while clementina, in her own fashion, was shattering an idyll to pieces, quixtus under the tutelage of billiter pursued the most distasteful occupation in which he had ever engaged. had some rhadamanthine arbiter of his destiny compelled him, under penalty of death, to choose between horse-racing and laborious practice as a solicitor, he would unhesitatingly have chosen the latter. course and stand and paddock and ring, the whole machinery of the sport, wearied him to exasperation. just as there are some men to whom, as the saying goes, music is the most expensive form of noise, so are there others to whom the racing of horses is merely the most extravagantly cumbersome form of gambling. why train valuable animals, they ask; to run round a field, when the same end could be attained by making little leaden horses gyrate mechanically round a disk, at a millionth part of the cost? of the delight of studying pedigree, of following form, of catching the precious trickles of information that percolate through the litter of stables, of backing their judgment thus misguided they have no notion. they cannot even feel a thrill of excitement at the sight of the far-off specks of galloping horses. they wonder at the futility of it all as the quadrupeds scrabble down the straight. an automobile, they plead, can go ten times as fast. that such purblind folk exist is sad; but after all they are god’s creatures, just the same as jockeys and professional tipsters.
at first there was one feature of the race-course which fascinated quixtus—the ring. then he imagined he had come into contact with incarnate evil. those coarse animal faces, swollen with the effort of bawling the odds, those hard greedy eyes bulging from purple cheeks, those voices raucous, inhuman, suggested to his mild fancy a peculiarly depraved corner of tophet. but what practical evil resulted from this masque of hades was not quite apparent. nobody seemed any the worse. the bookmaker smiled widely on those who won, and those who lost smiled on the world with undaunted cheerfulness. so, in the course of time, quixtus began to regard the bookmakers with feelings of disappointment, which gave place after a while to indifference, and eventually to weariness and irritation.
even old joe jenks, thick-necked, fishy-eyed villain, to whom billiter personally introduced him, proved himself, in all his dealings, to be a scrupulously honest man. the turf, in spite of its depressing ugliness, appeared but a man?uvring ground for the dull virtues. where was its wickedness? he complained, at length, to billiter.
billiter seemed for the moment to be in a bad humour. he tugged at his heavy moustache.
“i don’t see what fault you can find with racing. you’re making a very good thing out of it.”
which was true. fortune, who had played him such scurvy tricks, was now turning on him her sunniest smile. he was winning prodigiously, fantastically. billiter selected the horses which he was to back, he backed them to the amount advised by billiter, and in most instances the horses won.
“if you think the mere gaining of money gives me any pleasure, my dear billiter,” said he, “you’re very much mistaken. i have sufficient means of my own to satisfy my modest requirements, and to accept large sums of money from your friend, mr. jenks, is humiliating and repulsive.”
“if that’s the matter, you can turn them over to me,” said billiter, “i don’t get much out of the business.”
they were walking about the paddock, between the races. quixtus halted and regarded his morose companion with cold inquiry.
“you gave me to understand that you were betting on the same horses as i was.”
billiter cursed himself for an incautious fool.
“only now and then,” said he, “and for small stakes. how can i afford to plunge like you?”
“what is the dismal quadruped i am betting on for this next race?” asked quixtus looking at his card.
“punchinello. forty-five to one. dead cert.”
“then,” said quixtus, “here are five pounds. put them on punchinello and if he wins you will have two hundred and twenty-five.”
billiter left him, made his way out of the paddock to that part of the race-course where the outside bookmakers have their habitation. old joe jenks in the flaming check suit and a white hat adorned with his name and quality stood on a stool shouting the odds, taking bets and giving directions to the clerk at his side. business for a moment was slack.
“another fiver for the governor on punchinello,” said billiter.
old joe jenks jumped from his stool and took billiter aside.
