“Mistaken for a Burglar
“Amazing Experience of the Mayor
“Our worthy mayor was involved in an awkward predicament last night. In pursuance of an appointment with Mr. Wilkins, of the British Motor Garage, he arrived at the workshop between eight and nine o’clock, and was awaiting the proprietor, when he was suddenly seized and thrown down by a young man in the uniform of a second lieutenant, who had come up in company with Mr. Wilkins’s assistant, and, not familiar with the mayor’s lineaments, had mistaken him for a burglar. The police were telephoned for, and Constable Brown, on reaching the scene, found himself in an unenviable position, between cross-charges of burglary and common assault. The tension was relieved by the arrival of Mr. Wilkins, who saw at once that a pardonable mistake had been made by his assistant and the young officer, and by the exercise of his accustomed tact succeeded in bringing both parties to an amicable understanding. We have unfortunately to record that in the regrettable fracas our mayor sustained an ocular abrasion, the consequences of which, while temporarily disfiguring, will, we trust, be otherwise negligible. As a comparative newcomer Mr. Noakes may not be aware that he is in good company. Those familiar with the chronicles of our ancient borough will remember the historic bout between Ted Sloggins and Jemmy Wild, the prizefighter once Mayor of Pudlington, when the latter was knocked out in the tenth round with two broken ribs and a black eye.”
“That’s a nasty one!” said Eves, returning the paper.
“That last bit, sir? True, I feel it so—very nasty indeed. That feller have got his knife into the mayor, in a sly sort of way.”
“Mr. Noakes isn’t very popular, then? The local paper would hardly give a dig at a popular mayor.”
“Well, sir, to tell ’ee the truth, there’s two parties, one for and one against. Mr. Noakes is almost a newcomer, and some folks don’t take kindly to his pushing ways. I don’t myself, I own it. He’s near driven me off my head over this meeting, and though I’d do anything in the way of business, I don’t hold with his views. He was one of they ‘Stop the War’ kidney, and though goodness knows I’d ’a stopped the war, having a son over in France, I wouldn’t stop it a moment afore we’d done what we set out to do, and thankful I am our lads have done it. That there young officer last night”—he smiled—“was you, I take it, sir.”
“The curtain’s dropped over that, Mr. Johnson,” said Eves. “By the way, you were going to try Mr. Templeton’s new fire extinguisher. Have you rigged up the apparatus?”
“Ay, sure, ’tis all ready. Come up along, and I’ll show ’ee. I’ll try it next week, just afore I plaster the ceiling.”
He took Eves to the floor above, and showed him, between the workmen’s planks and the matchboard, a large shallow tank of sheet iron resting on the rafters. It was filled with water, and the builder explained that the holes in the bottom had been plugged with the composition a week before.
“Most ingenious,” said Eves, making a mental note of the position of the tank. “If it answers, I suppose you will make a tank to cover the whole of the ceiling.”
“Surely, and put it into every house, hall or church I build.”
“Johnson, where are you?” came a call from below.
“’Tis Mr. Noakes himself, come to bother me again!” said Johnson in an undertone. Aloud he cried: “Coming, Mr. Noakes, coming!... Belike you’ll bide here a bit,” he added with a smile.
“I’m not keen on meeting your worthy mayor,” replied Eves. “I’ll come down when he’s gone.”
Through the matchboard Eves clearly heard the conversation between the two men.
“Look ’ee here, Johnson,” began Noakes, irritably, “this won’t do. The place is as cold as an ice-house, and my orders was to heat en well. Folks won’t be no good listening to speeches if they’re all of a shiver.”
“Why, bless ’ee, Mr. Noakes, ’tis only ten o’clock. There’s plenty of time to get the room comfortable warm by seven. The furnace is going, and you don’t want the place like a greenhouse, do ’ee? Folks ’ud all drop asleep.”
“There’s a medium, Johnson. I count on you to regulate the furnace so’s we’re cosy-like. ’Tis a raw morning, and ’twill be worse to-night. Keep the furnace going steady, and come four o’clock shet all the winders to keep out the night air.”
“But what about ventilation? If so be there’s a good audience you’ll have women fainting, and I don’t know what all.”
“There’ll be plenty of ventilation through the matchboard,” said Noakes, looking upward. “Besides, we’ve always the winders to cool the air if need be, but if you ain’t got a good fire—why there you are! See that my orders are carried out, Johnson.”
