The Dinner Club Page 20

Merton was one of those indefinable characters who defy placing. You felt that if you landed in Yokohama, and he was with you, you would instinctively rely on him for information as to the best thing to do and the best way to do it. There seemed to be no part of the globe, from the South Sea Islands going westward to Alaska, with which he was not as well acquainted as the ordinary man is with his native village. At the time I did not know him well. The dinner was only our third meeting, and during the meal we confined ourselves to the business which had been the original cause of our running across one another at all. But even in that short time I had realised that Billy Merton was a white man. And not only was he straight, but he was essentially a useful person to have at one’s side in a tight corner.

  “Are you disposed to elaborate your somewhat amazing statement?” I asked, after a pause.

  For a moment or two he hesitated, and his eyes became thoughtful.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any reason why I shouldn’t,” he answered slowly. “It’s ancient history now – ten years or so.”

  “That was just about the time she was married,” I remarked.

  He nodded. “She was on her honeymoon when it happened. Well, if you want to hear the yarn, come round to my club.”

  “Why, certainly,” I said, beckoning for the bill. “Let’s get on at once; I’m curious.”

  “Do you know Africa at all?” he asked me, as we pulled our chairs up to the fire. We had the room almost to ourselves; a gentle snoring from the other fireplace betokened the only other occupant.

  “Egypt,” I answered. “Parts of South Africa. The usual thing: nothing out of the ordinary.”

  He nodded. “It was up the West Coast that it happened,” he began, after his pipe was going to his satisfaction. “And though I’ve been in many Godforsaken spots in my life, I’ve never yet struck anything to compare with that place. Nwambi it was called – just a few shacks stretching in from the sea along a straggling, dusty street – one so-called shop and a bar. It called itself an hotel, but Lord help the person who tried to put up there. It was a bar pure and simple, though no one could call the liquor that. Lukewarm gin, some vile substitute for whisky, the usual short drinks, and some local poisons formed the stock; I ought to know – I was the bartender.

  “For about three miles inland there stretched a belt of stinking swamp – one vast malaria hotbed – and over this belt the straggling street meandered towards the low foothills beyond. At times it almost lost itself: but if you didn’t give up hope, or expire from the stench, and cast about you’d generally find it again leading you on to where you felt you might get a breath of God’s fresh air in the hills. As a matter of fact you didn’t; the utmost one can say is that it wasn’t quite so appalling as in the swamp itself. Mosquitoes! Heavens! they had to be seen to be believed. I’ve watched ’em there literally like a grey cloud.”

  Merton smiled reminiscently.

  “That – and the eternal boom of the sea on the bar half a mile out, made up Nwambi. How any white man ever got through alive if he had to stop there any length of time is beyond me; to be accurate, very few did. It was a grave, that place, and only the down-and-outers went there. At the time I was one myself.

  “The sole reason for its existence at all was that the water alongside the quay was deep enough for good-sized boats to come in, and most of the native produce from the district inland found its way down to Nwambi for shipment. Once over the belt of swamp and a few miles into the hills the climate was much better, and half a dozen traders in a biggish way had bungalows there. They were dagos most of them – it wasn’t a British part of the West Coast – and I frankly admit that my love for the dago has never been very great. But there was one Scotchman, McAndrew, amongst them – and he was the first fellow who came into the bar after I’d taken over the job. He was down for the night about some question of freight.

  “‘You’re new,’ he remarked, leaning against the counter. ‘What’s happened to the other fellow? Is he dead?’

  “‘Probably,’ I returned. ‘What do you want?’

  “‘Gin – double tot. What’s your name?’

  “I told him, and he pondered the matter while he finished his drink.

  “‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘I warned your predecessor, and I’ll warn you. Don’t fall foul of my manager down here. Name of Mainwaring – I do not think. Don’t give him advice about keeping off the drink, or he’ll kill you. He’s killing himself, but that’s his business. I’m tough – you look tough, but he’s got us beat to a frazzle. And take cover if he ever gets mixed up with any of the dagos – the place isn’t healthy.’

