Six Against the Yard Read online

  Well, now, the way I thought it out was this. It wasn’t going to be too good to make a set for anyone young. I didn’t want any snoopy parents or guardians having their say-so; and however glad they may be to get a lousy looker off their hands, in-laws can be just hell once they’ve got the victim hooked, strapped, and delivered. No, not even if she’d got dough in her own rights I couldn’t see myself putting up with the in-laws dropping in to breakfast just when they wanted, with me not daring to so much as sneeze at them in case I got cut off with a dime. I wasn’t sure whether they’d let you sue your wife for alimony in these English courts, and I wasn’t taking any risks.

  That meant I’d got to look out for a dame old enough to have outgrown her family. That didn’t worry me any. The older she was, the easier she ought to be. After a while a dame kind of gives up hope, and to offer her any then is just like feeding honey to a bear: she’ll make just one jump and land at your side with all four feet. And if you begin pulling a line of sales-talk about gen-u-ine gold wedding rings on top of that, you’ll wonder what that is frisking round your feet like a puppy chasing its tail. Leastways, that’s how I saw it, and maybe I wasn’t too wrong at that.

  I figured it wasn’t going to be difficult to meet up with the kind of dame I wanted. It was summer-time, and I worked it out that pretty well all I needed to do was to stay in some big dump by the sea and keep an eye on the swell hotels. So I asked a guy in the hotel in London what he reckoned was the real classy place to stay in by the sea in England, and he plumped for Folkestone. So I packed my grips and booked my ticket to Folkestone that same day. I knew I hadn’t any time to waste.

  Well, Folkestone sure is class all right. The Leas looked to me just lousy with millionaires, though maybe some of them weren’t so sticky with dough as they looked. I registered in a real nice little hotel that the guy in London had told me about, and went out straight away to have a look round. I hadn’t got any time to waste.

  Well, there’s no need to write about the next few days. What I like about Folkestone was that there was always plenty of wind. When I get a good line I stick to it, and I needn’t say more than that my hat blew into about half a dozen laps a day, till I got real cute at making it land just where I wanted.

  And was it easy? I’m telling you. I didn’t get a single freeze when I sat down on the bench beside them and began spieling about the difference between Folkestone and Arizona. Not a one. That comes of picking them. I could always size up a dame with both eyes shut.

  But when I began asking the questions, there was something wrong with all of them. Either they weren’t staying at one of the really swell hotels, or it was out of their class, or there was something wrong with the way their dough was tied up. I wouldn’t of believed there could be so many difficulties, when the dames themselves were so willing. I was beginning to wonder would I ever find the right one.

  And then I found Myrtle. I could have nearly cried.

  The way it happened was like this.

  I’d been having tea in the swellest hotel of the lot just the day before, and keeping my eyes pretty wide open, too. Sitting over by one of the pillars was a big fat dame who looked just fierce. In fact, I don’t mind saying that she looked so fierce I passed her over at first, though goodness knows I was getting kind of desperate. She had a sort of square face, with what looked like a couple of dozen chins under it, and it was the colour of the under-side of a pumpkin pie that’s been made by a cook who’s just been stoking the furnace with her bare hands and forgotten to wash them. That’s the colour it was; and she hadn’t tried to cover it not even with a speck of powder. You’d almost have said she must be proud of it.

  That was bad enough, but to add to it she was dressed kind of mannish. Leastways, she had on one of those flat black felt hats jammed down on her short, grey hair and a kind of square-cut coat of some darned dull grey stuff, and a short skirt to match, and a white silk waist, and a black knitted four-in-hand. She looked just fierce.

  So when I found myself sitting on the next bench to hers the morning after, I don’t mind admitting I kind of shuddered once or twice before I let fly with the derby. I had to keep telling myself that beggars can’t be choosers, and if old man Henry VIII could stick it, I could: though I will say for that guy, when he didn’t like it, he knew what to do with it. So I kind of breathed a prayer and braced myself up.

  The shot was a beauty, and the derby landed slick as a coot. There was certainly plenty of lap for a landing-ground, but even so it was a nifty shot.

