Grey Timothy/Chapter 11

Mr Augustus Fanks occupied the suite of rooms at the East Central Hotel. He had occupied the same rooms since ’87—so he said. He was a big man, big in body, big and square of head. Pale blue eyes looked at you from under his hairless eyebrows. His face was smooth, as smooth as his polished bald head. It had neither line nor crease. He looked like a great overgrown baby, and there was no vestige of hair to indicate his age. Only a certain fulness under each eye indicated that he had behind him a life which had been spent, well or ill.

It was no exaggeration to say that he was a brilliant financier. If he had been as honest as he was brilliant, he might have risen to any position, but there was a crooked place in his composition that made him prefer those adventurous paths of finance which led through morasses and along the dizzy edges of disastrous precipices, where other men hesitated to go.

The beaten track was never for him. There were all manners of short cuts to wealth which attracted him. Sometimes they led him over rocky paths and brought him, breathless but triumphant, to his goal. More often than not they brought him to a blank wall of rock, and he had the choice of climbing laboriously back to the place from whence he had started or risk a leap over the chasm which divides the legal from the illicit. He invariably leapt. Fanks had never been found out. That was his secret boast. Not once but many times the law had spread a cunning net for his undoing, but ever he had walked warily round the bait, sniffed at it and gone off to forage on less dangerous ground.

Pinlow found him alone on the night following the meeting.

The big man, looking more like a great baby than usual, lay in his big sitting-room, comfortably stretched on the sofa, smoking a huge cigar.

“Shut the door, Pinlow,” he said; “always shut doors, Pinlow. You never know who is hanging about. Sit over there where I can see you; now let’s have this business out. Paid the cash yet?”

“Yes, I’ve paid it—this thing looks like ruining me,” said Pinlow moodily.

Fanks blew a thick cloud of pungent smoke before replying.

“That’s a fool’s way of looking at things,” he said comfortably. “What is ruin? There’s no ruin except death, and death is preferable to insomnia.”

“It’s all very well for you to be philosophical,” said the other irritably, “but I can’t afford to be; you’re a rich man”

Fanks laughed, and Pinlow noticed that no line appeared in his face when he laughed. He just opened his mouth without expression and emitted a chuckling gurgle of sound.

“Rich, am I?” he asked. “I’m rich in credit. Pinlow, I owe nearly half a million.”

He said this proudly.

“And I shall never pay it,” he added, “and, what’s more, my creditors wouldn’t like me to pay it. I live on my liabilities, and am respected—any fool can live on twenty shillings in the pound.”

“You are a wonderful man, Fanks,” said Pinlow testily. “I’ve paid the money, and it is now a question of getting some of it back. I want your help.”

Fanks flicked the ash of his cigar on to the carpet.

“Well,” he said slowly, “getting money back has never been a recreation of mine: I have always preferred new money, fresh money; there’s more satisfaction in getting somebody else’s money than getting your own.”

“I think I told you,” said Pinlow, “that I had a horse in the Stewards’ Cup.”

The other nodded twice.

“I know—it’s coughing,” he said.

“Everybody seems to know it,” replied Pinlow angrily. “Well, I backed my horse to win me a little fortune, and I’ve laid Pallard’s horse to lose me another little fortune—if Grey Timothy wins I’m out.”

Again Mr Fanks puffed noisily.

“Obviously,” he said slowly. “Grey Timothy must not win. I don’t profess to know much about race-horses—in fact, frankly, my dear Pinlow, I do not exactly approve of horse-racing”—he was a little pompous, and pompousness fitted him remarkably well—“but—er—I might be able to help you. I’m acquainted with a clever man who knows a great deal about horses. This is one Smith.”

“Tinker Smith?” asked Pinlow carelessly. “Oh, yes, I wrote to him.”

“Ah, yes, I see you remember that we have spoken of him before; but you understand that you will do nothing illegal, and that I am not introducing you with the object of promoting any illegal act—how much do you stand to lose?”

“About twelve thousand,” said the other.

“Ah, and to win a couple of thousand,” Fanks nodded at his own estimate, “and I stand in—how much?”

“A monkey?” suggested Pinlow.

Fanks smiled vaguely, staring up at the smoke wreaths above his head.

“It will cost me that,” he said. “My friends are expensive friends, and I do not quite approve of Smith, now that I come to think of it. Do you know a Dr Jellis? You don’t, I can see.”

“I don’t know him, and I’m bound to confess that I don’t want to have too many people in the business,” said Pinlow.

Again Fanks smoked silently.

“Well, we’ll try Smith, and if Smith fails, we’ll try Jellis—rum old boy, Jellis,” he said. He raised himself with a grunt, and sat up.

He walked across the room with the slow enjoyable steps of a man who has realized that he was taking exercise without any serious inconvenience or discomfort, and rang the bell.

His own servant answered the summons and assisted him into his boots.

Though it was at the end of July and distinctly close, he donned an overcoat and wrapped up his throat carefully.

“Call a taxi,” he commanded.

“We’d better see Smith,” he said, when the servant had gone. “He’ll do most things I want.”

They went down the lift, through the vestibule of the hotel to the street.

“Drive us to Slippington Street, Somers Town—I’ll tell you where to stop.”

On the journey Mr Fanks enlightened the other as to the character of the rendezvous where he hoped to find the redoubtable ‘Tinker’.