  “It was just at that moment that the door swung open and a tall, lean fellow lounged in. He’d got an eyeglass screwed into one eye, and a pair of perfectly-fitting polo boots with some immaculate white breeches encased his legs. His shirt was silk, his sun-helmet spotless; in fact, he looked like the typical English dude of fiction.

  “‘My manager, Mainwaring,’ said McAndrew, by way of introduction.

  “Mainwaring stared at me for a moment or two – then he shrugged his shoulders.

  “‘You look sane; however, if you come here you can’t be. Double gin – and one for yourself.’

  “He spoke with a faint, almost affected drawl, and as I poured out the drinks I watched him covertly. When he first came in I had thought him a young man; now I wasn’t so sure. It was his eyes that made one wonder as to his age – they were so utterly tired. If he was indeed drinking himself to death, there were no traces of it as yet on his face, and his hand as he lifted his glass was perfectly steady. But those eyes of his – I can see them now. The cynical bitterness, the concentrated weariness of all Hell was in them. And it’s not good for any man to look like that; certainly not a man of thirty-five, as I afterwards discovered his age to be.”

  Merton paused and sipped his whisky-and-soda, while from the other side of the room came indications that the sleeper still slept.

  “I never found out what his real name was,” he continued, thoughtfully. “Incidentally, it doesn’t much matter. We knew him as Mainwaring, and the J which preceded it in his signature was assumed to stand for James or Jimmy. Anyway, he answered to it, which was the main point. As far as I know, he never received a letter and he never read a paper, and I guess I got to know him better than anyone else in that hole. Every morning, punctual to the second at eleven o’clock, he’d stroll into the bar and have three double gins. Sometimes he’d talk in his faint, rather pleasant drawl; more often he’d sit silently at one of the rickety tables, staring out to sea, with his long legs stretched out in front of him. But whichever he did – whatever morning it was – you could always see your face in his boots.

  “I remember once, after I’d been there about a month, I started to pull his leg about those boots of his.

  “‘Take the devil of a long time cleaning them in the morning, don’t you, Jimmy?’ I said, as he lounged up to the bar for his third gin.

  “‘Yes,’ he answered, leaning over the counter so that his face was close to mine. ‘Got anything further to say about my appearance?’

  “‘Jimmy,’ I replied, ‘your appearance doesn’t signify one continental damn to me. But as the only two regular British habitués of this first-class American bar, don’t let’s quarrel.’

  “He grinned – a sort of slow, lazy grin.

  “‘Think not?’ he said. ‘Might amuse one. However, perhaps you’re right.’

  “And so it went on – one sweltering day after another, until one could have gone mad with the hideous boredom of it. I used to stand behind the bar there sometimes and curse weakly and foolishly like a child, but I never heard Mainwaring do it. What happened during those steamy nights in the privacy of his own room, when he – like the rest of us – was fighting for sleep, is another matter. During the day he never varied. Cold, cynical,
immaculate, he seemed a being apart – above our little worries and utterly contemptuous of them. Maybe he was right – maybe the thing that had downed him was too big for foolish cursing. Knowing what I do now, a good many things are clear which one didn’t realise at the time.

  “Only once, I think, did I ever get in the slightest degree intimate with him. It was latish one evening, and the bar was empty save for us two. I’d been railing against the fate that had landed me penniless in such an accursed spot, and after a while he chipped in, in his lazy drawl: “‘Would a thousand be any good to you?’

  “I looked at him speechless. ‘A thousand pounds?’ I stammered.

  “‘Yes; I think I can raise that for you.’ He was staring in front of him as he spoke. ‘And yet I don’t know. I’ve got more or less used to you and you’ll have to stop a bit longer. Then we’ll see about it.’

  “‘But, good heavens! man,’ I almost shouted, ‘do you mean to say that you stop here when you can lay your hand on a thousand pounds?’

