Two Crafty Criminals! Page 14

  Mr. Miller was pleased to have his little joke laughed at, and went on: “Here, Mr. Horspath. Would you say this was a warm evening?”

  “Jolly warm, yes. Splendid weather.”

  “Now, when I was in the Army,” said Mr. Miller, “out in India, we had a little dodge that we used to get up to to keep ourselves cool. What you do is—”

  Mrs. Miller kicked him on one ankle and Daisy kicked him on the other, but he had his best boots on, and they were pinching his toes so tightly that the kicks came as a welcome relief. He ignored them and went on.

  “What you do is, you cut a nice long piece of cucumber peel, like this”—he cut one for himself, and handed another to Mr. Horspath—“and you stick it on your forehead. Go on, try.”

  He stuck his own on, and Mr. Horspath did the same with his. They sat there, looking at each other.

  “Remarkable cooling properties, cucumber,” said Mr. Miller.

  “Jolly cool, yes,” said Mr. Horspath, nodding. The cucumber peel slid down his nose. He had the uncomfortable feeling that Mr. Miller was laughing at him, though the other man was looking inscrutably solemn.

  After the meal, Mrs. Miller said, “Daisy, dear, do take Mr. Horspath into the parlor. Your pa and me has got things to do in the kitchen.”

  The way she looked at her husband made it clear that she was going to tell him off about the cucumber business, but Mr. Horspath pretended not to notice that and stood up politely to open the door for Daisy.

  “This way, Mr. Horspath,” said Daisy, who could have whacked her father over the head with his wretched cucumber. Every time she brought someone nice home, he had to go and make them stick cucumber peel all over themselves and look silly. She could have cried.

  But Mr. Horspath was so nice, he didn’t seem to mind.

  “I say, Daisy,” he said when they were sitting on the little sofa. “I wish you’d call me Bertie.”

  “Oh, thank you!” said Daisy, shyly tweaking a frond of the enormous potted palm that stood behind the sofa. This potted palm was Mr. Miller’s pride and joy. He claimed he had grown it from a coconut that a monkey in India had thrown at him, but no one really believed that. It was so big now that it almost filled the space between the sofa and the window, and darkened the room considerably.

  Mr. Horspath sat a little closer and slid his arm along the back of the sofa behind Daisy.

  “Daisy,” he murmured, “I’m so glad we’re alone at last. I’ve wanted to be alone with you for weeks and weeks …”

  And she felt little shivers going all the way up and down her spine, as if mice were dancing on her. She even heard little mouselike rustlings from somewhere in the room. How embarrassing! She hoped Mr. Horspath wouldn’t notice.

  All this time, the twins had been preparing the way for Dick to unleash the power of Orlando’s love secret. Knowing nothing about Mr. Horspath’s visit to the Millers’, they had arranged for Dick to crouch unseen behind the privet hedge in the Millers’ little front garden, and then clamber through the front window like a lover in a play. Daisy often sat in the parlor of an evening, and he could make his declaration of love without being interrupted.

  So very, very carefully and quietly, Angela raised the window and held aside the thick palm leaves that got in the way.

  “Look,” she whispered, “there’s her hand already, on the back of the sofa. All you gotta do is grab it and cover it with burning kisses.”

  Dick, trembling with resolution, stepped through with no more noise than a mouse. He could see the hand where Angela was pointing—a soft, delicate, pale hand. It could only be Daisy’s. He was nearly there!

  “Go on,” whispered Zerlina.

  Dick nodded, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and grabbed.

  What happened next was never entirely clear to anyone.

  First the potted palm fell over with a mighty crash.

  Then Daisy gave a yell of alarm.

  Then Mr. Horspath stood up in horror and gazed openmouthed at his own right hand, which was being covered with burning kisses by a blushing Dick, whose eyes were screwed tightly shut.

  Before anyone could speak, Dick (who’d been counting) came to the twelfth burning kiss and pressed Mr. Horspath’s hand to his heart.

  “I loves yer!” he bawled hoarsely. “Will yer marry me?”

  “WHAT?” shrieked Mr. Horspath.

  Dick opened his eyes.

  His jaw fell.