“look here, old friend,” said he, “chuck it. come off it. i’m not playing any more. i poured a couple of quarts of champagne over your head because you told me you had got hold of a mug, and instead of the mug you bring up a ruddy miracle who backs every wrong ‘un at a hundred to one—and romps in. and thinking you straight, mr. billiter, sir, i’ve stretched out the odds—to oblige you. and you’ve damn well landed me. it’s getting monotonous. see? i’m tired.”
“it’s not my fault, joe,” said billiter, humbly. “look. just an extra fiver on punchinello. he’s got no earthly—you know that as well as i do.”
“do i?” growled the bookmaker angrily, convinced that billiter was over-reaching him. “how do i know what you know? you want to have it both ways, do you? well you won’t get it out of me.”
“i swear to god, joe,” said billiter, earnestly, “that i’m straight. so little did i expect him to win that i’ve not asked a penny commission.”
“then ask it now, and be hanged to you,” cried the angry bookmaker, and leaping back to his stool, he resumed his brazen-throated trade.
billiter kept his five-pound note, unwilling to risk it with another bookmaker on the laughing-stock of a punchinello, and sauntered away moodily. he was a most injured man. old joe jenks doubted his good faith. now, was there a single horse selected for his patron to back upon which any student of racing outside a lunatic asylum would have staked money? not one. he could lay his hand on his honest heart and swear it. and had he staked a penny on his selections? no. he could swear to that, too. he had not (fool that he was) asked quixtus for a commission. through his honourable dealing he was a poor man. the thought was bitter. he had run straight with jenks. it was not his fault if the devil had got into the horses so that every shocking outsider, backed by quixtus, revealed ultra-equine capacities. what could a horse do against the superhorse? nothing. what could billiter himself do? nothing. except have a drink. in the circumstances it was the only thing to do. he went into the bar of the grand stand and ordered a whisky and soda. it sizzled gratefully down a throat burning with a sense of wrong. his moral tone restored, he determined to live in poverty no more for the sake of a quixotic principle, and, proceeding to a ready-money bookmaker of his acquaintance, pulled out his five-pound note and backed rosemary, a certain winner (such was his private and infallible information) at eight to one. this duty to himself accomplished, he went to the grand stand to view the race, leaving quixtus to do that which seemed best to him.
the bell rang, the course was cleared, the numbers put up; the horses cantered gaily past. at the sight of rosemary, a shiny bay in beautiful condition, billiter’s heart warmed; at the sight of punchinello, a scraggy crock who had never won a race in his inglorious life, billiter sniffed scornfully. if old joe jenks was such a fool as to refuse a free gift of two pounds ten—they had agreed to halve the spoils—the folly thereof lay entirely on old joe jenks’s head.
the start was made. for a long time the horses ran in a bunch. then rosemary crept ahead. billiter’s moustache beneath the levelled field-glasses betrayed a happy smile. rosemary increased her lead. at the turn into the straight, something happened. she swerved and lost her stride. three others dashed by, among them the despised punchinello. they passed the post in a flash, punchinello first. billiter murmured things at which the world, had it heard them, would have grown pale, and again sought the bar. emerging thence he went in quest of his patron. he had not far to go. quixtus sat on a wooden chair at the back of the grand stand reading a vellum covered elzevir duodecimo edition of saint augustine’s confessions. when billiter approached he rose and thrust the volume into the tail pocket of his frock-coat.
“was that a race?” he asked.
“race. of course it was. the race. didn’t you see it?”
“thank goodness, no,” said quixtus. “did any horse win?”
the sodden and simple wit of billiter rose like a salmon at this gaudy fly of irony. he lost his temper.
“your damned, spavined, bow-legged, mule-be-gotten crock of a punchinello won.”
quixtus regarded him mildly; but a transient gleam of light flickered in his china-blue eyes.