  “‘It appears so, doesn’t it?’ He rose and stalked over to the bar. ‘It doesn’t much matter where you stop, Merton, when you can’t be in the one place where you’d sell your hopes of Heaven to be. And it’s best, perhaps, to choose a place where the end will come quickly.’

  “With that he turned on his heel, and I watched him with a sort of dazed amazement as he sauntered down the dusty road, white in the tropical moon, towards his own shack. A thousand pounds! The thought of it rang in my head all through the night. A thousand pounds! A fortune! And because, out in death-spots like that, men are apt to think strange thoughts – thoughts that look ugly by the light of day – I found myself wondering how long he could last at the rate he was going. Two – sometimes three – bottles of gin a day: it couldn’t be long. And then – who knew? It would be quick, the break-up; all the quicker because there was not a trace of it now. And perhaps when it came he’d remember about that thousand. Or I could remind him.”

  Merton laughed grimly.

  “Yes, we’re pretty average swine, even the best of us, when we’re up against it, and I lay no claims to be a plaster saint. But Fate had decreed that Jimmy Mainwaring was to find the end which he craved for quicker than he had anticipated. Moreover – and that’s what I’ve always been glad about – it had decreed that he was to find it before drink had rotted that iron constitution of his; while his boots still shone and his silk shirts remained spotless. It had decreed that he was to find it in the way of all others that he would have chosen, had such a wild improbability ever suggested itself. Which is going ahead a bit fast with the yarn – but no matter.

  “It was after I’d been there about three months that the incident happened which was destined to be the indirect cause of his death. I told you, didn’t I, that there were several dago traders who lived up in the foothills, and on the night in question three of them had come down to Nwambi on business of some sort – amongst them one Pedro Salvas, who was as unpleasant a specimen of humanity as I have ever met. A crafty, orange-skinned brute, who indulged, according to common knowledge, in every known form of vice, and a good many unknown ones too. The three of them were sitting at a table near the door when Mainwaring lounged in – and McAndrew’s words came back to me. The dagos had been drinking; Jimmy looked in his most uncompromising mood. He paused at the door, and stared at each of them in turn through his eyeglass; then he turned his back on them and came over to me.

  “I glanced over his shoulder at the three men, and realised there was trouble coming. They’d been whispering and muttering together the whole evening, though at the time I had paid no attention. But now Pedro Salvas, with an ugly flush on his ugly face, had risen and was coming towards the bar.

  “‘If one so utterly unworthy as I,’ he snarled, ‘may venture to speak to the so very exclusive Englishman, I would suggest that he does not throw pictures of his lady-loves about the streets.’

  “He was holding something in his hand, and Jimmy swung round like a panther. His hand went to his breast pocket; then I saw what the dago was holding out. It was the miniature of a girl. And after that I didn’t see much more; I didn’t even have time to take cover. It seemed to me that the lightning movement of Jimmy’s left hand as he grabbed the miniature, and the terrific upper-cut with his right, were simultaneous. Anyway, the next second he was putting the picture back in his breast pocket, and the dago, snarling like a mad dog, was picking himself out of a medley of broken bottles. That was phase one. Phase two was equally rapid, and left me blinking. There was the crack of a revolver, and at the same moment a knife stuck out quivering in the wall behind my head. Then there was a silence, and I collected my scattered wits.

  “The revolver, still smoking, was in Jimmy’s hand: Salvas, his right arm dripping with blood, was standing by the door, while his two pals were crouching behind the table, looking for all the world like wild beasts waiting to spring.

  “‘Next time,’ said Jimmy, ‘I shoot to kill.’

  “And he meant it. He was a bit white round the nostrils, which is a darned dangerous sign in a man, especially if he’s got a gun and you’re looking down the business end of it. And no one knew it better than those three dagos. They went on snarling, but not one of them moved an eyelid.

  “‘Put your knives on that table, you scum,’ ordered Jimmy.

  “The other two obeyed, and he laughed contemptuously.

  “‘Now clear out. You pollute the air.’

  “For a moment or two they hesitated: then Salvas, with a prodigious effort, regained his self-control.