“Very good. You shall have it like an oven if you like: ’tis not for me to say.”
Noakes, whose face suggested the recent application of a beefsteak, inspected the rows of chairs, mounted the platform and re-arranged the table, scolded the charwoman who had left her dust-pan on the chairman’s seat, and finally departed. Then Eves rejoined the builder.
“They’ll be warm afore they gets to work,” said the latter, smiling, “And if so be there’s any opposition, I won’t say but what tempers ’ll rise to biling point. However!”
“A queer man, your mayor!” said Eves. “By the way, I’d like to have a look at your furnace.”
“Surely, sir. Come wi’ me.”
He led Eves into the basement, where a young man in shirt-sleeves was stoking the fire.
“I’ll have to keep ’ee to-night, Fred,” said the builder, “and sorry I be to say it, but the mayor’s just been talking to me, and wants the place hotted up. You must stay till eight, my lad, and leave a good fire when you go: there’s no telling how long the speechifying will last; these ’lection meetings are that uncertain.”
The stoker brushed his arm across his damp brow, and muttered something uncomplimentary of the mayor. Johnson expounded to Eves the merits of his heating system, and followed him up the stairs again.
“The mayor’s a busy man just now,” said Eves. “Isn’t there some sort of a ceremony coming on?”
“Ay, so ’tis, a ceremony that’s come down from very ancient days, very ancient indeed, when we was all heathens, so it seems. ’Tis the anointing of the British Stone, they do call it, a rare old block of granite all by itself in a field some way north o’ the town. Nobody knows how it come there, but ’tis said there was a battle on the spot, I don’t know how many hundred years ago, and a whole cemetery of bones down below. Whatever the truth is, the mayor and corporation marches out in full rig once a year, and the mayor breaks a bottle o’ cider, the wine o’ the country, atop of the stone. I say ’tis just an excuse for a randy, for they make a sort of fair o’t, wi’ stalls and merry-go-rounds, and I don’t know what all. There won’t be so much fun as usual this year, though, owing to shortage of sugar for sweets and cakes and such. Still, maybe ’twill be worth your seeing, being so ancient.”
“Rather! I’m tremendously keen on rags, ancient or modern. I’ll be there!”
Eves bade the builder good-bye at the door of the hall, and the latter went up the street to his office. As soon as his back was turned, Eves hastened below to the furnace room.
“Pretty thirsty work, isn’t it?” he said to the man. “I don’t wonder you’re not keen to be kept so long at it.”
“’Tisn’t that, sir,” said the stoker. “The truth o’t is I was going to take my girl to the cinema to-night. It begins at seven, and she’ll be in a taking, ’cos they’re showing some war pictures, and I’m in one of ’em, and she’s mad on seeing me, though I tell her I ain’t doing nothing, only looking down my nose at a blooming Hun prisoner.”
“Naturally she wants to see you, and squeeze your hand, and—you know. I should myself. Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll come about 6.45 and release you.”
The man stared.
“I mean it, no kid,” Eves went on. “I intended coming to the meeting, but there’ll be nothing very interesting until half time, and the stoking will be finished by then.”
“But you’ll mess your clothes, sir, not to speak of your hands.”
“Oh, no! I’ll see to that. Besides, you know, we didn’t fret ourselves about dirt in the trenches. That’s all right, then, and look here—get your young woman a box of chocolates, a pound box—all one price, four shillings. She’ll like your picture all the more.”
He handed the man a couple of half-crowns, cut short his effusive thanks, and made his way back to the cottage.
“Bob come home, Mrs. Pouncey?” he asked the old dame.
“Not yet, sir, and I do hope he won’t be late, for I’ve got as tender a loin of young pig as ever I’ve roasted.”
“Capital! I’m ravenous, I always am. It’s a disease, Mrs. Pouncey. Don’t I show it in my face?”
“Bless your heart, sir, your face does me good: it do look so happy!”
“Happy thoughts, old dear. I’ve had a particularly happy thought all the morning, and it shines out on my ingenuous countenance. Some folks never show anything, you know. My friend Templeton, now—ah! here he is! Roast pork, Bob—hurry up!”
