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

‘Good. That sounds as business. But why should we go there? Surely it is more fitly that a workman would come and wait on our convenience at your place of living?’

‘It isn’t a matter of fitness—it’s a matter of ordinary prudence. Have I ever been what is call “in trouble”, Bronsky?’

‘Not as far as to my knowledge,’ admitted the comrade. ‘I have always understand that you keep you hand clean however.’

‘So. And I have done that by sticking to one rule: never to have anything in my place that isn’t capable of a reasonable explanation. Most things can be explained away but not the copper plate of a bank-note found underneath your flooring. That is Larch’s look out.’

‘You are right. It would never do—especially when I is here. We cannot be too much careful. Now this Larch—was he not in it once before when things did not go rightly?’

Joolby nodded and the visitor noticed that his bulging throat sagged unpleasantly.

‘That’s the chap. There was a split and Larch didn’t get his fingers out quickly enough. Three years he was sentence and he came out less than six weeks ago.’

‘He is safe though? He has no bad feeling?’

‘Why should he have?’ demanded Joolby, looking at Mr Bronsky with challenging directness. ‘I had nothing to do with him being put away. It was just a matter of luck that while Larch had the stuff when he was nabbed nothing could have been found on me if they had looked for ever—luck or good management.’

‘Good management if you say to me,’ propounded Bronsky wisely. ‘Notwithstanding.’

‘The one who has the plates is bound to get it in the ear if it comes to trouble. Larch knows that all right when he goes in it.’

‘But you are able to persuade him to risk it again? Well, that is real cleverness, Joolby.’

‘Oh yes; I was able as you say it to persuade him. George is the best copper-plate engraver of his line in England; he came out with a splendid character from the prison Governor—and not an earthly chance of getting a better job than rag-picking. I’ve had harder propositions than persuading him in the circumstances, if it comes to that, Bronsky.’

‘It is to your good notwithstanding,’ declared Mr Bronsky urbanely. ‘The Committee of course officially know nothing of details and are in position to deny whatever is say or done but they is not unmindful of zeal, as you may rely in it, comrade. That is the occasion of my report. Now as regards this business of eleven?’

‘You will meet them all then and hear what is being done in other directions. Nickle will be here by that time and we shall be able to decide about Tapsfield.’

‘Tapsfield? That is a new one surely? I have not heard—’

‘Place where the mills are that make all the official Bank paper,’ explained Joolby. ‘Naturally the paper is our chief trouble—always has been: always will be. Larch can make perfect plates, but with what we’re aiming at this time nothing but the actual paper the Bank of England itself uses will pass muster. Well, there’s plenty of it down at Tapsfield and we’re going to lift it somehow.’

‘I quite agree that we must have the right paper however. But this person Nickle—he is not unknown to some of us—is he quite—?’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, there is a feeling that he appear to think more of what he can get out of our holy crusade than of the ultimate benefit of mankind. He has not got the true international spirit, Julian Joolby. I suspect that he has taint of what he would doubtless call “patriotism”—which mean that he has yet to learn that any other country is preferable to his own. To be short, I have found this young man vulgar and it is not beyond that he may also prove restive.’

‘Leave that to me,’ said Joolby with a note of authority, and his unshapely form gave the impression of increasing in bulk as if to meet the prospect of aggression. ‘This is London, not Moscow, Bronsky; I’m in charge here and I have to pick my people and adapt my methods. Nickle will fall into line all right and serve us just so far as suits our purpose. So long as he is doing that he can sing “Rule Britannia” in his spare time for all it matters.’

‘But in the cause—’

‘In the meantime we cannot be too particular about the exact shape of the tool we use to open closed doors with,’ continued Joolby, smothering the interruption with masterful insistence. ‘We are going to flood China, India and the East with absolutely perfect Bank of England paper so that in the end it will be sheerly impossible for English trade to go on there, and so pave the way for Soviet rule. But it is not necessary to shout that sacred message into every ear, even if for the time they work hand in hand with us. Let them think that they are out to make easy money. Few men work any the worse for the expectation that they are in the way to get fortunes. Does that not satisfy you, comrade Bronsky?’

‘So long as it goes forward,’ admitted Mr Bronsky with slightly ungracious acceptance, for he could not blink the suspicion that while he himself was an extremely important figure, this subordinate monstrosity would do precisely as he intended.

‘It is going forward—as you shall convince yourself completely. In the meanwhiles—you have not, I hope, made dinner?’

‘Well, no,’ admitted the visitor, with a flutter of misgiving at the prospect, ‘but—’

‘That is well—you need have no qualms; I can produce something better than kahetia or vodka, and as to food—Won Chou there is equal to anything you would find at your own place or in Soho. Won Chou—number one topside feed, me him, plenty quick. Not is? Is?’

‘Can do. Is,’ replied Won Chou with impassive precision.

‘There you see,’ amplified Joolby, with the pride of a conjurer bringing off a successful trick, ‘he can do it all right—take no longer in the end than if you went out somewhere. And,’ he added, with an inward appreciation of the effect that he knew the boast would have on his guest’s composure, ‘all that he will use for a six course spread may be a gas-ring and two or perhaps three old biscuit tins.’

IT was a continual matter of pained surprise to George Larch whenever he came to think about it—and owing to the nature of his work and its occasional regrettable developments he had plenty of time for meditation—that he should have become a criminal. It was so entirely different from what he had ever intended when he set out in life. All his instincts were law-abiding and moral and the goal of his ambition from the day when he put by his first saved shilling had been a country cottage (as he conceived it), some fancy poultry and a nice square garden. Not a damp, broken-down, honeysuckle-clad, spider-infested, thatched old hovel of the sort that artists loved to depict, but a really sound, trim little new red-brick villa, standing well up and preferably in the immediate suburbs of Brighton or Worthing.

As a baby, a child, a boy, he had given his mother no trouble whatever, and at school he had always earned unexceptional reports, with particular distinction in his two favourite subjects—Handwriting and Scripture History. Indeed, on the occasion of his last Breaking Up the schoolmaster had gone out of his way to contrive a test and as a result had been able to demonstrate to the assembled boys that, set a line of copper-plate, it was literally impossible to decide which was George’s work and which the copy. As it happened, ‘Honesty is the Best Policy. £ s. d.’ (the tag merely to fill up the line) had been the felicitous text of this experiment.