“then, my dear billiter,” said he, “i have won nine hundred pounds, which, in view of my opinion of the turf, based on experience, i think i shall hand over to the society for the propagation of the gospel to be earmarked for the conversion of the mahommedans in mecca. as for you, billiter, you have won two hundred and twenty-five pounds”—billiter quivered with sub-aspirate anathema—“which ought to satisfy the momentary cupidity of any man. let us go. the more i see of it the more am i convinced that the race-course is no place for me. it is too good.”
billiter glanced at him with wrathful suspicion. was he speaking in childish simplicity or in mordant sarcasm? the grave, unsmiling face, the expressionless blue eyes gave him no clue.
thus, however, ended quixtus’s career on the turf. to stand about wearily in all weathers in order to witness what, to his fastidious mind was merely a dull and vulgar spectacle, was an act of self-sacrifice from which he derived no compensating thrill. the injured billiter having patched up a peace with old joe jenks, convincing him of his own ingenuousness and of the inevitable change in his patron’s luck, in vain persuaded quixtus to resume his investigations. he offered to introduce him to a fraternity of so-called commission agents and touts, in whose company he could saturate himself with vileness.
“i have no taste for disgusting society,” said quixtus.
“then i don’t know what the deuce you do want,” exclaimed billiter in a fume.
“you can’t touch pitch without being defiled.”
“i thought that was just what you were trying to be.”
“in one way, yes,” replied quixtus, musingly; “but i loathe touching the pitch.”
in spite of his confessed belief in the altruistic purity of the turf, he regarded as unspeakable defilement the cheques which he had received from old joe jenks. he had kept them in his drawer, and the more he looked at them the more did the bestial face of old joe jenks obtrude itself before his eyes, and the more repugnant did it become to his now abnormal fastidiousness to pay them into his own banking account. to destroy them, as was his first impulse, merely signified a benefit conferred on the odious jenks, who would be only too glad to repocket his filthy money. what should he do? at last a malignant idea occurred to his morbidly and curiously working mind. he would cast all this pitch and defilement upon another’s head. some one else should shiver with the disgust of it. but who? the inspiration came from tartarus. he endorsed the cheques to the value of nearly two thousand pounds, and paid them into the banking account of his nephew tommy burgrave.
he would be as diabolically and defiledly wicked as you please, but the intermediary pitch he would not touch.
that was his attitude towards all the suggestions for wickedness laid before him by his three counsellors. they, for their part, although they recognised great advantage in fostering the gloomy humour of their mad patron, began to be weary in evil-doing. after they had taxed their invention for an attractive scheme of villainy, they found that it either came within the tabooed category of crime or, by its lack of refinement, failed to commend itself to the sensitive scholar. they were at their wits’ end. the only one to whose proposal quixtus turned an attentive ear was huckaby, who had suggested the heart-breaking expedition through the fashionable resorts of europe. and, to the credit of huckaby, be it here mentioned that, beyond certain fantastical and mocking suggestions, such as the devastation of old women’s wards in workhouses by means of an anonymous christmas gifts of nitroglycerine plum-puddings, this was the only serious proposal he submitted. anxious, however, lest the idea should lose its attraction, he urged quixtus to start immediately. it is not every day that a down-at-heel wastrel has the opportunity of luxurious foreign travel, to say nothing of the humorous object of this particular excursion. but quixtus, very sensibly, pointed out to his eager follower that the fashionable resorts of europe, save the great capitals, are empty during the months of may and june, and that it would be much better to postpone their journey until august filled them with the thousand women waiting to have their hearts broken.
vandermeer, unemployed since his embassy to tommy burgrave, unsuccessful in his suggestions and envious of billiter and huckaby, at last hit upon an ingenious idea. he brought quixtus a dirty letter. it ran:
“dear mr. vandermeer,—you, who were an old friend of my husband’s in our better days and know how valiantly i have struggled to keep the home together, can’t you help me now? i am ill in bed, my children are starving. the little ones are lying now even too weak to cry out for bread. it would break a wolf’s heart to see them. if you can’t help me, for i know how things are with you, can’t you bring my case before your rich friend, mr. quixtus, of whose kindness and generosity you have so often spoken? . . .
“yours sincerely,
“emily wellgood.”
it bore the address “2, transiter street, clerkenwell road, n.w.”