IV
After early supper that evening, Eves and Templeton, giving each an arm to Mrs. Pouncey, set off for the Literary Institute. The good woman was greatly excited at the prospect of giving her vote for the first time next day, and had announced her intention of voting for “the gentleman,” whereupon Eves had reproached her, with well-assumed severity.
“That is not the right spirit, I am sure of it,” he said. “You are going to exercise for the first time the priceless privilege, or right, or duty, of the franchise: a most solemn responsibility, Mrs. Pouncey. Yet you have made up your mind to vote for ’the gentleman’ without considering what views he professes, and without hearing the other side, which may be one of Nature’s gentlemen.”
“I like ’em best bred, same as pig,” said Mrs. Pouncey, stoutly.
“I don’t dispute your taste,” returned Eves, “but I think you owe it to the principle of fair play at least to hear what the other fellow may have to say. This is your last chance: to-morrow is the fatal day: like the man in the poem, you must make up your mind between truth and falsehood, ’twixt the good and evil side.”
“Oh! how you do talk, Mr. Eves!” said Mrs. Pouncey. “I’ll go, then, to please you, and I hope as I shan’t be sorry for it.”
“I don’t think you will; in fact I think you will have quite a pleasant entertainment. Mr. Noakes has insisted on the hall being warm and cosy-like, and the chairs are quite good. I’ll find you a good place at the back of the hall.”
“Not too far back, then, for my hearing bain’t what it was.”
“But your eyes are good—wonderfully good for a lady of forty or so. You shall sit where you can hear—and see—everything.”
Templeton had privately taken Eves to task for persuading the old dame to venture out on a cold night; but Eves had only chuckled.
The young officers were both in mufti, Eves having borrowed an old suit from his friend.
It was twenty minutes to seven when they reached the hall. The first few rows of chairs were already occupied, and people were streaming in. Eves piloted Mrs. Pouncey to a seat in the middle of the sixth row from the back wall.
“It do be warmish, to be sure,” she said, removing her tippet.
“Thanks to the mayor! Bob, look after Mrs. Pouncey. I’ll be back presently.”
He dodged his way through the incoming stream, and disappeared.
Templeton sat beside Mrs. Pouncey, looking around the audience with an air of mild interest, and quite unconscious that the good lady was basking in the glory reflected upon her by the companionship of the “young feller as had his name in the paper.” She nodded and smiled at her friends and acquaintances, and bridled visibly when she saw heads put together, nods in her direction, curious glances at Templeton, and lips whispering into ready ears.
The hall gradually filled. Tradesmen of the town, farmers from the outskirts, a sprinkling of khaki, and a considerable number of women, occupied all the chairs, and overflowed into the aisles along the walls. Conversation buzzed; the broad Doric of the county mingled quaintly with the north-country burr and the cockney twang of the soldiers whom chance had camped in the neighbourhood.
“Where be Mr. Eves, I wonder?” said Mrs. Pouncey, presently. She was in truth disappointed. “Mr. Templeton was a nice young gentleman, to be sure” (so she afterwards confided to a gossip), “but he was that quiet—well, you didn’t like to speak to him promiscous-like, for fear you spoiled the high thoughts a-rooting in his mind. But that Mr. Eves, now—well, you weren’t afeared of high thoughts with him. He was a merry feller, that he was, full of his fun; and talk—my dear, you should have heard him; ’twas just as if you poured out a kettle till it run dry, and the most beautiful long words, I do assure ’ee.”
“Where be Mr. Eves, I wonder?”
The question roused Templeton from his abstracted scrutiny of the audience. He glanced at his watch; it was two minutes to seven. Some of the soldiers were already stamping their feet and calling “Time!” He looked up and down the hall, along the walls, into the doorway. Eves was not to be seen. A misgiving seized him. Eves had been very keen on coming to this meeting. Was he contemplating a “rag”? The idea made Templeton perspire.
An outburst of cheers and clapping of hands drew his attention from his uneasy thoughts. The platform party had arrived. Noakes, wearing his chain of office, stepped first on to the platform. He was followed by a lean, hungry-looking man with fiery eyes, clean-shaven, his reddish hair brushed up from the scalp. Templeton recognised the features of a fanatical agitator whose portrait had appeared in the picture papers. The local Labour candidate, a burly fellow with a jolly red face and closely trimmed beard, took his seat beside the speaker of the evening, and the remaining chairs on the platform were occupied by his principal supporters, male and female.
