Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (327 page)

Has a watch and chain of course —

and threw his dripping blanket over the helmet of the Law. In any other country in the world we should have run an exceedingly good chance of being shot, or dirked, or clubbed — and clubbing is worse than being shot. But I reflected in that wet-cloth tangle that this was England, where the police are made to be banged and battered and bruised, that they may the better endure a police-court reprimand next morning. We three fell in a festoon, he calling on me by name — that was the tingling horror of it — to sit on the policeman’s head and cut the traces. I wriggled clear first and shouted to the policeman to kill the blanket-man.

Naturally the policeman answered: ‘You’re as bad as ‘im,’ and chased me, as the smaller man, round St. Clement Danes into Holywell Street, where I ran into the arms of another policeman. That flight could not have lasted more than a minute and a half, but it seemed to me as long and as wearisome as the foot-bound flight of a nightmare. I had leisure to think of a thousand things as I ran; but most I thought of the great and god-like man who held a sitting in the north gallery of St. Clement Danes a hundred years ago. I know that he at least would have felt for me. So occupied was I with these considerations, that when the other policeman hugged me to his bosom and said: ‘What are you tryin’ to do?’ I answered with exquisite politeness: ‘Sir, let us take a walk down Fleet Street.’ ‘Bow Street’ll do your business, I think,’ was the answer, and for a moment I thought so too, till it seemed I might scuffle out of it. Then there was a hideous scene, and it was complicated by my companion hurrying up with the blanket and telling me — always by name — that he would rescue me or perish in the attempt.

‘Knock him down,’ I pleaded. ‘Club his head open first and I’ll explain afterwards.’

The first policeman, the one who had been outraged, drew his truncheon and cut at my companion’s head. The high silk hat crackled and the owner dropped like a log.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ I said. ‘You’ve probably killed him.’

Holywell Street never goes to bed. A small crowd gathered on the spot, and some one of German extraction shrieked: ‘You haf killed the man.’

Another cried: ‘Take his bloomin’ number. I saw him strook cruel ‘ard. Yah!’

Now the street was empty when the trouble began, and, saving the two policemen and myself, no one had seen the blow. I said, therefore, in a loud and cheerful voice: —

‘The man’s a friend of mine. He’s fallen down in a fit. Bobby, will you bring the ambulance?’ Under my breath I added: ‘It’s five shillings apiece, and the man didn’t hit you.’

‘No, but ‘im and you tried to scrob me,’ said the policeman.

This was not a thing to argue about.

‘Is Dempsey on duty at Charing Cross?’ I said.

‘Wot d’you know of Dempsey, you bloomin’ garrotter?’ said the policeman.

‘If Dempsey’s there, he knows me. Get the ambulance quick, and I’ll take him to Charing Cross.’

‘You’re coming to Bow Street, you are,’ said the policeman crisply.

‘The man’s dying’ — he lay groaning on the pavement — ’get the ambulance,’ said I.

There is an ambulance at the back of St. Clement Danes, whereof I know more than most people. The policeman seemed to possess the keys of the box in which it lived. We trundled it out — it was a three-wheeled affair with a hood — and we bundled the body of the man upon it.

A body in an ambulance looks very extremely dead. The policemen softened at the sight of the stiff boot-heels.

‘Now then,’ said they, and I fancied that they still meant Bow Street.

‘Let me see Dempsey for three minutes if he’s on duty,’ I answered.

‘Very good. He is.’

Then I knew that all would be well, but before we started I put my head under the ambulance-hood to see if the man were alive. A guarded whisper came to my ear.

‘Laddie, you maun pay me for a new hat. They’ve broken it. Dinna desert me now, laddie. I’m o’er old to go to Bow Street in my gray hairs for a fault of yours. Laddie, dinna desert me.’

‘You’ll be lucky if you get off under seven years,’ I said to the policeman.

Moved by a very lively fear of having exceeded their duty, the two policemen left their beats, and the mournful procession wound down the empty Strand. Once west of the Adelphi, I knew I should be in my own country; and the policemen had reason to know that too, for as I was pacing proudly a little ahead of the catafalque, another policeman said ‘Good-night, sir,’ to me as he passed.

‘Now, you see,’ I said, with condescension, ‘I wouldn’t be in your shoes for something. On my word, I’ve a great mind to march you two down to Scotland Yard.’

‘If the gentleman’s a friend o’ yours, per’aps — ’ said the policeman who had given the blow, and was reflecting on the consequences.

