Mr. Humble was still emitting unpleasant sounds. His eyes were still closed.

“Of course, I know about his old job,” Pank said softly, “but what’s he been doing lately?”

The landlord leaned across and whispered in his young patron’s ear. Ernest Pank shook him by the hand, put on his hat and coat and went out into the night, smiling.