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

duties of the police.

Lady Knob-Kerrick had made enquiries of the servants, and was now convinced that her daughter had either eloped or been abducted. Her hair was disarranged, there was dirt upon her face, and leaves and mould upon her gown; but of these she was unconscious, and she regarded Bindle with an expression of grim triumph. At least she had captured one of the ruffians, probably the worst.

Bindle himself was quite self-possessed. All he desired was to gain time so that the fugitives might get well beyond the possibility of capture.

"Now, look here, Calves," he remarked, obliquely examining the footman's gorgeous raiment, "if you pinch I kick. See?"

Apprehensive of an attack upon his white silk legs, Thomas moved away as far as he could, holding Bindle at arm's-length.

"I have had the police telephoned for," said Lady Knob-Kerrick grimly. "Now, where is Miss Knob-Kerrick?"

"You may search me, mum," replied Bindle imperturbably.

"You were with the villains who abducted her," snapped Lady Knob-Kerrick.

"Who wot, mum?"

"Abducted her."

"I never done that to any woman. I kissed a few, but I never gone further. Mrs. Bindle (my name's Bindle—Joseph Bindle) is sort o' particular."

"Then you refuse to confess?" Lady Knob-Kerrick glared at Bindle through her lorgnettes.

"I ain't got nothin' to confess, mum; leastways nothin' I'd like to say 'fore a lady. Look 'ere, Dicky-Bird, if you pinch my arm I'll break your bloomin' shins." This last remark was addressed to Wilton, whom Bindle examined with insulting deliberation. "Must cost a bit to keep yer in clean dickies, ole son," he remarked. Wilton writhed. Bindle suddenly caught sight of Miss Strint slipping into the room, looking very ill and obviously in a state bordering on hysteria.

"'Ello, miss, you do look bad. I hope you ain't 'urt." There was solicitude in Bindle's voice.

"I am very upset and——"

"Strint!" admonished Lady Knob-Kerrick, "please be silent. How dare you converse with this man?"

"Now look 'ere, mum, I ain't said much so far, but you're goin' to get into a bit of a mess if yer ain't careful. If you'll just call orf Dicky-Bird and Calves, I'll show yer wot an' 'oo I am. I'm a special constable, I am, and you done a fine thing to-night. P'r'aps yer know the law, p'r'aps yer don't. But this is a case for 'eavy damages. Now, Dicky-Bird, leggo!"

With a dexterous movement Bindle wrenched his arm free from Wilton's clutch, and drew his truncheon, which he flourished under the nose of his astonished captors. Thomas, fearing an attack, released the arm he held and retreated precipitately to the door.

"Thomas! Wilton!" shrieked Lady Knob-Kerrick, "hold him, don't let him escape."

"I'll keep the door, m' lady," said Thomas, his hand on the handle, his attitude that of a man solicitous as to his own safety rather than desirous of preventing another's escape.

With great deliberation Bindle produced his armlet and whistle.

"This 'ere, mum," holding the articles of equipment for Lady Knob-Kerrick's inspection, "is me summer uniform, but as the nights is a little bit chilly I added a pair o' trousers and a few other things."

Miss Strint tittered, and then, appalled at her own temerity, coughed violently.

Lady Knob-Kerrick turned upon her accustomed victim.

"Strint," she cried, glaring through her lorgnettes, "have you no sense of decency?"

"She's got an awful cough, mum. Yer'd better leave 'er alone," and Bindle grinned in a manner that Lady Knob-Kerrick decided was intolerable.

"I want you to explain, mum, wot you mean by letting Calves and Dicky-Bird keep a special constable from the execution of 'is duty."

Lady Knob-Kerrick looked uncertainly from Bindle to Wilton, then to Miss Strint, and then back again to Bindle.

"You were with the ruffians who have taken my daughter," she said.

