Bindle: Some Chapters in the Life of Joseph Bindle, Herbert George Jenkins [love letters to the dead TXT] 📗

wot 'e's found out. Shouldn't be surprised if it was them guns," muttered Bindle prophetically under his breath.

Bindle had been employed by the Depository for six months, and had acquitted himself well. He was a good workman and trustworthy, and had given conclusive proof that he knew his business.

The manager looked up from a letter he held in his hand.

"I've had a very serious letter from Sir Charles Custance of Little Compton," he began.

"No bad news, I 'ope, sir," remarked Bindle cheerfully. "Brooks sort o' shook 'im up a bit, accordin' to 'is own account." Brooks was the foreman pantechnicon-man.

The manager frowned, and proceeded to read aloud Sir Charles's letter. It recapitulated the events that had taken place at Little Compton, painting Bindle and the foreman as a pair of the most desperate cut-throats conceivable, threatening, not only them, but the West London Furniture Depository with every imaginable pain and penalty.

When he had finished, the manager looked up at Bindle with great severity.

"You've heard what Sir Charles Custance writes. What have you got to say?" he asked.

Bindle scratched his head and shuffled his feet. Then he looked up with a grin.

"Yer see, sir, I wasn't to know that they was as scared as rabbits o' the Germans. I jest sort o' let an 'int drop all innocent like, an' the 'ole bloomin' place turns itself into a sort o' Scotland Yard."

"But you sought out Sir Charles and"—the manager referred to the letter—"'and laid before me an information,' he says."

"I didn't lay nothink before 'im, sir, not even a complaint, although 'is language when 'e come out o' the ark wasn't fit for Ginger to 'ear, an' Ginger's ain't exactly Sunday-school talk."

The manager was short-handed and anxious to find some means of placating so important a man as Sir Charles Custance, and, at the same time, retaining Bindle's services. He bit the top of his pen meditatively. It was Bindle who solved the problem.

"I better resign," he suggested, "and then join up again later, sir. You can write an' say I'm under notice to go."

The manager pondered awhile. He was responsible for the conduct of the affairs of the Depository, and, after all, Sir Charles Custance and the others had been mainly responsible for what had occurred.

"I'll think the matter over," he remarked. "In the meantime Brooks is away, Mr. Colter is ill, and Jameson hasn't turned up this morning, and we have that move in West Kensington to get through during the day. Do you think that you can be responsible for it?"

"Sure of it, sir. I been in the perfession, man and boy, all me life."

The West London Furniture Depository made a specialty of moving clients' furniture whilst they were holiday-making. They undertook to set out the rooms in the new house exactly as they had been in the old, with due allowance for a changed geography.

"Here is the specification," said the manager, handing to Bindle a paper. "Now how will you set to work?"

"'Five bed, two reception, one study, one kitchen, one nursery,'" read Bindle. "Two vans'll do it, sir. Best bedroom, servant's. dinin'-room, No. 1; second bedroom, drawin'-room, No. 2; two bedrooms and kitchen No. 3, and the rest No. 4. Then you see we shan't get 'em mixed."

The manager nodded approvingly.

"Do you think you could replace the furniture?"

"Sure as I am o' Mrs. Bindle. I can carry an 'ole 'ouse in me eye; they won't know they've even moved."

"The keys are at the West Kensington Police Station. Here is the authority, with a note from me. It's No. 181 Branksome Road you're to fetch the furniture from. Here's the key of the house you are to take it to—No. 33 Lebanon Avenue, Chiswick. Take Nos. 6 and 8 vans, with Wilkes, Huggles, Randers, and the new man."

"Right, sir," said Bindle; "I'll see it through."

Bindle returned to the yard, where he narrated to his mates what had just taken place in the manager's room.

"So yer see, Ginger, I'm still goin' to stay wi' yer, correct yer language an' make a gentleman o' yer. So cheer up, 'Appy."

Bindle gathered together his forces and set out. He was glad to be able to include Ginger, whose misanthropic outlook upon life was a source of intense interest to him. Outside the police-station he stepped off the tail-board of the front van, saying that he would overtake them.

"Come to give yourself up?" enquired the sergeant, who had a slight acquaintance with Bindle.

"Not yet, ole sport; goin' to give yer a chance to earn promotion. I come for a key."

Bindle handed in his credentials.

At that moment two constables entered with a drunken woman screaming obscenities. The men had all they could do to hold her. Bindle listened for a moment.

"Lord, she ain't learnt all that at Sunday-school," he muttered; then turning to the sergeant, said, "'Ere, gi'e me my key. I didn't ought to 'ear such things."

The sergeant hurriedly turned to a rack behind him, picked up the key and handed it to Bindle. His attention was engrossed with the new case; it meant a troublesome day for him.

Bindle signed for the key, put it in his pocket and left the station.

He overtook the vans just as they were entering Branksome Road. Pulling the key out of his pocket he looked at the tag.

"Funny," he muttered, "thought he said a 'undred an' eighty-one, not a 'undred an' thirty-one."

He took a scrap of paper out of his pocket, on which he had written down the number in the manager's office. It was clearly 181. The sergeant had given him the wrong key.

"'Ere! Hi!" he began, when he stopped suddenly, a grin overspreading his features. Suddenly he slapped his knee.

"Wot a go! 'Oly Moses, I'll do it! I only 'ope they 'aven't left no servants in the 'ouse. Won't it be—— Hi, where the 'ell are you goin' to? You're passin' the 'ouse."

"Didn't yer say a 'undred an' heighty-one?" came the hoarse voice of Wilkes from the front of the first of the pantechnicons.