  He looked at Mr. Horspath; at Daisy; at the potted palm; at his own hand, still clutching Mr. Horspath’s. He let it go as if it was electrified.

  “You snake in the grass!” he shouted, and punched Mr. Horspath right on the nose.

  Angela and Zerlina cheered loudly.

  “Go it, Dick!” they cried. “Whack him again!”

  Mr. Horspath clutched his nose with a shrill cry, and then events got out of control, as the twins told Benny and Thunderbolt later.

  Unknown to anyone, P.C. Jellicoe had been passing by, and hearing the noise of a disturbance of the peace, he blew his whistle vigorously and lumbered to the scene.

  Mr. and Mrs. Miller heard the noise too, even over their discussion of the cucumber business, and came hurrying in to see what was going on.

  They found Mr. Horspath trying to mop his nose and hide behind Daisy while Dick chased him furiously, waving his fists.

  “Come on out and fight, you wavy-haired weasel!” Dick roared.

  “No—no—help!” cried Mr. Horspath. “He’s assaulting me! Help!”

  “Stop it, Dick! Stop it!” cried Daisy.

  “Help! Police!” shouted Mrs. Miller. “Murder!”

  “Go on, Dick, clock him another one,” said Mr. Miller, but then he saw the ruins of his potted palm and struck his forehead in horror. “My potted palm!” he shouted. “I grew that meself from a coconut! Who’s done that? Was that you, Horsface?”

  “No!” sobbed Mr. Horspath, dodging behind Daisy again. “It was him!”

  “Come here! Come out and take yer medicine!” bellowed Dick, bouncing up and down and waving his fists. “Making up to Daisy like that! Blooming sauce! I’ll teach yer to—”

  But what Dick intended to teach Mr. Horspath they never heard, because P.C. Jellicoe, looking in at the window, blew such a blast on his whistle that they all fell still with their ears ringing.

  “Woss going on?” P.C. Jellicoe demanded. “Is this a private and domestic dispute, or do you require the assistance of the law?”

  “Constable, arrest this man!” blubbered Mr. Horspath. “And as for your position at the Gasworks, Smiss, you can consider yourself dismithed!”

  “Eh?” said Daisy.

  “You can’t do that!” said Dick. “This ain’t nothing to do with the blooming Gasworks—this is a matter of love and honor!”

  “I can do what I like,” said Mr. Horspath, mopping his nose, feeling a bit safer now that P.C. Jellicoe had clambered in through the window to protect him. “And you heard what I said. You’re sacked!”

  With a roar, Dick sprang at him again. He managed to get in one good wallop. Mr. Horspath went down with a shriek, and then P.C. Jellicoe got the handcuffs on Dick, who was struggling like an eel.

  Outside the window, in the shadow of the privet hedge, the twins looked at each other. They didn’t need to speak. Leaving the confusion of wailing and shouting and banging behind them, they softly and suddenly vanished.

  “So he’s arrested,” said Angela.

  “In jail?” said Benny.

  “Yeah!” said Zerlina. “We watched old Jelly-Belly drag him away in handcuffs. Half the street was watching!”

  “So …,” Thunderbolt gulped. “If he’s in jail … he can’t ask Daisy to … And the Gas-Fitters’ Ball’s the day after tomorrow …”

  “Did you put that other shilling on with Snake-Eyes?” said Angela.

  He nodded speechlessly.

  “Cor,” said Zerlina.

  They looked at him with pity and wonder, as if he were a ruined
man already. Thunderbolt felt the shadow of the workhouse looming over him—and worse. He was thinking of the melodrama he and Pa had been to see the week before called The Primrose Path, or, If Only He Had Known, in which a fine young man descended step by easy step along the road to ruin. Drink; low companions; loose women, whatever they were; and—Thunderbolt gulped—it had all started with gambling. The young man in the play had begun by betting the rent money on a horse race and ended up on the gallows, and the last scene of all showed his poor mother weeping in the snow outside the prison walls as the bell tolled eight o’clock, the execution hour.

  Thunderbolt opened his mouth once or twice, but couldn’t speak. Suddenly that felt like his future too.

