Ernest Bramah - The Bravo of London - And ‘The Bunch of Violets’

In the sacred cause of universal brotherhood comrade Bronsky knew no boundaries and he hastened forward to meet Mr Joolby with the same fraternal greeting already bestowed on Won Chou, forgetting for the moment what sort of man he was about to encounter. The reminder was sharp and revolting: his outstretched arms dropped to his sides and he turned, affecting to be taken with some object in the shop until he could recompose his agitated faculties. Joolby’s slit-like mouth lengthened into the ghost of an enigmatical grin as he recognised the awkwardness of the comrade’s position.

Bronsky, for his part, felt that he must say something exceptional to pass off the unfortunate situation and he fell back on a highly coloured account of the derangement he had just suffered through being charged and buffeted by a mob of ‘little tevils’—an encounter so upsetting that even yet he scarcely knew which way up he was standing. Any irregularity of his salutation having thus been neatly accounted for he shook Joolby’s two hands with accumulated warmness and expressed an inordinate pleasure in the meeting.

‘But I am forgetting, comrade,’ he broke off from these amiable courtesies when the indiscretion might be deemed sufficiently expiated; ‘those sticky little bastads drove everything from my mind until I just remember. I met two men further off and from what I could see at the distance they seemed to have come out from here?’

‘There were a couple of men here a few minutes ago,’ agreed Mr Joolby. ‘What about it, comrade?’

‘I appear to recognise the look of one, but for life of me I cannot get him. Do you know them, comrade Joolby?’

‘Not from Mahomet. Said his name was Carrados—his nibs. The other was a flunkey.’

‘Max Carrados!’ exclaimed Mr Bronsky with startled enlightenment. ‘What in name of tevil was he doing here in your shop, Joolby?’

‘Wasting his time,’ was the indifferent reply. ‘My time also.’

‘Do you not believe it,’ retorted Bronsky emphatically. ‘He never waste his time, that man. Julian Joolby, do you not realise who has been here with you?’

‘Never heard of him in my life before. Never want to again either.’

‘Well, it is time for yourself that you should be put wiser. It was Max Carrados who fixed the rope round Serge Laskie’s neck. And stopped the Rimsky explosion when everything was going so well; and, oh, did a lot more harm. I tell you he is no good, comrade. He is a bad man.’

‘Anyhow, he can’t interfere with us in this business, whatever he’s done in the past,’ replied Joolby, who might be pardoned after his recent experience for feeling that there would be more agreeable subjects of conversation. ‘He’s blind now.’

‘“Blind now”—hear him!’ appealed Bronsky with a derisive cackle. ‘Tell me this however notwithstanding: did you make anything out of him, eh, Joolby?’

‘No,’ admitted Joolby, determinedly impervious to Bronsky’s agitation; ‘we did no business as it happens. He knew more than a customer has any right to know. In fact’—with an uneasy recollection of the Greek coin—‘he may have known more than I did.’

‘That is always the way. Blind: and he knows more than we who not are. Blind: and he stretch out his cunning wicked fingers and they tell him all that our clever eyes have missed to see.’

‘So he said, Bronsky. Indeed, to hear him talk—’

‘Yes, but wait to hear,’ entreated the comrade, anxious not to be deprived of his narration. ‘He sniffs—at a bit of paper, let us haphazard, and lo behold, where it has been, who has touched it, what pocket it has laid in—all are disclose to him. He listen to a breath of wind that no one else would hear and it tell him that—that, well, perhaps that two men are ready round the corner for him with a sand-bag.’

‘Oh-ho!’ said Joolby, sardonically amused; ‘so you’ve tried it, have you?’

‘Tried! You use the right word, comrade Joolby. Listen how. At Cairo he was given some sandwiches to ate on a journey. He did ate three and the fourth he had between his teeth when he change his mind and throw it to a pi-dog. That dog died very hastily.’

‘Anyone may recognise a taste or smell. Your people mixed the wrong sort of mustard.’

‘Anyone may recognise a taste or smell but yet plenty of people die of poison. Listen more. One night at Marseilles he was walking along a street when absolutely without any warning he turn and hit a poor man who happened to be following him on the head—hit him so hard that our friend had to drop the knife he was holding and to take to heels. And yet he was wearing rubber shoes. It is not right. Julian Joolby; it is not fair when a blind man can do like that. The good comrade who warned me of him say: He can smell a thought and hear a look. And that is not all. I have heard that he has the sixth sense too—’

‘Let him have; I tell you, Bronsky, he is nothing to us. He only chanced along here. He wanted Greek coins.’

‘Greek coins!’ This was reassuring for it agreed with something further about Max Carrados that Bronsky remembered hearing. ‘That may be very true after all as it is well known that he is crazy about collecting—thinks nothing of paying five hundred roubles for a single drachma … Yes, Julian Joolby, if it should become necessary it might be that a hook baited with a rare coin—’

‘Don’t worry. Next week we shall have moved to our new quarters and nothing going on here will matter then.’

‘Ah; that is arrange? I was getting anxious. Our friends in Moscow are becoming more and more impatient as time goes on. The man who pays the piper calls for a tune, as these fool English say it, and the Committee are insist that as they have allow so much for expenses already they must now see results. I am here with authority to investigate about that, comrade Joolby.’

‘They shall see results all right,’ promised Joolby, swelling darkly at the suggestion of interference. ‘And since you fancy English proverbs, comrade, it is well to remember that Rome was not built in a day, one cannot make bricks without clay, and it is not wise to spoil the ship for the sake of a kopeck’s worth of caulking.’

‘That is never fear,’ said Bronsky with a graciously reassuring wave of his hand; ‘nobody mistrusts you of yourself, comrade, and it is only as good friend that I tell you for information what is being thought at headquarters. This is going to be big thing, Joolby.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ agreed the other, regarding his visitor’s comfortable self-satisfaction with his twisted look of private appreciation. ‘I shall do my best in that way, comrade.’

‘Extraordinary care is being take to make sure for wide and quick distribution in China, Japan and India and everywhere agents signify good prospects. The Committee are confident that this move, successfully engined, will destroy British commercial prestige in the East for at least a generation—and by the end of that time there will not be any British in the East. Meanwhile there must be no weak link in the chain. Now, Julian Joolby, what can I report to the Commissar?’

‘You will know that within the next few hours. I’ve called them for eleven. Larch is working on the plates at a safe place now and as soon as dusk we will fill in the time by going to see what he has done and approve or not according to what you think of them.’