“You’ve never heard of the Freedom Club, I suppose?” he asked. “It’s a sort of working men’s club run for men who don’t work.” He chuckled at his own little witticism.

“After all, they are the people who require a club,” he said, shooting a sly look at the other. “A working-man ought to be at work. If he labours thoroughly and conscientiously he ought to be so tired at the end of the day that he should be fit for nothing but sleep. It’s the little man who does not work, who makes his living by his wits, who needs the mental refreshment which communion with his fellow-man alone can give him.”

Fanks needed little encouragement to make a speech. Rhetoric was his long suit, and Pinlow, who knew his weakness, did not attempt to encourage him. Fortunately, no sooner had Fanks got well started on the subject of the brainfulness of criminals, than the car turned out of the Euston Road into Slippington Street.

“We’ll stop here,” said Fanks, and leaning forward he knocked at the window of the taxi to call the driver’s attention. Dismissing the car, the two men walked a little way along the busy street.

“This way,” said Fanks.

He turned abruptly to the right, into a narrow side street, which was made up of little shops and high model dwellings. One such shop had a painted window and over the fanlight was inscribed modestly the words ‘Freedom Club’. Fanks pushed open the swing door and nodded to a man who sat in a tiny box in the passage.

“Mr Smith in?” he asked.

“Just gorn upstairs,” said the man, looking suspiciously at Pinlow.

“A friend of mine,” explained Fanks.

“Put his name in the book, sir, according to lor,” recited the man, and produced an old exercise-book in which Fanks scribbled indecipherably. He led the way up the narrow stairs.

On the first landing was a little man with a straggling beard.

He stood on the step-ladder placed carelessly in front of the closed door of the ‘front room’, and had a hammer in his hand. He glanced inquiringly round, recognized Fanks with a toothless grin and slowly descended the ladder.

“Clever, eh?” muttered Fanks, “natural position: man doing some repairs outside the room, door locked because of the ladder. Suppose we were strangers or the police, he’d drop that hammer of his, and whilst he was clearing away the ladder and unlocking the door, the lads inside would be ‘clearing up’, eh?”

The old man moved the ladder, knocked once on the door, and unlocked it.

Following his conductor, Pinlow entered.

The room was much larger than he had anticipated. There were a dozen men at or about one large table covered with green baize and marked off in squares, and in the centre a polished black roulette wheel.

Nobody paid attention to the new-comers, yet every man saw them, with that curious, swift, peering glance with which the professional thief favours humanity.

The two stood watching the twirling wheel, then a man who sat next to the croupier looked up and caught Fanks’ eyes.

He sat quietly for a little while; then, whilst the players were staking their money on the green cloth, he rose, and the man who stood behind him took his place at the table.

He made his way to where the two visitors stood.

“Well, Smith,” said Fanks blandly, “and how are you?”

The man nodded uncomfortably.

He was a lean, wiry man, with a big, pale face. His big head seemed out of all proportion to his body, and there was an air of furtive secrecy about his every movement which suggested that he had at all times some enormous mystery locked up in his bosom.

“Smith,” said Fanks, dropping his voice, “do you know a gentleman named Pallard?”

“Racin’ feller?”

“Yes.”

Smith hesitated. He spoke grudgingly, as one whose words were precious.

“Seen him,” he confessed.

“Have you heard of Grey Timothy?”

Smith nodded.

“Ah—you don’t know my friend, of course?”

Smith shot a swift glance at Pinlow.

“Done a job for him in Melbourne,” he said laconically.

“You were supposed to have done a job for me,” corrected Pinlow. “Oh, yes, Fanks I I’ve met Tinker before.”

“Well, this is how it is,” Fanks went on. “My friend here stands to lose a lot of money over Grey Timothy; now, Smith, we all know how bad it makes a man feel to lose money—eh? Not a nice experience—um?”

Smith shook his head.

“Now, suppose,” said Fanks carefully, “suppose this horse isn’t as good as my friend thinks he is; suppose you and my friend had a look at him.”

“Right,” said Smith, and shot a cunning glance at Pinlow. “Same’s we looked at Iron Pyrites,” he said.

“Remember,” warned the virtuous Fanks, “I want to know nothing—I know nothing. You’ve got to make your own arrangements.” He looked at his watch. “We must be off soon. You’d perhaps like to have a few words in private.”

He strolled across to the players and left them alone.

“You understand, Smith,” said Pinlow, dropping his voice, “that this is a bigger business than Iron Pyrites—it’s neck or nothing with me. I shall have to clear out of England if Grey Timothy wins.”

“He’ll win nothing,” said Smith, with decision. “Not if what you wrote to me is true: you’ve got the stable lad straightened.”

“Yes—I’ve had two men down at Wickham Norton for a month, and they haven’t been idle.”

He caught the other’s arm gently, and led him still further from the players.

“Smith,” he said slowly, “this fellow Pallard is getting on my nerves; in the old days, for a pony, I could have got him”

“Done up?” suggested Smith, as Pinlow hesitated.

He nodded.

“You could get him done up now for a pony,” said Smith calmly; “for five an’ twenty pun’ you could get him, so that his own landlady wouldn’t know him.”

For answer, Pinlow took a pocket-book from his inside pocket and counted out five five-pound notes into the other’s hand.

Then he saw one of the players watching him.

“Who is that man?” he asked quickly; “the man with the check suit?”

“He’s nobody,” said Smith carelessly, “a broadsman by the name of Caggley.”