  “Right,” said Benny. “We gotta do summing about this. You two gotta get Dick out of jail, ’cause you got him in. Oh, yes, you blooming did,” he went on hotly as the twins started to argue. “Never mind blooming Snake-Eyes Melmott and five to one and winning fortunes and so on. Dick’s in jail and he didn’t oughter be, and you gotta get him out. I don’t care what you do—you make sure he’s there at the Gas-Fitters’ Ball. Meanwhile, me and Thunderbolt’s got summing even more difficult and dangerous to do. We might end up in jail ourselves for it, but it’s gotta be done. It wouldn’t be right otherwise. So there,” he finished, glaring around pugnaciously. “Anyone arguing? Good. Now let’s get on with it!”

  The twins weren’t allowed to know what Benny and Thunderbolt were doing, in case they were caught and tortured. If they didn’t know, they couldn’t confess.

  “Like Garibaldi and the Redshirts,” said Angela, “fighting the Austrians.”

  There was an engraved portrait of the great Italian hero above the sideboard in their parlor. They’d never been entirely clear about what he’d done, but they were sure it was very gallant and dangerous.

  As their task was now. They walked home slowly, talking under their breath, leaning together slightly in the curious way they did when they were plotting something. More than one person who saw them crossed his fingers superstitiously, having seen them in action before.

  At supper they hardly noticed what they were eating. Their mother had to bang the table and reach meaningfully for the bread knife before they came out of their mutual trance.

  “What’s up, gals?” said their father, a cheerful soul.

  “Nothing,” said Angela.

  “They’re in trouble,” said their brother Alf. “I can tell.”

  “No we ain’t,” said Zerlina.

  “Well, if they’re not yet, they’re gonna be,” said their other brother, Giuseppe, or Joe for short. Like their father, he worked in the dried-fruit trade.

  “They get in trouble, I cut-a their troats,” said their mother, feeling the edge of the bread knife. Most of the Peretti men had been born in London, which was why they spoke better English than Italian, and they used to go back to Naples to find a wife, which was why their wives spoke better Italian than English.

  “I should cut ’em anyway,” suggested Giuseppe. “Save time. Here, Alf, fancy a stroll down the Walk later on? We might have a drink with Orlando.”

  The twins felt a little shiver of excitement, and because they were twins, each of them knew that the other had felt it at the same moment. The same catlike smile appeared on their faces, and they turned their attention to the lasagne.

  Much later, when darkness had fallen over Lambeth, when the hissing naphtha lamps of the market stalls had all been put away, when only the grimy moonlight glimmered on the rough bricks and the dirty cobbles, two small figures trudged along beside the great grim wall of the prison.

  Their heads were bowed; each of them held a big white handkerchief to her face; occasionally a sniff or even a broken sob would make its way out.

  Just as they reached the little iron-studded oak door that was set into a big and even more iron-studded oak gate, a key turned and the door creaked open. It was midnight: the hour when the prison warders changed shifts.

  The little figures looked up tragically at the first man who came out. He was a big, ponderous man with a gray mustache; and when he saw the two girls gazing up at him imploringly, with the moonlight glittering on the tears on their cheeks, he couldn’t help stopping.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “It’s our brother,” said Angela.

  “He in here, is he?”

  Angela gave a little sob and hid her face in the handkerchief. The warder shifted his feet uncomfortably, for he too had been to see The Primrose Path, and had found it as moving as Thunderbolt did.

  “He’s … he’s not a bad man,” said Zerlina piteously, “but he’s passionate and impetuous.”

  “And now we’re all alone,” said Angela.

  “We just want to know where he is,” said Zerlina, “so we can wave to him and … and …”

  “And pray for him,” Angela put in quickly.

  “That’s it, yeah,” said Zerlina. “If only we knew which cell he was in, we could feel a bit easier in our minds.”

  “ ’Cause we could come and just look up and … and think about him,” said Angela brokenly.

  The warder felt a lump in his throat. He coughed hard.

  “What’s his name?” he said as sternly as he could manage.

  “Dick Smith,” said Zerlina. “He’s not a bad man. He means good.”

  “Ah, yes, Smith,” said the warder. “Number 1045. He’s in the East Wing. That’s round here. You follow me, gals, and I’ll show yer.”

