The Square Peg or The Gun Fella полностью

“Here is my card,” Frampton said. “If you will take my offer to five of the women, and tell them that I have a housekeeper who will make them at home, and who will come for them in a car at the end of this performance, if they choose to take the offer. But perhaps you have married couples. Two married couples and a girl, I could take those, if they would like.”

“We got no married couples, worse luck,” Mike said. “This bunch isn’t like the circus, nor yet like a touring company, with East Lynne and the Harbour Lights. I never was with a menagerie before, and begob it’s my last time. I’ll take your offer to them, Sorr, and in the meantime, I thank you kindly.”

Frampton saw that Mike acquitted him of running a brothel, and put him down as an odd sort of madman, such as was said to inhabit these islands. He closed the unwanted tickets; it was unlikely that anyone would ask for a seat now. He said:

“Will you just wait here, Sorr? I’ll bruit it to them.”

He took the card, glanced at it carefully, and vanished down the passage which led to the dressing-rooms. Faint wafts of cheap scent and cigarette smoke came from those parts. As Frampton waited, the young man and woman from the house came slowly out of the hall. The young woman was smoking. She stared at Frampton, who stared back. At the passage end, she paused and said:

“Shall we go to their dressing-rooms and tell them how lousy they are?”

“I wouldn’t,” the young man said, “Circassian blood, you know. These chaps are very handy with the knife.”

“Lousy day,” the young woman said, looking out of the outer door.

“Absooty pute.”

“I suppose they take us for the bloods, waiting for the soubrettes.”

“Like to cut?”

“What else can we do, till it’s time for Crissies?”

“You could see over the church,” the young man said. They giggled.

“What’s the time now?”

“Twelve past five. We’ll wait till half-past and then cut and have a cocktail at Paggies’. We’ll have earned it.”

They sauntered back past Frampton; she stared at him as she passed; he returned her stare. Tiger Mike returned just as she passed him. Tiger Mike was like a living conscience.

“Lady,” he said, “will you put that cigarette out now? Smoking’s not allowed in here, neither in the hall nor in any passage. The orders of the police are clear. Put it out now. I told you of that before.”

“Were you speaking to me?” she asked.

“Yes, lady.”

“I’m glad to know. Don’t let it become a habit, will you?”

“Young gentleman,” Tiger Mike said to the lad, “you must ask your lady to go outside to smoke, or take her from here.”

At this point, Miss Adobe came out with Eldrida, whose excitements always went straight to her liver and was now beginning to feel their onslaught. They went out hurriedly.

“Do you hear?” the young woman said. “We’re absooty chucked out, on our ears; absooty marvous. Get my wrap. We’ll leave this and see the church. We can smoke there.”

She moved to the outer door, and continued to smoke there, while her young man fetched the wraps from the hall. Mike turned to Frampton.

“I put it to them, Sorr,” he said. “The five here on this sheet will thank you kindly, Sorr.”

He took the sheet, without looking at it.

“Is there a telephone here?” he asked.

“No, Sorr, this place is not on.”

“I must get through to my housekeeper. I’ll go telephone. The show won’t be beginning?”

“You’ll have lashings of time, Sorr,” Mike said.

He had seen enough on his trip to make him sure of that.

Frampton went out into the rain. When he had gone a few yards up the road, he looked at the precious list, carefully screening it from the rain. It was written or scrawled with eyebrow-stick or some dark kind of grease-paint on the packing-paper which had covered the supply of tickets. It bore the names of five persons: Sorya, Marianela, Aranowski, Godelof, Zapritska. Sorya was the first of them; she was to be there, and she wasn’t married. His luck was in.

He telephoned at a little tavern; he got through to Mrs. Haulover and gave his orders, that there would be five strange young women at Mullples for the week-end; that their rooms were to be made ready at once, with fires lighted, and that she was to come down at once in the big car to welcome them. It was somewhat of a blow to Mrs. Haulover, who guessed that something unusual had occurred. He told her to get through to a Stanchester firm, which knew him and happened to be open on Saturdays, to insist that any extra stores needed should be sent by road at once.

“That’s that, then,” he concluded. “The sooner the quicker.”

He judged that Mrs. Haulover had guessed that a staggering chance had fallen. He went back to his place as the curtain rose upon the Toltecs.