“what do you bring me this for?” asked quixtus as soon as he had read it.
“i am satisfying my own conscience as far as mrs. wellgood is concerned,” replied vandermeer, “and at the same time giving you an opportunity of being wicked. it’s a genuine case. you can let them die of starvation.”
quixtus leaned back in his chair and gave the matter his consideration. vandermeer had interrupted him in the midst of a paper which he was writing to controvert a new theory as to the juxtaposition of the pal?olithic and neolithic tombs at solutré, and he required time to fetch back his mind from the quaternary age to the present day. the prospect of a whole family perishing of hunger by an act; as it were, of his will, pleased his fancy.
“very good. very good, vandermeer. let them starve,” said he. “let them starve,” he murmured to himself, as he took up his pen.
vandermeer, hanging about, hinted at payment for the service rendered. quixtus met his crafty eyes with equal cunning.
“you would be too soft-hearted—you would give them some of the money. wait till some of them are dead.” he rolled the last words delectably round his tongue. “and now, my dear vandermeer, i’m very busy. many thanks and good-bye.”
vandermeer left reluctantly and quixtus resumed his work.
“the bizygomatic transverse diameter,” he wrote, putting down the beginning of the sentence that was in his head when vandermeer was announced. he paused. he had lost the thread of his ideas. it was a subtle argument depending on the comparative measurements of newly discovered skulls. he threw down his pen impatiently, and in mild and gentlemanly language anathematised vandermeer. he attacked the bizygomatic transverse diameter again; but the starving family occupied his thoughts. presently he abandoned work for the morning and gave himself up to the relish of his wickedness. it had a delicious flavour. practically he was slaying mother and babes, while he stood outside the ordinary repulsive and sordid circumstances of murder. vandermeer should have his reward. after lunch, he felt impelled to visit them. a force stronger than a strong inclination to return to his paper led him out of the front-door and into a taxi-cab summoned from the neighbouring rank. he promised himself the thrill of gloating over the sufferings of his victims. besides, the letter contained a challenge. “it would break a wolf’s heart to see them.” he would show the writer that his heart was harder than any wolf’s. instinctively his hand sought the waistcoat pocket in which he kept his loose gold. yes; there were three sovereigns. he smiled. it would be the finished craft of devildom to lay them out on a table before the woman’s hungering and ravished eyes and then, with a merciless chuckle, to pocket them again and walk out of the house.
“i will not be a fool,” he asserted, as the taxi-cab entered the clerkenwell road.
the taxi-cab driver signed that he wished to communicate with his fare. quixtus leaned forward over the door.
“do you know where transiter street is, sir?”
quixtus did not. does any easy london gentleman know the mean streets in the purlieus of clerkenwell? but, oddly enough, a milkman of the locality knew not transiter street either. nor did a policeman on duty. nor did a postman. perplexed, quixtus drove to the nearest district post office and made inquiries. there was no such street in clerkenwell at all. he consulted the post office london directory. there was no such street as transiter street in london.
quixtus drove home in an angry mood. once more he had been deceived. vandermeer had invented the emaciated family for the sake of the fee. did the earth hold a more abandoned villain? he grimly set about devising some punishment for his disingenuous counsellor. nothing adequate occurred to him till some days afterwards when vandermeer sent him another forged letter announcing the demise, in horrible torment, of the youngest child. he took up his pen and wrote as follows:
“my dear vandermeer,—i am sending mrs. wellgood the burial expenses. i have also enclosed a cheque for yourself. will you kindly go to transiter street and claim it. for the present i have no further need of you.