  ‘Say, lady,’ I said, doing my stuff, ‘I certainly beg your pardon. That sure was dumb of me. I ought to of known by this time I should have been grabbing it with both hands, sitting here.’

  She handed it back, and it seemed to me there was a grim kind of look in her eye; but I couldn’t be sure, and anyways, I hadn’t finished my lines.

  ‘But perhaps it warn’t such an ill wind after all, mam,’ I says, pulling the Arizona line of talk. ‘Not if it allows me to make your honoured acquaintance. It sure is dull, setting here alone; and if you’ll pardon the liberty, it looks like you’re in the same boat. Perhaps we might spend half an hour in talking together? Ships that pass in the night, as the poet says: though it’s certainly day with us.’ I stood looking kind of humble and questioning, like I did when all the other dames almost grabbed me and pulled me down on the seat beside them.

  But Myrtle always was different. ‘My good man,’ she said, looking me up and down, ‘if you mean, may you sit on this bench, it belongs to the Corporation, not me. I have no say in the matter.’ And she kind of gives a cocky little snigger.

  ‘That’s certainly kind of you, mam,’ I said, sitting down. ‘The seat may belong to the Corporation, but while you’re on it you’ve got the right to say who may share it with you, and I take it kindly that you let me. Way back in Arizona, where I come from, we never force our company where it’s not wanted.’

  ‘So you come from Arizona?’ she said, in a sort of friendly way. She was real English, all right; she had the proper dude accent. I could tell she was a lady, whatever she looked like.

  ‘I sure do, mam. Li’l old Arizona. Gee, it seems a long way away from here.’ And I heaved a pretty good sigh.

  ‘My dear man,’ said the dame, ‘it is a long way from here.’

  Well, we didn’t seem to be getting anywheres, so I thought I’d better liven things up with a compliment or two. I’ve found that’s a thing a dame will always swallow. Even when a compliment on her dial would sound like a bad joke, she’ll always be pleased to have one somewhere else. So I took a look at Myrtle’s short fat legs in thick grey wool stockings, ending in outsize Oxfords, and said:

  ‘If you’ll pardon the liberty, mam, it certainly is a treat to see a neat pair of ankles. Way back in Arizona–––’

  ‘Hey!’ she said. Just that. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Mam?’

  ‘If you’re working up to the confidence trick, my good man, you can spare your breath. I’m wise.’

  ‘Mam!’ I said. Well, it kind of took me aback.

  ‘If you weren’t—if you were just being infernally impertinent, I apologise,’ said Myrtle, and sniggered again.

  I saw I’d made a mistake. I ought never to have made a pass at her at all. I might have known, from her hat. I thought I’d better beat it before she called a cop, so I jumped up and acted sore.

  ‘Mam,’ I said, ‘it’s for me to apologise. I see I should not have presoomed on the accident of the wind blowing my hat–––’

  ‘So it was the wind, was it?’ she broke in like a flash.

  ‘Certainly it was the wind,’ I said, all dignified.

  ‘You lie,’ she said. ‘There isn’t any wind this morning. Besides, I saw you flick it. Now sit down again and tell me why the heck you wanted to get off with an old frump like me, and why you’re talking this stage American. Sit down, do you hear, my good man, or I’ll call a policeman.’

  That was Myrtle all over. Bossy.
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  I sat down. There wasn’t anything else to do.

  II

  Well, the funny thing is, after that, Myrtle and I got along fine. You see, I really had a ranch in Arizona, so I didn’t come out of that so bad. I’d bought it when times were good, and it had surely looked like a little gold-mine then. I’d put in a guy to act as foreman and he had a bunch of boys to run it, and there was a tidy bunch of steers running there. But now times weren’t so good it hadn’t been doing much more than pay the boys’ wages, so that was about as much use to me as horn-rims to a bustard; though I knew I’d be raking in the bucks from it again when times got better.

  I explained all that to Myrtle, with pictures of me among the boys, wearing those woolly-mat pants to prove it. She saw then she’d got me wrong, though I allowed I’d overdone the Arizona line of talk. After that we were as sweet as two hicks in a flivver.