"A 'undred an' thirty-one, you ole 'Uggins. 'Adn't yer better count it up on yer fingers? Yer can use yer toes if yer like."

There was a growl in response. Bindle was popular with his mates, and no one ever took offence at what he said.

The two vans drew up before No. 131, and the four men grouped themselves by the gate.

Bindle surveyed them with a grin.

"Lord, wot a army of ole reprobates! Wilkes," said Bindle gravely, addressing an elderly man with a stubbly beard and a persistent cough, of which he made the most, "yer must get out of that 'abit o' yours o' shavin' only on jubilee days and golden weddin's. It spoils y' appearance. Yer won't get no more kisses than a currycomb."

Bindle was in high spirits.

"'Ullo, Ginger, where's that clean coller you was wearin' last Toosday week? Lent it to the lodger? 'Ere, come along. Let's lay the dust 'fore we starts." And Bindle and his squad trooped off to the nearest public-house.

A quarter of an hour later they returned and set to work. Bindle laboured like one possessed, and inspired his men to more than usual efforts. Nothing had been prepared, and consequently there was much more to do than was usually the case. One of the men remarked upon this fact.

"They ain't a-goin' to pay you for doin' things and do 'em theirselves, so look slippy," was Bindle's response.

The people at No. 129 manifested considerable surprise in the doings of Bindle and his assistants. Soon after a start had been made, the maidservant came to the front door for a few moments, and watched the operations with keen interest. As Bindle staggered down the path beneath a particularly voluminous armchair she ventured a tentative remark.

"I'm surprised that Mrs. Rogers is movin'," she said.

"Not 'alf as surprised as she'll be when she finds out," muttered Bindle with a grin, as he deposited the chair on the tail of the van for Ginger to stow away.

"Funny she shouldn't 'ave told yer," he remarked to the girl as he returned up the path.

"You ain't 'alf as funny as you think," retorted the girl with a toss of her head.

"If you're as funny as you look, Ruthie dear, you ought to be worth a lot to yer family," retorted Bindle.

"Where did you get that nose from?" snapped the girl pertly.

"Same place as yer got that face, only I got there first. Now run in, Ruthie, there's a good girl. I'm busy. I'm also married." The girl retired discomfited.

Later in the day the mistress of No. 129 emerged on her way to pay a call. Seeing Bindle she paused, lifted her lorgnettes, and surveyed him with cold insolence.

"Is Mrs. Rogers moving?" she asked.

"No, mum," replied Bindle, "we're goin' to take the furniture for a ride in the park."

"You're an extremely impertinent fellow," was the retort. "I shall report you to your employers."

"Please don't do that, mum; think o' me 'ungry wives an' child."

There was no further endeavour to enquire into the destination of Mrs. Rogers's possessions.

By four o'clock the last load had left—a miscellaneous mass of oddments that puzzled Bindle how he was ever going to sort them out.

It was past seven before Bindle and his men had finished their work. The miscellaneous things, obviously the accumulation of many years, had presented problems; but Bindle had overcome them by putting in the coal-cellar everything that he could not crowd in a lumber room at the top of the house, or distribute through the rest of the rooms.

"Seemed to have moved in an 'urry," coughed Wilkes; "I never see sich a lot of truck in all me life."

"P'r'aps they owed the rent," suggested Huggles.

"'Uggles, 'Uggles," remonstrated Bindle with a grin, "I'm surprised at you. 'Cos your family 'as shot the moon for years—'Uggles, I'm pained."

Bindle duly returned the key to the police-station, put up the vans, and himself saw that the horses were made comfortable for the night. Whenever in charge of a job he always made this his own particular duty.

II

At six o'clock on the following afternoon a railway omnibus drew up at the West Kensington police-station. In it were Mr. and Mrs. Railton-Rogers, seven little Rogerses, a nursemaid, and what is known in suburbia as a cook-general.

After some difficulty, Mr. Rogers, a bald-headed, thick-set man with the fussy deportment of a Thames tug, extricated himself from his progeny. After repeated injunctions to it to remain quiet, he disappeared into the police-station and a few minutes later emerged with the key.

"Don't do that, Eustace," he called out.

Eustace was doing nothing but press a particularly stubby nose against the window of the omnibus; but Mr. Rogers was a man who must talk if only to keep himself in practice. If nothing worthy of comment presented itself, he would exclaim, apropos the slightest sound or movement, "What's that?"

The omnibus started off again, and a few minutes later turned into Branksome Road. It was Nelly, the second girl, aged eleven, who made the startling discovery.

"Mother, mother, look at our house, it's empty!" she cried excitedly.

"Nelly, be quiet," commanded Mr. Rogers from sheer habit.

"But, father, father, look, look!" she persisted, pointing in the direction of No. 131.

Mr. Rogers looked, and looked again. He then looked at his family as if to assure himself of his own identity.

"Good God! Emily," he gasped (Emily was Mrs. Rogers), "look!"

Emily looked. She was a heavy, apathetic woman, who seemed always to be a day in arrears of the amount of sleep necessary to her. A facetious relative had dubbed her "the sleeping partner." From the house Mrs. Rogers looked back to her husband, as if seeking her cue from him.

"They've stolen my horse!" a howl of protest arose from Eustace, and for once he went uncorrected.

The omnibus drew up with a groan and a squeak opposite to No. 131. Mr. Rogers, followed by a stream of little Rogerses, bounded out and up the path like a comet that had outstripped its tail. He opened the door with almost incredible quickness, entered and rushed in and out of the rooms like a lost dog seeking his master. He then darted up the stairs, the seven little Rogerses streaming after him. When he had reached the top floor and had thoroughly assured himself that everywhere there was a void of desolation, he uttered a howl of despair,