“yours sincerely,
“ephraim quixtus.”
he posted the letter himself on his way to lunch at the club where wonnacott remarked on his high good humour.
since the discontinuance of the tuesday dinners (for they were not resumed after the establishment of the new relations), huckaby, billiter, and vandermeer had contracted the habit of meeting once a week in the bar-parlour of a quiet tavern for a companionable fuddle. there they exchanged views on religion and alcohol, and related unveracious (and uncredited) anecdotes of their former high estate. jealous of each other, however, they spoke little of quixtus, and then only in general terms. the poor gentleman was still distraught. it was a sad case, causing them to wag their heads sorrowfully and order another round of whisky.
but one evening of depression, quixtus having for some time refused their ministrations, and pockets having become woefully empty, they talked with greater freedom of their respective dealings with their patron. vandermeer related the practical joke he had played upon him; billiter described his astounding luck, and his crazy reason for retiring from the turf; and huckaby, by way of illustrating the unbalanced state of quixtus’s mind, confided to them the project of breaking a woman’s heart.
“what are you going to get out of it?” asked vandermeer brutally, for the first time breaking through the pretence that they were three devoted friends banded together to protect the poor mad gentleman’s interests.
huckaby raised a protesting hand. “my dear van!”
“oh, drop it,” cried vandermeer. “you make me tired.” he repeated the question.
“simply amusement. what else?” said huckaby.
they wrangled foolishly for a while. at last billiter, who had remained silent, brought his fist down, with a bang, on the table.
“i’ve got an idea,” said he. “have you any particular woman in view?”
“lord, no,” said huckaby.
“i can put you on to one,” said billiter. “no need to go abroad. she’s here in london.”
huckaby called him uncomplimentary names. the continental trip, as far as he was concerned, was the essence of the suggestion; the capture of the wild goose a remote consideration.
“besides, old man,” said he, “this is my show.”
billiter looked glum. after all, the idea was of no great value. vandermeer’s cunning brain began to work. he asked billiter for a description of the lady.
“she’s the widow of an old pal of mine,” replied billiter. “lady and all that sort of thing. her husband, poor old chap, came to grief—dragoon guards—in the running for a title—went it too hot, you know—died leaving her with nothing at all. she has pulled through, somehow—lives in devilish good style, dresses expensively, and has the cleverness to hang on to her social position. damned nice woman—but as for her heart, you could go at it with a pickaxe without risk of breaking it. i thought she would just suit the case.”
“where does the money come from to live in good style and dress expensively?” asked huckaby.
“billiter thinks it might just as well come from quixtus as from any one else. don’t you, billiter?”
billiter nodded sagaciously and gulped down some whisky and water.
“and then we’d all stand in,” cried vandermeer.
“that may be all very well in its way,” said huckaby, “but i’m not going to give up my one chance of getting abroad.”
“go abroad then,” retorted vandermeer. “if the lady is of the kind i take her to be, she won’t mind crossing the channel when she knows there’s a golden feathered coot in boulogne just dying to moult in her hand.”
“you are crude and vulgar in your ideas, van,” said huckaby. “gentlemen of quixtus’s position no more go to boulogne for a holiday than they frequent ramsgate boarding-houses. and they don’t give large sums of money to expensively dressed ladies with conjecturable means of support.”
“he’s such a fool that he would never guess anything,” argued vandermeer.
“hold on,” said billiter, “you’re on the wrong tack altogether. i told you she was a lady.” his manner changed subtly, the moribund instinct of birth crackling suddening into a tiny flame. “i don’t know if you two quite realise what that means, but to quixtus it would mean everything.”
“i’m a sometime fellow of corpus christi college, cambridge——” began huckaby, ruffled.
“then you must have met a lady connected with somebody in your damned academy,” said billiter, who had been sent down from oxford.
“the university of cambridge isn’t an academy,” said huckaby, waxing quarrelsome.
“and a woman who subsists on gifts from her gentlemen friends can’t be a real lady,” said vandermeer.
“oh go to blazes, both of you!” cried billiter, angrily.
he clapped on his hat and rose. but as he had been sitting in the corner of the divan, between huckaby and vandermeer, with the table in front of him, a dignified exit was impracticable. indeed, he was immediately plumped down again on his seat by a tug on each side of his coat, and adjured in the vernacular not to stray from the paths of wisdom.
“what’s the use of quarrelling?” asked huckaby. “she’s a lady if you say so.”