  Well, I pretty soon saw I’d struck it swell. When I began edging my questions into the conversation, there wasn’t a one that didn’t get answered right. Myrtle never suspected a thing. Maybe that dame wasn’t so smart as she’d figured, after all. She poured it all out to me; how she’d got almost more dough than she knew how to spend, and how she hadn’t a living relative to give two hoots what she did with it or who she left it to, and how she wasn’t such a tough girl as she looked and had a heart under that square-cut jacket just oozy with longing for a strong guy’s love. Boy, was it easy! And in return I spilled the innocent beans about the swell ranch I had, and the dough I had stuffed away in the banks back at home, and the helluva big shot I was in the old home town. She lapped it up like a tough baby laps bourbon.

  And could she take it!

  That evening we met again, at her hotel, and when I saw the suite she had there I knew for certain I’d found what I was looking for. Anyways, Myrtle sent down for a pint, and we had it in her private parlour. They don’t have bourbon in England, but the stuff was good, and after we’d had a few slugs each I felt good, too. Pretty soon Myrtle sent down for another pint, and I’m telling you she’d drunk level with me on the first. I didn’t know they made ’em like that in England.

  Well, to cut a good evening short, before I swayed out of that room Myrtle and I were engaged to be married. Yes, just like that. I always was a quick worker, and I will say for Myrtle she was pretty near as quick as me. I finished the second pint before I shut my eyes and kissed her, but it wasn’t so bad, after all. And in any case, I was feeling pretty good just then, though I knew darned well I’d have to be sending out for bromo first thing the next morning.

  So when a guy comes up to me as soon as I got outside Myrtle’s parlour and looks like he wants to get fresh, I just slammed one into his stomach before I asked him what he wanted; but somehow he jerked his stomach to one side and my fist went past his hip, so he could grab my wrist.

  ‘Now then, none o’ that,’ he said, in his Limey accent. ‘I’ve been waiting for you, my lad.’

  ‘The hell you have,’ I said. ‘Come on outside, you son of a bitch.’

  ‘It’s you that’s coming with me,’ he said. ‘I know all about you. You’re coming along with me to the clink.’ That’s what they call the big house over here. ‘Confidence trick, eh? You can’t get away with that kind of thing here.’

  ‘Well, what the hell are you?’ I stalled. ‘A bull of some sort?’

  ‘You bet I’m a bull,’ he said. ‘Now, then, are you coming quiet? Lucky Miss Frumm warned me. We know how to deal with your sort here.’

  Just then Myrtle herself appeared in the doorway. The guy still had me by the wrist.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr. Foster,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided not to charge him. I’m going to marry him instead. It’ll be a worse punishment for him.’

  ‘Say, Myrtle,’ I said, ‘who is this guy, anyway?’

  ‘Why, it’s Mr. Foster, the hotel detective,’ Myrtle sniggered. ‘I told him all about meeting you this morning, and asked him to be on hand this evening, just in case. After all, a poor weak girl needs protection, doesn’t she? And I haven’t known you long. You might not have proposed marriage at all.’

  ‘Oh, that’s his racket, is it?’ said the bull, interested. ‘Well, miss, I’d better warn you that——’

  ‘Say, Myrtle,’ I interrupted him, ‘this is just a private bull, you mean?’ The guy had left hold of my wrist now.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Myrtle.

  ‘Not a real cop at all?’

  ‘Not an official one, no.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that just too bad for him?’ I said, and slammed him one again. This time it connected all right, because the guy wasn’t expecting it. ‘How d’ya like that, punk?’ I said. ‘Because there’s another one coming to you from just where that one came from.’ And I slammed at him again, at his chin this time.

  But he dodged it that time, and I took a belt on the chin instead myself that shook me up bad. The guy knew how to fight. I could see that.

  ‘Come inside if you’re going to fight,’ Myrtle said, holding the door open. ‘We can soon move the furniture.’ I had to hand it to her; she didn’t look like she’d had a drop to drink all evening. Except that some of her chins were shaking a bit with excitement, you couldn’t have told she’d been drinking slug for slug with me for nearly two hours.

  Well, the guy and I went inside. We were pretty mad at each other, and before Myrtle had begun moving the furniture we took off our coats and started in. I felt like I must beat up this guy or get killed.