"Well, mum, that's where you're sort o' wrong. I've collected white mice and rabbits and once I had a special sort of jumpin' fleas, but I never collected daughters. Besides, there's Mrs. Bindle. She's a bit funny when it comes to another woman. What she'll say when she gets to know that yer've had me 'eld 'ere, a-givin' of me the glad eye through them two 'oles on a stick—I tell yer, mum, I jest daren't think."

"How dare you, you vulgar fellow!" Lady Knob-Kerrick had seen the ghost of a smile flit across Thomas's face. "Hold your tongue!"

"I can't, mum. Lived too long wi' Mrs. B. I'm sort o' surprised at you 'oldin' me 'ere like this. It's like kissin' a girl against her will."

At this juncture there was a loud ringing at the outer bell.

"Go!" said Lady Knob-Kerrick, addressing Thomas.

"Now then, 'op it, Calves," added Bindle, as he resumed his armlet.

A minute later an inspector of police entered. He bowed to Lady Knob-Kerrick and looked towards Bindle, who saluted with a suddenness so dramatic as to cause both Wilton and Thomas involuntarily to start back.

"This man has been——" Lady Knob-Kerrick paused, at a loss to formulate the charge.

"Says I've run off with 'er daughter—me! 'Oly Moses! If Mrs. Bindle only knew!" And Bindle smiled so broadly and so joyously that even the official face of the inspector relaxed.

"What is the complaint, my lady?" the inspector enquired, producing his note-book.

"Someone has abducted my daughter and—and—we—I got this man."

Lady Knob-Kerrick was hesitant, and clearly not very sure of her ground.

She explained how she had gone into the garden in search of Miss Knob-Kerrick, had come across the ladder, and how in moving it Bindle had come crashing down upon her, and had been captured.

The inspector turned to Bindle, whom he knew as a special constable.

"This 'ere's goin' to be a serious business for 'er," Bindle indicated Lady Knob-Kerrick with his thumb. "I 'eard a whistle, then see a man on the wall and another in a motor-car. 'What-oh!' says I, 'burglars or German spies. If I blows me whistle orf they goes.' I climbs up a tree and drops on to the wall, crawls along, then I 'ears a young woman's voice. I jest got to the top of the ladder, frightened as a goat I was, when somebody gives it a tug. Over I tumbles on wot I thought was a air-cushion, but it was 'er." Bindle bowed elaborately to Lady Knob-Kerrick, who flushed scarlet. "She nabs me when I was goin' to nab the lot of 'em. I might 'a got the V.C.! Silly things, women." Bindle spat the words out with supreme disgust.

The inspector turned to Lady Knob-Kerrick.

"Do you wish to charge this special constable?"

"Yes, that's it," put in Bindle. "Jest let 'er charge me. She's got to do it now since she's 'eld me 'ere, and I'm out for damages. There's also goin' to be some damage done to Dicky-Bird and Calves before I've finished." And Bindle looked fiercely from one to the other.

Lady Knob-Kerrick motioned the inspector to the other end of the room, where she held a whispered conversation with him. Presently they returned to Bindle. The inspector said with official coldness:

"There seems to have been a mistake, and her ladyship offers you a sovereign in compensation."

"Oh, she does, does she?" remarked Bindle. "Well, jest tell 'er bloomin' ladysillyship wi' Joseph Bindle's compliments that there's nothin' doin'. A quid might 'ave been enough for a ordinary slop, but I'm a special sort o' slop and, like a special train, I 'as to be paid for. She can stump up a fiver or——"

The inspector looked nonplussed. He was not quite sure what authority he had over a special constable. A further whispered conversation followed, and eventually Lady Knob-Kerrick left the room and a few minutes later returned with five one-pound notes, which she handed to the inspector without a word, and he in turn passed them on to Bindle.

"Well," Bindle remarked, "I must be off. 'Ope you'll find your daughter, mum; and as for you, Dicky-Bird and Calves, we'll probably meet again. S'long." And he departed.