The cheers subsided, and the mayor rose. In the silence a high-pitched voice enquired from the rear of the hall, “Who said burglar?” Some of the audience laughed, some cried “Shame!” and a shrill cry of “It wasn’t me!” and a scuffle announced that the chucker-out had proved more than equal to the occasion. Noakes smiled blandly until the noise had ceased: then he began.
“Ladies and gentlemen.”
But there is no need to report his opening speech, which indeed was unusually brief for a chairman’s. Templeton had begun to think better of him, until, after announcing that he would not stand between the audience and their great comrade from London, he said that, when the speech of the evening was finished, he would venture to make a few remarks by way of applying its principles to local circumstances. He then introduced his friend and comrade, and sat down.
Nor is it worth while, perhaps, to follow the “comrade from London” through his hour’s declamation. “The fellow could speak,” said Templeton, afterwards, “and what he said wasn’t all rot. But it was full of the most hopelessly unpractical ideas, streaked with a vein of bitterness against every thing and every body, and absolutely vitiated for me by the assumption that every rich man is a knave, and every poor man a martyr. Noakes ought to have let well alone, but he tried to dot the i’s and simply provoked Eves’s question. If he had closed the meeting after the big speech, there’d have been no trouble.”
Whether it was that the bucolic mind moved too slowly to keep pace with the orator’s flying periods, or that the townsmen from London and the North were spell-bound by his fervid eloquence, or simply that the growing heat of the hall induced lethargy; certain it is that the meeting was quite orderly and decorous during the great speech. Not until the chairman was again on his feet did trouble arise, and that was due to a simple question put by Eves. But we must go back a little.
When Eves descended into the furnace room, and released the stoker, he stripped off coat, waistcoat and collar, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and started energetically upon his self-assumed task. Hardly two minutes had elapsed when he heard a rasping voice behind him.
“That’s the way. Keep it going steady, my man. There’s a thermometer on the wall just inside the hall; run up every now and again and take a look at it: never let it drop below 60°.”
“Ay sure,” said Eves, counterfeiting the local brogue, and Noakes, who had been standing on the bottom step, went away gratified that his orders were being carried out so well.
“Not below 60°!” said Eves under his breath. “Sixteen degrees to go! Well, it’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart is there!” And he ladled coal and coke into the furnace with the fresh enthusiasm of an amateur.
It occurred to him that if he was to slip up into the hall for the purpose of examining the thermometer it would be just as well to look the part he was playing. So he smeared his face and arms, and what was visible of his shirt, with coal dust, much assisted by the dampness of his perspiring skin.
He paid his first visit to the thermometer just as the meeting opened. It hung on the wall near a group of Tommies who had been unable to obtain seats. They eyed him with a certain humorous sympathy. The thermometer registered 62°.
During the hour-long oration Eves was up and down several times, noting with satisfaction that the mercury was steadily rising, yet a little doubtful whether it would reach the critical point before the close of the meeting. He noticed towards the end of the hour that the heat was telling on some members of the audience. Women were fanning themselves; two or three plethoric farmers had fallen asleep: all the Tommies had unbuttoned their tunics. “Some fug, mate!” one of them remarked in a stage whisper. Eves only smiled in answer; he had seen that the mercury now touched 74°, and having stoked up the furnace to its full capacity, was satisfied that he could do no more, and stood among the soldiers.
The great speech ended in wild and whirling words: the speaker sat down amid applause, and Noakes arose.
“Now, my friends, we’ve heard a terrible fine speech, that we have, and I agree with every word of it. Afore I call upon our candidate—he’ll be our member to-morrow—to propose a vote of thanks to our comrade, I’ve a thing or two to say for to bring it home to the hearts o’ the men and women o’ Pudlington. Capitalism, as he truly said, is the deadly poison as is driving a nail into the roots o’ the nation: I couldn’t say better nor that. Well, then, neighbours all, what I do say is, don’t ’ee go and vote for no capitalist as belongs to a covey of profiteers, birds of prey as peck out the vitals o’ the widder and the orphan. Ah, neighbours! my heart bleeds as I think o’ the poor lone widder woman as pays dear for her bread, and can’t get no cheese, scraping to pay the rate collector as he——”
“Who raised Widow Pouncey’s rent?” came a clear voice from the back of the hall.