  “‘You are brave, Señor Mainwaring, when you have a revolver and we are unarmed,’ he said, with a sneer.

  “In two strides Jimmy was at the table where the knives were lying. He picked one up, threw me his gun, and pointed to the other knife.

  “‘I’ll fight you now, Salvas,’ he answered, quietly. ‘Knife to knife, and to a finish.’

  “But the dago wasn’t taking any, and ’pon my soul I hardly blamed him. For if ever a man was mad, Jimmy Mainwaring was mad that night: mad with the madness that knows no fear and is absolutely blind to consequences.

  “‘I do not brawl in bars with drunken Englishmen,’ remarked Salvas, turning on his heel.

  “A magnificent utterance, but ill-advised with Jimmy as he was. He gave a short laugh and took a running kick, and Don Pedro Salvas disappeared abruptly into the night. And the other two followed with celerity.

  “‘You’ll be getting into trouble, old man,’ I said, as he came back to the bar, ‘if you start that sort of game with the dagos.’

  “‘The bigger the trouble the more I’ll like it,’ he answered, shortly. ‘Give me another drink. Don’t you understand yet, Merton, that I’m beyond caring?’

  “And thinking it over since, I’ve come to the conclusion that he spoke the literal truth. It’s a phrase often used, and very rarely meant; in his case it was the plain, unvarnished truth. Rightly or wrongly he had got into such a condition that he cared not one fig whether he lived or died; if anything he preferred the latter. And falling foul of the dago colony was a better way than most of obtaining his preference.

  “Of course, the episode that night had shown me one thing: it was a woman who was at the bottom of it all. I didn’t ask any questions; he wasn’t a man who took kindly to cross-examination. But I realised pretty forcibly that if the mere handling of her picture by a dago had produced such a result, the matter must be serious. Who she was I hadn’t any idea, or what was the trouble between them – and, as I say, I didn’t ask.

  “And then one day a few weeks later I got the answer to the first question. Someone left a month-old Tatler in the bar, and I was glancing through it when Mainwaring came in. I reached up for the gin bottle to give him his usual drink, and when I turned round to hand it to him he was staring at one of the pictures with the look of a dead
man on his face. I can see him now with his knuckles gleaming white through the sunburn of his hands, and his great powerful chest showing under his shirt. He stood like that maybe for five minutes – motionless; then, without a word, he swung round and left the bar. And I picked up the paper.”

  Merton paused and drained his glass.

  “Lady Sylvia’s wedding?” I asked, unnecessarily, and he nodded.

  “So the first part of the riddle was solved,” he continued, quietly. “And when two days passed by without a sign of Mainwaring, I began to be afraid that he had solved his own riddle in his own way. But he hadn’t; he came into the bar at ten o’clock at night, and leaned up against the counter in his usual way.

  “‘What have you been doing with yourself?’ I said, lightly.

  “‘I’ve been trying to get drunk,’ he answered slowly, letting one of his hands fall on my arm with a grip like steel. ‘And, dear God! I can’t.’

  “It doesn’t sound much – told like this in the smoking room of a London club. But though I’ve seen and heard many things in my life that have impressed me – horrible, dreadful things that I shall never forget – the moment of all others that is most indelibly stamped on my brain is that moment when, leaning across the bar, I looked into the depths of the soul of the man who called himself Jimmy Mainwaring – the man who could not get drunk.”

  Once again he paused, and this time I did not interrupt him. He was back in that steaming night, with the smell of stale spirits in his nostrils and the sight of strange things in his eyes. And I felt that I, too, could visualise that tall, immaculate Englishman leaning against the counter – the man who was beyond caring.

  “But I must get on with it,” continued Merton, after a while. “The club will be filling up soon and I’ve only got the finish to tell you now. And by one of those extraordinary coincidences which happen far more frequently in life than people will allow, the finish proved a worthy one.

  “It was about two days later. I was in the bar polishing the glasses when the door swung open and two men came in. They were obviously English, and both of them were dressed as if they were going to a garden party.