‘Perhaps you’d like me to go away and say nothing about it,’ I said. Then there hove into view the figure of Constable Dempsey, glittering in his oil-skins, and an angel of light to me. I had known him for months; he was an esteemed friend of mine, and we used to talk together in the early mornings. The fool seeks to ingratiate himself with Princes and Ministers; and courts and cabinets leave him to perish miserably. The wise man makes allies among the police and the hansoms, so that his friends spring up from the round-house and the cab-rank, and even his offences become triumphal processions.

‘Dempsey,’ said I, ‘have the police been on strike again? They’ve put some things on duty at St. Clement Danes that want to take me to Bow Street for garrotting.’

‘Lor, sir!’ said Dempsey indignantly.

‘Tell them I’m not a garrotter, nor a thief. It’s simply disgraceful that a gentleman can’t walk down the Strand without being man-handled by these roughs. One of them has done his best to kill my friend here; and I’m taking the body home. Speak for me, Dempsey.’

There was no time for the much misrepresented policemen to say a word. Dempsey spoke to them in language calculated to frighten. They tried to explain, but Dempsey launched into a glowing catalogue of my virtues, as noted by gas in the early hours. ‘And,’ he concluded vehemently; ‘‘e writes for the papers, too. How’d you like to be written for in the papers — in verse, too, which is ‘is ‘abit. You leave ‘im alone. ‘Im an’ me have been friends for months.’

‘What about the dead man?’ said the policeman who had not given the blow.

‘I’ll tell you,’ I said relenting, and to the three policemen under the lights of Charing Cross assembled, I recounted faithfully and at length the adventures of the night, beginning with the Breslau and ending at St. Clement Danes. I described the sinful old ruffian in the ambulance in words that made him wriggle where he lay, and never since the Metropolitan Police was founded did three policemen laugh as those three laughed. The Strand echoed to it, and the unclean birds of the night stood and wondered.

‘Oh lor’!’ said Dempsey, wiping his eyes, ‘I’d ha’ given anything to see that old man runnin’ about with a wet blanket an’ all! Excuse me, sir, but you ought to get took up every night for to make us ‘appy.’ He dissolved into fresh guffaws.

There was a clinking of silver and the two policemen of St. Clement Danes hurried back to their beats, laughing as they ran.

‘Take ‘im to Charing Cross,’ said Dempsey between shouts. ‘They’ll send the ambulance back in the morning.’

‘Laddie, ye’ve misca’ed me shameful names, but I’m o’er old to go to a hospital. Dinna desert me, laddie. Tak me home to my wife,’ said the voice in the ambulance.

‘He’s none so bad. ‘Is wife’ll comb ‘is hair for ‘im proper,’ said Dempsey, who was a married man.

‘Where d’you live?’ I demanded.

‘Brugglesmith,’ was the answer.

‘What’s that?’ I said to Dempsey, more skilled than I in portmanteau- words.

‘Brook Green, ‘Ammersmith,’ Dempsey translated promptly.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That’s just the sort of place he would choose to live in. I only wonder that it was not Kew.’

‘Are you going to wheel him ‘ome, sir,’ said Dempsey.

‘I’d wheel him home if he lived in — Paradise. He’s not going to get out of this ambulance while I’m here. He’d drag me into a murder for tuppence.’

‘Then strap ‘im up an’ make sure,’ said Dempsey, and he deftly buckled two straps that hung by the side of the ambulance over the man’s body. Brugglesmith — I know not his other name — was sleeping deeply. He even smiled in his sleep.

‘That’s all right,’ said Dempsey, and I moved off, wheeling my devil’s perambulator before me. Trafalgar Square was empty except for the few that slept in the open. One of these wretches ranged alongside and begged for motley, asserting that he had been a gentleman once.

‘So have I,’ I said. ‘That was long ago. I’ll give you a shilling if you’ll help me to push this thing.’

‘Is it a murder?’ said the vagabond, shrinking back. ‘I’ve not got to that yet:’

‘No, it’s going to be one,’ I answered. ‘I have.’

The man slunk back into the darkness and I pressed on, through Cockspur Street, and up to Piccadilly Circus, wondering what I should do with my treasure. All London was asleep, and I had only this drunken carcase to bear me company. It was silent — silent as chaste Piccadilly. A young man of my acquaintance came out of a pink brick club as I passed. A faded carnation drooped from his button-hole; he had been playing cards, and was walking home before the dawn, when he overtook me.

‘What are you doing?’ he said.

I was far beyond any feeling of shame. ‘It’s for a bet,’ said I. ‘Come and help.’

‘Laddie, who’s yon?’ said the voice beneath the hood.