The mayor paused, and cast a swift glance in the direction of the questioner. He had recognised the voice, and sought for that well-remembered figure in officer’s khaki. The somnolent audience was roused, every head was turned, many people had risen from their seats. Mrs. Pouncey, who had been dozing, her head constantly wobbling over towards Templeton’s shoulder, suddenly sat erect, and exclaimed with a cry of delight: “That’s Mr. Eves at last, bless him!” Eves himself, having launched his question, and ascertained that the mercury stood at 75°, turned with a smile towards the eager Tommies who wanted to know all about Widow Pouncey.
Noakes recovered from the shock before the first thrill of excitement had passed off.
“’Tis low manners to interrupt,” he said in his smoothest tones, still trying to discover Eves’s whereabouts, but in vain. “I was a-going to say——”
“Answer the question!” came in a chorused roar from the soldiers. “Who raised Widow Pouncey’s rent?”
“Shall I tell ’em, sir?” whispered Mrs. Pouncey.
“No, no!” advised Templeton, anxious to avoid publicity. “Better say nothing.”
“Ay, I be that shy, and the room so terrible hot.”
“As chairman of this meeting,” said Noakes, with a patient smile, “I rule that questions can’t be asked now.”
“Who—raised—Widow—Pouncey’s—rent?” sang the Tommies, to the tune of “Here we suffer grief and pain” da capo.
“Who was it, mate?” asked one of them.
“I dare say he’ll tell us presently,” said Eves, “if you keep it up a little longer.”
He had his eyes on the thermometer.
The “comrade from London” got up and spoke earnestly in Noakes’s ear, while the chorus continued. The mayor gave a sickly smile and held up his hand. There was silence.
“My friend on my right,” said the mayor, “reminds me as there’s nothing more powerful than the truth.”
“Righto!” yelled the Tommies. “Who—raised——”
“Nobody!” shouted the mayor. “’Tis a lie!”
“What’s a lie?” cried one of the men. The others looked enquiringly at Eves.
“I say ’tis a lie!” repeated the mayor. “Mrs. Pouncey pays me five shilling a week, the same as she’s paid——”
He stopped, for three parts of the way down the hall there rose a stout figure, with face flushed and bonnet awry. There was a moment’s breathless silence, then Mrs. Pouncey, with forefinger outstretched towards the mayor, spoke out.
“Ay, the same as I’ve paid honest for twenty year, afore ever you come into the town, and ’twas you as said ’twould be doubled as soon as Parlyment lets you, if not afore, and not a word of a lie in it, Mr. Noakes.”
The old woman collapsed into her seat, amid murmurs of “Shame!”
“Good old Mrs. Pouncey!” “Who said profiteer?” “Noakes raised Widow Pouncey’s rent!” “Chuck him out!” “Get out, old crocodile!”
The hall rang with various cries. Eves, smiling broadly, glanced at the thermometer The mercury touched 76°. Noakes leant forward over the table, and shaking his fists, roared:
“As chairman of this meeting, and Mayor of Pudlington, here I be, and here I bide.”
He started back suddenly, putting a finger between his collar and his neck, and looking upward. Next moment he dropped his head and brushed a drop of water from his nose. Several of the platform party turned their faces up, started back, and upset their chairs. Two or three thin streams of water, as from the eyelets in the spray of a shower bath, were descending from the unplastered ceiling. Noakes edged a little to the left, and was opening his mouth again, when with a hiss and clatter like a heavy shower of rain upon a glass house, the whole contents of Templeton’s experimental tank poured down between the laths of the matchboard. Noakes gasped and spluttered, the ladies of his party shrieked, all the occupants of the platform stampeded like a flock of sheep, overturning their chairs, obstructing one another in their mad flight for the stairs. For one moment of amazement the audience was silent; then a roar of inextinguishable laughter broke from nearly three hundred throats, whistles and cat-calls resounded, the Tommies looked round for the stoker, whom, by some obscure instinct or intuition, they connected with the catastrophic shower. But Eves had slipped away.
A special Election Edition of the Pudlington Echo appeared next day, and was bought up eagerly by the crowds who, in spite of the pouring rain, had flocked into the town to record their votes. The Editor had filled half a column with a descriptive paragraph in his best style.