The Little Nugget

If the management of the Hotel Guelph, that London landmark, could have been present at three o’clock one afternoon in early January in the sitting-room of the suite which they had assigned to Mrs. Elmer Ford, late of New York, they might well have felt a little aggrieved. Philosophers among them would possibly have meditated on the limitations of human effort; for they had done their best for Mrs. Ford. They had housed her well. They had fed her well. They had caused inspired servants to anticipate her every need. Yet here she was, in the midst of all these aids to a contented mind, exhibiting a restlessness and impatience of her surroundings that would have been noticeable in a caged tigress or a prisoner of the Bastille. She paced the room. She sat down, picked up a novel, dropped it, and, rising, resumed her patrol. The clock striking, she compared it with her watch, which she had consulted two minutes before. She opened the locket that hung by a gold chain from her neck, looked at its contents, and sighed. Finally, going quickly into the bedroom, she took from a suitcase a framed oil-painting, and returning with it to the sitting-room, placed it on a chair, and stepped back, gazing at it hungrily. Her large brown eyes, normally hard and imperious, were strangely softened. Her mouth quivered.

“Ogden!” she whispered.

The picture which had inspired this exhibition of feeling would probably not have affected the casual spectator to quite the same degree.

A cloud of tobacco-smoke rising above the back of an easy-chair greeted me as I opened the door. Moving into the room, I perceived a pair of boots resting on the grate. I stepped to the light, and the remainder of the Little Nugget came into view.

He was lying almost at full length in the chair, his eyes fixed in dreamy abstraction upon the ceiling. As I came towards him, he drew at the cigarette between his fingers, glanced at me, looked away again, and expelled another mouthful of smoke. He was not interested in me.

Perhaps this indifference piqued me, and I saw him with prejudiced eyes. At any rate, he seemed to me a singularly unprepossessing youth. That portrait had flattered him. He had a stout body and a round, unwholesome face. His eyes were dull, and his mouth dropped discontentedly. He had the air of one who is surfeited with life.

I am disposed to imagine, as Mr. Abney would have said, that my manner in addressing him was brisker and more incisive than Mr. Abney’s own. I was irritated by his supercilious detachment.

“Throw away that cigarette,” I said.

To my amazement, he did, promptly. I was beginning to wonder whether I had not been too abrupt⁠—he gave me a curious sensation of being a man of my own age⁠—when he produced a silver case from his pocket and opened it.

The hint seemed to wound rather than frighten him.

“Aw, cut out the rough stuff, bo,” he said reproachfully in a cautious, husky undertone. “I ain’t goin’ to start anything.”

I had an impression that I had heard the voice before, but I could not place it.

“What are you following me for?” I demanded. “Who are you?”

“Say, I want a talk wit youse. I took a slant at youse under de lamppost back dere, an’ I seen it was you, so I tagged along. Say, I’m wise to your game, sport.”

I had identified him by this time. Unless there were two men in the neighbourhood of Sanstead who hailed from the Bowery, this must be the man I had seen at the Feathers who had incurred the disapproval of Miss Benjafield.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” I said. “What is my game?”

His voice became reproachful again.

“Ah chee!” he protested. “Quit yer kiddin’! What was youse rubberin’ around de house for last night if you wasn’t trailin’ de kid?”

“Was it you who ran into me last night?” I asked.

“Gee! I t’ought it was a tree. I came near takin’ de count.”

“I did take it. You seemed in a great hurry.”

“Hell!” said the man simply, and expectorated.

“Say,” he resumed, having delivered this criticism on that stirring episode, “dat’s a great kid, dat Nugget. I t’ought it was a Black Hand soup explosion when he cut loose. But, say, let’s don’t waste time. We gotta get together about dat kid.”

There was a quick footstep outside, the door flew open, and on the threshold stood a short, sturdy man in a motoring coat and cap. The upper part of his face was covered by a strip of white linen, with holes for the eyes, and there was a Browning pistol in his hand.

It is my belief that, if assistant-masters were allowed to wear white masks and carry automatic pistols, keeping order in a school would become child’s play. A silence such as no threat of bad marks had ever been able to produce fell instantaneously upon the classroom. Out of the corner of my eye, as I turned to face our visitor, I could see small boys goggling rapturously at this miraculous realization of all the dreams induced by juvenile adventure fiction. As far as I could ascertain, on subsequent inquiry, not one of them felt a tremor of fear. It was all too tremendously exciting for that. For their exclusive benefit an illustration from a weekly paper for boys had come to life, and they had no time to waste in being frightened.

As for me, I was dazed. Motor bandits may terrorize France, and desperadoes hold up trains in America, but this was peaceful England. The fact that Buck MacGinnis was at large in the neighbourhood did not make the thing any the less incredible.

It is strange how really literal figurative expressions are. I had read stories in which some astonished character’s heart leaped into his mouth. For an instant I could have supposed that mine had actually done so. The illusion of some solid object blocking up my throat was extraordinarily vivid, and there certainly seemed to be a vacuum in the spot where my heart should have been. Not for a substantial reward could I have uttered a word at that moment. I could not even breathe. The horrible unexpectedness of the blow had paralysed me.

White, however, was apparently prepared to continue the chat without my assistance.

“I guess you didn’t know I was around, or you wouldn’t have talked that way. Well, I was, and I heard every word you said. Here was the money, you said, and he was to take it and break for London, and go to the address on this card, and your pal Smith would look after him. I guess there had been some talk before that, but I didn’t arrive in time to hear it. But I heard all I wanted, except that address. And that’s what I’m going to find out when we get to London.”

He gave out this appalling information in a rich and soothing voice, as if it were some ordinary commonplace. To me it seemed to end everything. I imagined I was already as good as under arrest. What a fool I had been to discuss such a matter in a place like a stable yard, however apparently empty. I might have known that at a school there are no empty places.