More Deadly Than The Male

"Good morning, Mr George," Ella said, putting a cup of watery tea on the bamboo table by the bed. "Did I wake you?"

"Hmm?" George Fraser asked. He looked up with blank astonishment at Ella in her frowsy blue uniform and her ridiculous cap perched on the top of her mouse-coloured hair. "Good Lord! You gave me quite a turn. I didn't hear you come in. I must've been dozing . . ."

"It's ever such a lovely morning," Ella went on, crossing the drab little room, and pulling up the blind. "The sun's shining and there ain't a cloud in the sky."

George Fraser closed his eyes against the bright sunlight that streamed through the grimy window pane. The image he had been creating of himself as "Machine-gun Fraser", millionaire gangster, still gripped his imagination, and Ella's unexpected intrusion fuddled him.

"Shall I tidy up a hit?" Ella asked, her plain, shiny little face resigned as she surveyed the disordered room. "Coo, Mr George! Your socks are in the coal-scuttle."

George Fraser sighed. It was no good. He would have to leave the back room, the smell of cordite, the terrified faces of Capone, Nelson, Karpis and Charlie Lucky until later. He could always pick up his fantasy when Ella had gone.

"Oh, all right," he said, pushing the blankets from his shoulders and sitting up. "Only don't make too much noise. I've got a bit of a head this morning."

Ella looked at him hopefully. "Did you have any adventures last night?" she asked as she busied herself about the room.

George resisted the temptation to give her a fictitious account of his evening He did not feel quite up to it this morning, and after the story he had told her the day before, which had been his best effort to date, he did not think it wise to risk an anticlimax.

"I can't tell you yet," he said. "A little later perhaps; but it's too secret right now."

Ella's face fell. She was thin, sharp-featured, wistful — a typical product of the East End slums. For three years she had been the general help at this boarding-house Off the Edgware Road. Most mornings, providing he hadn't a hangover, George would keep her entranced with lurid tales of G-men, gangsters and their molls. He assured her that, when he lived in the States, he had known them all. At one time he had worked with Frank Kelly, the hank robber; at another time he had been the bodyguard of Toni Scarletti, the booze racketeer. His name was known and feared by all the big shots of the underworld, and he had experienced enough adventures to fill a dozen books.

These stories which George recounted so glibly were the figments of his extraordinary imagination. He had never been to America, let alone seen a gangster; but, being an avid reader of the lurid American pulp magazines, and having seen every gangster film ever made, he had acquired a remarkable knowledge of American crime. The gunmen as depicted by such magazines as
Front-Page
Detective a
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ssed him.

Like so many other men and women who live in a secret world of their own, George suffered from an acute inferiority complex. He had always lacked confidence in himself, and believed that whatever he planned to do was hound to end in failure.

This inferiority complex was the direct result of the treatment he had received in his early childhood from his parents. His birth had been an "accident", and his parents, music-hall artists by profession, had no place for a child in their rather selfish, extremely mobile lives. They regarded him as a calamity, and had made no attempt to conceal the fact from him. He was always the last to be considered, his babyhood was loveless, and at the earliest possible moment he was handed over to an elderly couple who had reluctantly taken on the role of foster parents in return for the much-needed addition to their meagre income. They were too old to be bothered with a small child, and it was not long before George realized that they considered him to be an unnecessary burden to them.

It says much for George's character that this unhappy, unwanted existence did not entirely affect his nature, but it certainly made him extremely shy and unnaturally sensitive. Because of his shyness he had a wretched time at school. As he grew older he became more reserved and repressed. He made no friends, and consequently had no outlet for his thoughts and desires. It was not surprising, then, that he became an introvert: as an antidote against loneliness and as a bolster to his drooping ego, he filled his mind with stories of adventure and violence, imagining himself as the hero of whatever story he happened to be reading. When he was at school he imagined himself as Bulldog Drummond; later, he saw himself as Jack Dempsey, and now, at the age of twenty-seven, he pictured himself as the all-powerful gang leader, amassing millions of dollars, terrorizing other mobs, racing the streets in a black armoured car, and being the idol of dazzling, beautifully dressed blondes.

For some time George Fraser had been content to live, in his mind, this role of a gangster; but these mental pictures became so vivid and exciting that he could no longer keep them to himself. Cautiously he tried them out on Ella, and was gratified to find that he had an immediately enthralled audience.

Ella had previously regarded George as just another boarder who seldom got up before eleven o'clock, and who expected a cup of tea just when she was occupied in making beds. But when George casually mentioned that he had lived in Chicago and had rubbed shoulders with most of the notorious Public Enemies, Ella was instantly intrigued. She went regularly to her local cinema, and was well acquainted with the savagery of American gangsters. Now here was someone, it seemed, who had actually met these men in the flesh, who had fought with and against them, and whose experiences were much more exciting and fantastic than the most exciting and fantastic film.

Ella was profoundly impressed. Not that George Fraser was impressive to look at. He had a tall, beefy, ungainly figure. His complexion was sallow and his eyes were big, blue and rather sad. In spite of his size, he could not entirely hide his timidity and shyness. If someone spoke to him suddenly he would change colour and become flustered, looking anywhere but at the person addressing him. His landlady, Mrs Rhodes, terrified him, and whenever he ran into her he would talk complete nonsense while endeavouring to escape, leaving her staring after him, completely bewildered.

In spite of his manner, the stories he had to tell fascinated Ella.

Not for a moment did it cross her mind that George was deceiving her. When he told her that he had been forced to leave the States in a hurry and that even now, if a certain mob knew where he was, they would come after him, she spent restless nights in fear for him. She must not, he had warned her, tell anyone of his past. He was, he explained, doing important and secret work, and his life would be in danger if anyone so much as suspected what his activities were.

All this was so much nonsense. In actual fact, up to four months ago George Fraser had been a hank clerk. He had been with the bank for ten years, and he would have been quite satisfied to remain a bank clerk for the rest of his days, but it did not turn out that way. One evening he had wandered into a pub—he was always wandering into pubs—a few minutes before closing time. There he met a flashily dressed individual who had, rather obviously, been in the pub since it had opened. This individual proposed to do George a good turn. Lowering his voice, he conveyed to George the name of a horse that was certain to win the next day's two o'clock handicap.

Now, George was no gambler, nor was he interested in horseracing, but he was flattered that his companion had mistaken him for a sportsman. He decided to have a flutter.