  He led them round the corner of the great grim wall and pointed to a tiny window high up under the edge of the roof.

  “That’s his cell, the third on the left,” he said. “You could wave to him from there.”

  “Oh, thank you, sir, thank you!” said Angela.

  “You’re a kind and noble man!” said Zerlina.

  The warder brushed a manly tear from his eye. What a pair of angels!

  “Well, I must say,” he said, “he’s a lucky feller to have such devoted sisters. I shouldn’t wonder but that your love and devotion wouldn’t make all the difference to a young lad like him. A good example like that might set him on the road to reform.” He began to walk off, and turned back to say, “Who knows? With your help, he might not be in here for long!”

  Oddly enough, that was exactly what the twins had in mind.

  Their next stop was Charlie Ladysmith’s builder’s yard, next to the Candle Manufactory. It was locked, of course, in the middle of the night, but there was a loose panel in the wooden fence, and it only took a moment for the girls to slip through.

  “You know what?” whispered Angela. “They oughter make things like this for cats to come in through doors with.”

  “No one’d buy ’em,” said Zerlina. “It’s a silly idea.”

  “Yeah, perhaps it is. Now where’s he keep them ladders?”

  Charlie Ladysmith wasn’t a very tidy builder, or he’d have repaired his fence by this time, but it didn’t take long to find his ladders. They were leaning against the wall of the main shed—long ones, short ones, stepladders and platform ladders.

  “Cor,” whispered Angela. “They’re blooming long, all of ’em. Even the short ones is long.”

  “How we gonna get one of them out?” said Zerlina.

  It turned out to be easier than they’d thought. They only knocked over a pile of bricks, smashed a window, tipped a rainwater barrel over onto a heap of sand, jabbed a hole in the wall of the shed, and broke two more panels on the fence; and after twenty minutes of struggling, they had the longest ladder they could manage outside in the street.

  “He better ’preciate this,” said Zerlina, panting. “He better be grateful.”

  Angela’s eyes glittered with the thought of what they’d do to Dick if he didn’t and wasn’t. But they didn’t have time to think about that; they had another call to make that night.

  Being in the theatrical profession, the Mighty Orlando was used to staying in boardinghouses. There wer
e good ones and bad ones. When he was working in London, he always stayed at Mrs. Drummond’s in Tower Street, where the landlady looked after him well, providing two loaves, three dozen eggs, and five pounds of bacon for breakfast every day, as well as an extra-strong bed to sleep in and a nice quiet room overlooking the backyard.

  It was half past one in the morning when the twins clambered over the wall into that very backyard and looked up at the house, wondering which window was Orlando’s.

  It wasn’t hard to tell, actually. Since it was a warm night, all the windows were open, and out of one of them came a snoring so thunderous that the twins were lost in admiration.

  “Like an elephant!” said Angela.

  “Or a railway engine. It’s colossal!”

  “How we gonna wake him up? Whatever noise we make, he won’t hear it ’cause of the noise he’s making hisself!”

  In the end they threw stones through the window. Orlando was used to cannonballs landing on his head, of course, so he hardly noticed a few pebbles; but finally, by luck, one of them landed in his open mouth. He swallowed it like a fly and woke up.

  The twins heard the snoring stop with a sort of gulping noise. A moment or two later, Orlando appeared at the window, with a big white nightcap keeping the drafts off his shiny head.

  “Who’s that?” he said, peering down. “Oh, it’s you gals. What can I do for yer?”

  “Rescue someone from prison,” said Angela.

  “It’s easy,” said Zerlina. “It’ll only take ten minutes, honest.”

  “Only if he’s been unjustly accused,” said Orlando sternly. “I takes a dim view of any hanky-panky with the law.”

  “It’s Dick,” said Angela. “You remember that love secret you told him?”

  “Yeah. How’d he get on?”

  “He kissed the wrong hand and proposed to Mr. Horspath by mistake,” said Zerlina, “and they put him in jail.”

  Orlando was appalled.

  “That’s a monstrous piece of injustice!” he said, struggling into his clothes. “I never heard the like! And it’s my fault and all. I oughter told him the first part of the love secret.”