CHAPTER XIX THE SCARLET HORSE COTERIE

One of the indirect results of Millie's romance was the foregathering each Friday night under the hospitable roof of the Scarlet Horse of a number of congenial and convivial spirits. It was Bindle's practice to spend the two hours during which Millie and Charlie Dixon were at the cinema in drinking a pint of beer at the Scarlet Horse, and exchanging ideas with anyone who showed himself conversationally inclined.

In time Bindle's friends and acquaintance got to know of this practice, and it became their custom to drop into "the 'Orse to 'ear ole Joe tell the tale."

Ginger would come over from Chiswick, Huggles from West Kensington, Wilkes from Hammersmith, and one man regularly made the journey from Tottenham Court Road.

At first they had met in the public bar, but later, through the diplomacy of Bindle, who had explained to the proprietor that "yer gets more thirsty in a little place than wot yer does in a big 'un, 'cause it's 'otter," they had been granted the use of a small room.

Sometimes the proprietor himself would join the company.

One September evening, having handed over Millie to her cavalier with strict injunctions to be outside the Cinema at ten sharp, Bindle turned his own steps towards the Scarlet Horse. As he entered he was greeted with that cordiality to which he had become accustomed. Calling for a pint of beer, he seated himself beside a rough-looking labourer known as "Ruddy" Bill, on account of the extreme picturesqueness and sustained directness of his language.

On Bindle's arrival Bill had been delivering himself of an opinion, accompanied by a string of explicatory oaths and obscenities that obviously embarrassed his hearers, rough though they were. Waiting his opportunity, Bindle presently remarked quite casually:

"Words such as 'damn' and ''ell,' like beer and tobacco, was sent to sort of 'elp us along, 'specially them wot is married. Where'd I be wi' Mrs. B. if I 'adn't 'ell an' a few other things to fall back on? No!" he continued after a moment's pause, "I don't 'old wi' swearin'." He turned and looked at Ruddy Bill as if seeking confirmation of his view.

"'Oo the blinkin' 'ell arst wot you 'old wiv?" demanded Bill truculently, and with much adornment of language.

Bindle proceeded deliberately to light his pipe as if he had not heard the question; then, when it was drawing to his entire satisfaction, he raised his eyes and gazed at Bill over the lighted match.

"No one, ole sport. Yer always gets the good things for nothink, like twins an' lodgers."

Bill resented the laugh that greeted Bindle's reply, and proceeded to pour forth his views on those given to "shovin' in their decorated snouts."

When he had exhausted his eloquence Bindle remarked good-humouredly.

"It 'ud take a bucketful of carbolic an' a damn big brush to clean the dirty words out o' your mouth, Sweet William."

Bill growled out further obscenities.

"I ain't religious," continued Bindle, "I don't suppose none of us is. I don't seem to see 'Uggles wi' wings, and Ginger ain't exactly fitted for sittin' on a cloud a-pullin' 'arp strings; but if yer want to come 'ere an' listen to my talk and Wilkes's cough, Sweet William, you got to clean up that talk o' yours a bit. Ain't that so, mates?"

The rest of the company made it abundantly clear that Bindle had expressed its sentiments, and Ruddy Bill subsided into sotto voce blasphemies.

During these Friday nights at the Scarlet Horse, many subjects came up for discussion; marriage, politics, religion were dealt with in turn, but it was impossible to keep the talk away from the War, to which time after time it returned with the same persistency that the needle of the compass flutters back to the north.

"I'd sooner be like 'Earty than a German," Bindle once remarked with decision. "If they'd only come over 'ere I'd get a smack at 'em, spite of me various veins."

His forced inaction was to Bindle a tragedy of which he seldom spoke; but when he did it was generally to the point, and more than one man enlisted as a direct result of Bindle's views on the war.

For "the slacker" he had one question. "You got various veins?" he would enquire; and on hearing that the man had not, he would say, "Then yer got to join."

To those who suggested that he himself should enlist, he made only one reply, "You get me in the army, ole sport, an' I'll give yer anythink I got. Gawd strike me dead if I won't." And impressed by Bindle's earnestness, almost without exception, the