‘Good Lord!’ said the young man, leaping across the pavement. Perhaps card-losses had told on his nerves. Mine were steel that night.

‘The Lord, The Lord?’ the passionless, incurious voice went on. ‘Dinna be profane, laddie. He’ll come in His ain good time.’

The young man looked at me with horror.

‘It’s all part of the bet,’ I answered. ‘Do come and push!’

‘W — where are you going to?’ said he.

‘Brugglesmith,’ said the voice within. ‘Laddie, d’ye ken my wife?’

‘No,’ said I.

‘Well, she’s just a tremenjus wumman. Laddie, I want a drink. Knock at one o’ those braw houses, laddie, an’ — an’ — ye may kiss the girrl for your pains.’

‘Lie still, or I’ll gag you,’ I said, savagely.

The young man with the carnation crossed to the other side of Piccadilly, and hailed the only hansom visible for miles. What he thought I cannot tell.

I pressed on — wheeling, eternally wheeling — to Brook Green, Hammersmith. There I would abandon Brugglesmith to the gods of that desolate land. We had been through so much together that I could not leave him bound in the street. Besides, he would call after me, and oh! it is a shameful thing to hear one’s name ringing down the emptiness of London in the dawn.

So I went on, past Apsley House, even to the coffee-stall, but there was no coffee for Brugglesmith. And into Knightsbridge — respectable Knightsbridge — I wheeled my burden, the body of Brugglesmith.

‘Laddie, what are ye going to do wi’ me?’ he said when opposite the barracks.

‘Kill you,’ I said briefly, ‘or hand you over to your wife. Be quiet.’

He would not obey. He talked incessantly — sliding in one sentence from clear cut dialect to wild and drunken jumble. At the Albert Hall he said that I was the ‘Hattle Gardle buggle,’ which I apprehend is the Hatton Garden burglar. At Kensington High Street he loved me as a son, but when my weary legs came to the Addison Road Bridge he implored me with tears to unloose the straps and to fight against the sin of vanity. No man molested us. It was as though a bar had been set between myself and all humanity till I had cleared my account with Brugglesmith. The glimmering of light grew in the sky; the cloudy brown of the wood pavement turned to heather-purple; I made no doubt that I should be allowed vengeance on Brugglesmith ere the evening.

At Hammersmith the heavens were steel-gray, and the day came weeping. All the tides of the sadness of an unprofitable dawning poured into the soul of Brugglesmith. He wept bitterly, because the puddles looked cold and houseless. I entered a half-waked public-house — in evening dress and an ulster, I marched to the bar — and got him whisky on condition that he should cease kicking at the canvas of the ambulance. Then he wept more bitterly, for that he had ever been associated with me, and so seduced into stealing the Breslau’s dinghy.

The day was white and wan when I reached my long journey’s end, and, putting back the hood, bade Brugglesmith declare where he lived. His eyes wandered disconsolately round the red and gray houses till they fell on a villa in whose garden stood a staggering board with the legend ‘To Let.’ It needed only this to break him down utterly, and with the breakage fled his fine fluency in his guttural northern tongue; for liquor levels all.

‘Olely lil while,’ he sobbed. ‘Olely lil while. Home — falmy — besht of falmies — wife too — you dole know my wife! Left them all a lill while ago. Now everything’s sold — all sold. Wife — falmy — all sold. Lemmegellup!’

I unbuckled the straps cautiously. Brugglesmith rolled off his resting-place and staggered to the house.

‘Wattle I do?’ he said.

Then I understood the baser depths in the mind of Mephistopheles.

‘Ring,’ I said; ‘perhaps they are in the attic or the cellar.’

‘You do’ know my wife, She shleeps on soful in the dorlin’ room, waiting meculhome. You do’ know my wife.’

He took off his boots, covered them with his tall hat, and craftily as a Red Indian picked his way up the garden path and smote the bell marked ‘Visitors’ a severe blow with the clenched fist.

‘Bell sole too. Sole electick bell! Wassor bell this? I can’t riggle bell,’ he moaned despairingly.

‘You pull it — pull it hard,’ I repeated, keeping a wary eye down the road. Vengeance was coming and I desired no witnesses.

‘Yes, I’ll pull it hard.’ He slapped his forehead with inspiration. ‘I’ll pull it out.’

Leaning back he grasped the knob with both hands and pulled. A wild ringing in the kitchen was his answer. Spitting on his hands he pulled with renewed strength, and shouted for his wife. Then he bent his ear to the knob, shook his head, drew out an enormous yellow and red handkerchief, tied it round the knob, turned his back to the door, and pulled over his shoulder.