“of course, old man,” vandermeer agreed. “have a drink?”
billiter being mollified, and the refinement of the dragoon guardsman’s widow being accepted as indisputable, a long and confidential conference took place, the conspirators speaking in whispers, with heads close together, although they happened to be alone in the saloon-bar. it was the first time they had contemplated concerted action, the first time they had discussed anything of real interest; so, for the first time they forgot to get fuddled. the plot was simple. billiter was to approach mrs. fontaine (at last he disclosed the lady’s identity) with all the delicacy such a mission demanded, and lay the proposal before her. if she fell in with it she would hold herself in readiness to repair to whatever continental resort might be indicated, and then having made herself known to huckaby, would be introduced by him to quixtus. the rest would follow, as the night the day.
“the part i don’t like about it,” objected vandermeer, “is not only letting a fourth into our own private concern, but giving her the lion’s share. we’re not a syndicate of philanthropists.”
“i’m by way of thinking it won’t be our concern much longer,” replied billiter.
“and nobody asked you to come in,” said huckaby. “you can stand out if you like.”
an ugly look overspread vandermeer’s foxy face.
“oh can i? you see what happens if you try that game on.”
“besides,” continued billiter, disregarding the snarl, “it will be to our advantage. which of us is going to touch our demented friend for a hundred pounds? we didn’t do it in former days; much less now. but i’ll back mrs. fontaine to get at least three thousand out of him. thirty per cent, is our commission without which we don’t play, and that gives us three hundred each. i could do with three hundred myself very nicely.”
“how are we to know what she gets?”
“that’s easily managed,” said huckaby, pulling his ragged beard. “she’ll make her returns to billiter and i’ll undertake to get the figures out of quixtus.”
“but where do i come in?” asked vandermeer. “how shall i know if you two are playing straight?”
“you’ll have your damned head punched in a minute,” said billiter, looking fierce. “to hear you one would think we were a set of crooks.”
“if we aren’t, what the devil are we, then?” muttered vandermeer bitterly.
but billiter had turned his broad back on him and did not catch the words, whereby possibly he escaped a broken head. billiter was sometimes sensitive on the point of honour. he had sunk to lower depths of meanness and petty villainy than the other two in whom the moral sense still lingered. he would acknowledge himself to be a “wrong ‘un” because that vague term connoted in his mind merely a gentleman of broken fortune who was put to shifts (such as his disastrous bargain with old joe jenks and the present conspiracy) for his living; but a crook was a common thief or swindler, a member of the criminal classes, of a confraternity to which he, billiter, deemed it impossible that he could belong, especially during a period like the present, when he found himself, after many years of dingy linen, apparelled in the gorgeous raiment of his gentlemanly days. he had sunk below the line of self-realisation. but the others had not. vandermeer, who hitherto had merely snapped like a jackal at passing food to satisfy his hunger, did not deceive himself as to what he had become. cynical, he felt no remorse. on the other hand, huckaby, who went to bed that night sober, had a bad attack of conscience during the small hours and woke up next morning with a headache. whereupon he upbraided himself for his folly; first, in confiding to his companions the project of his whimsical adventure; secondly, in allowing it to drift into such a despicable entanglement; thirdly, in associating himself with a scarlet crustacean of billiter’s claw-power; and fourthly, in not getting drunk.
huckaby was nearer quixtus than the others in education and point of view. though willing to accept any alms thrown to him he was not rapacious; he had not regarded his mad and wealthy patron entirely as a pigeon to be plucked; and beneath all the corruption of his nature there burnt a spark of affection for the kindly man who had befriended him and whose trust he had betrayed. he spent most of the ineffectual day in shaping a resolution to withdraw from the discreditable compact. but by the last post in the evening he received a laconic postcard from billiter: “the fountain plays.”
the sapped will-power gave way before the march of practical events. with a shrug he accepted the message as a decree of destiny, and wandered forth into congenial haunts, where, in one respect at least, he did not repeat the folly of the previous evening.