  At first I thought he was going to have it all over me. I took another belt on the chin that knocked me over backwards. When I got up I was so crazy mad I began missing plenty. Then I slammed two into his face, right and left, and that didn’t seem so bad. But I’d drunk so much I was off balance most of the time, and when I tried to close in with him he’d just stand back and let me have it. I began to think I was in for a swell lacing. The guy was beating hell out of me.

  Once when he banged me on the side of the head and knocked the other side against the parlour wall, I heard Myrtle say:

  ‘That’s the stuff, Foster. Knock hell out of the matrimonial crook.’

  Well, I don’t know why, but that made me madder than a trapped skunk. It sounded real raw. I just went in and I didn’t care what he did to me; I couldn’t pump ’em in fast enough. One of them landed on the point of his chin, and that was the finish.

  While he was sleeping on the floor I turned to Myrtle.

  ‘Did you tell that guy to lay for me?’ I said.

  You got to hand it to Myrtle. ‘I did,’ she said. ‘I saw through your little game when you were pumping me this morning. I knew you were going to have the darned impertinence to propose marriage, so I warned Mr. Foster about you.’

  ‘The hell you did,’ I said, and slugged her one for herself. She went down like a hippopotamus into a mud-pool. I left them lying asleep across each other.

  That was something Myrtle hadn’t expected. Over here, I guess, they don’t slug dames. Well, we’re tougher where I come from, that’s all.

  I went back to my hotel and lay down across the bed. I was tired, and my jaw was sore where the bull had clipped me. I thought of Myrtle, and felt sorer than my jaw.

  I figured I was about finished in Folkestone. Myrtle would see the story got spread around, and so would the bull; and after that the town would be too hot. It seemed like I’d better take the first train on somewheres else, if I was going to put my racket over before it got too late. But I felt sore. Myrtle had certainly seemed to fall for the dope that morning. Now I saw that when she was pretending to hand out all that information she was only razzing me along. I’d been the sucker right enough, and Myrtle had just played me for one. It makes a guy feel pretty sore when he’s fancied he’s tough and then finds he’s fallen like a spent bullet for the first amachoor who tries to razz him.

  When I woke up the next morning I didn’t feel any better. I felt rotten. My mouth was as dry as the Arizona desert, and my lip
s were all swollen up, like I was trying to whistle and couldn’t. One of my eyes was pretty near closed, too.

  I had a pint in the cupboard, and after a couple of slugs I began to feel better. They didn’t have running water in that hotel like they do in the civilised countries, but there was some water in the pitcher and I rinsed my face and doused my head in it. Then I sent down to the clerk for the bromo, and by the time I’d mixed that up and drank it I began to feel that I might be able to do some thinking again if I didn’t do it too hard. So I sat down on the bed and tried to figure out what I was going to do next, and where I could go. I thought maybe they could tell me downstairs what was the next swell seaside town in England after Folkestone.

  I was just going to try to make it, when the bell-hop came in to tell me there was a dame downstairs asking for me. Leastways, he said a ‘lady,’ but I guessed he meant a dame.

  ‘Listen, sonny,’ I said, ‘I don’t know any ladies here except one, and if it’s her you can tell her to go fry herself. Is that the one?’

  ‘That sounds like ’er, sir,’ said the bell-hop.

  ‘Then tell her,’ I said.

  The bell-hop reached for the door, but before he could get through it was slung open like a bison had charged it. The bell-hop got knocked into the wastepaper basket on the other side of the room. It was Myrtle, of course. She held the door open and gave one jerk with her thumb, and the bell-hop beat it quicker than I’ve ever seen a bell-hop move before.

  Myrtle came and stood over me, and I covered up. I thought she’d come to slug me back for the belt I’d given her the night before, and I felt too sore to take another slam in the face.

  But she didn’t slug me. ‘Eddie,’ she said. ‘I got you into a hell of a jam last night.’ Leastways that isn’t exactly what she said, I suppose, but it’s what she meant.

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘I got you into a hell of a jam, and you slugged me for it, and I’ve come round to congratulate you.’

  ‘You’ve come round to do what?’ I said.