The Long Arm of Looney Coote - (1)

Given private means sufficiently large to pad them against the moulding buffets of Life, it is extraordinary how little men change in after years from the boys they once were. There was a youth in my house at school named Coote. J. G. Coote. And he was popularly known as Looney on account of the vain and foolish superstitions which seemed to rule his every action. Boys are hard-headed, practical persons, and they have small tolerance for the view-point of one who declines to join in a quiet smoke behind the gymnasium not through any moral scruples—which, to do him justice, he would have scorned—but purely on the ground that he had seen a magpie that morning. This was what J. G. Coote did, and it was the first occasion on which I remember him being addressed as Looney.
    But, once given, the nickname stuck; and this in spite of the fact—seeing that we were caught half-way through the first cigarette and forcefully dealt with by a muscular head master—that that magpie of his would appear to have known a thing or two. For five happy years, till we parted to go to our respective universities, I never called Coote anything but Looney; and it was as Looney that I greeted him when we happened upon each other one afternoon at Sandown, shortly after the conclusion of the three o’clock race.
    “Did you do anything on that one?” I asked, after we had exchanged salutations.
    “I went down,” replied Looney, in the subdued but not heart-broken manner of the plutocrat who can afford to do these things. “I had a tenner on My Valet.”
    “On My Valet!” I cried, aghast at this inexplicable patronage of an animal which, even in the preliminary saunter round the paddock, had shown symptoms of lethargy and fatigue, not to mention a disposition to trip over his feet. “Whatever made you do that?”
    “Yes, I suppose he never had a chance,” agreed Coote, “but a week ago my man Spencer broke his leg, and I thought it might be an omen.”
    And then I knew that, for all his moustache and added weight, he was still the old Looney of my boyhood.
    “Is that the principle on which you always bet?” I enquired.
    “Well, you’d be surprised how often it works. The day my aunt was shut up in the private asylum I collected five hundred quid by backing Crazy Jane for the Jubilee Cup. Have a cigarette?”
    “Thanks.”
    “Oh, my Lord!”
    “Now what?”
    “My pocket has been picked,” faltered Looney Coote, withdrawing a trembling hand. “I had a note-case with nearly a hundred quid, and it’s gone!”
    The next moment I was astounded to observe a faint, resigned smile on the man’s face.
    “Well, that makes two,” he murmured, as if to himself.
    “Two what?”
    “Two misfortunes. These things always go in threes, you know. Whenever anything rotten happens, I simply brace myself up for the other two things. Well, there’s only one more to come this time, thank goodness.”
    “What was the first one?”
    “I told you my man Spencer broke his leg.”
    “I should have thought that would have ranked as one of Spencer’s three misfortunes. How do you come in?”
    “Why, my dear fellow, I’ve been having the devil of a time since he dropped out. The ass they sent me from the agency as a substitute is no good at all. Look at that!” He extended a shapely leg. “Do you call that a crease?”
    From the humble standpoint of my own bagginess, I should have called it an excellent crease, but he seemed thoroughly dissatisfied with it, so there was nothing to do but tell him to set his teeth and bear it like a man, and presently, the bell having rung for the three-thirty race, we parted.
    “Oh, by the way,” said Looney, as he left me, “are you going to be at the old Wrykinian dinner next week?”
    “Yes, I’m coming. So is Ukridge.”
    “Ukridge? Good Lord, I haven’t seen old Ukridge for years.”
    “Well, he will be there. And I expect he’ll touch you for a temporary loan. That will make your third misfortune.”
    Ukridge’s decision to attend the annual dinner of the Old Boys of the school at which he and I had been—in a manner of speaking—educated had come as a surprise to me; for, though the meal was likely to be well-cooked and sustaining, the tickets cost half a sovereign apiece, and it was required of the celebrants that they wear evening-dress. And, while Ukridge sometimes possessed ten shillings which he had acquired by pawning a dress-suit, or a dress-suit which he had hired for ten shillings, it was unusual for him to have the two things together. Still, he was as good as his word, and on the night of the banquet turned up at my lodgings for a preliminary bracer faultlessly clad and ready for the feast.
    Tactlessly, perhaps, I asked him what bank he had been robbing.
    “I thought you told me a week ago that money was tight,” I said.
    “It was tighter,” said Ukridge, “than these damned trousers. Never buy ready-made dress-clothes, Corky, my boy. They’re always unsatisfactory. But all that’s over now. I have turned the corner, old man. Last Saturday we cleaned up to an extraordinary extent at Sandown.”
    “We?”
    “The firm. I told you I had become a sleeping-partner in a bookie’s business.”
    “For Heaven’s sake! You don’t mean to say that it is really making money?”
    “Making money? My dear old lad, how could it help making money? I told you from the first the thing was a gold-mine. Affluence stares me in the eyeball. The day before yesterday I bought half-a-dozen shirts. That’ll show you!”
    “How much have you made?”
    “In some ways,” said Ukridge, sentimentally, “I regret this prosperity. I mean to say, those old careless impecunious days were not so bad. Not so bad, Corky, old boy, eh? Life had a tang then. It was swift, vivid, interesting. And there’s always the danger that one may allow oneself to grow slack and enervated with wealth. Still, it has its compensations. Yes, on the whole I am not sorry to have made my pile.”
    “How much have you made?” I asked again, impressed by this time. The fact of Ukridge buying shirts for himself instead of purloining mine suggested an almost Monte Cristo-like opulence.
    “Fifteen quid,” said Ukridge. “Fifteen golden sovereigns, my boy! And out of one week’s racing! And you must remember that the thing is going on all the year round. Month by month, week by week, we shall expand, we shall unfold, we shall develop. It wouldn’t be a bad scheme, old man, to drop a judicious word here and there among the lads at this dinner to-night, advising them to lodge their commissions with us. Isaac O’Brien is the name of the firm, 3 Blue Street, St. James’s. Telegraphic address, ‘Ikobee, London.’ and our representative attends all the recognised meetings. But don’t mention my connection with the firm. I don’t want it generally known, as it might impair my social standing. And now, laddie, if we don’t want to be late for this binge, we had better be starting.”
    Ukridge, as I have recorded elsewhere, had left school under something of a cloud. Not to put too fine a point on it, he had been expelled for breaking out at night to attend the local fair, and it was only after many years of cold exclusion that he had been admitted to the pure-minded membership of the Old Boys’ Society.
    Nevertheless, in the matter of patriotism he yielded to no one.
    During our drive to the restaurant where the dinner was to be held he grew more and more sentimental about the dear old school, and by the time the meal was over and the speeches began he was in the mood when men shed tears and invite people, to avoid whom in calmer moments they would duck down side-streets, to go on long walking tours with them. He wandered from table to table with a large cigar in his mouth, now exchanging reminiscences, anon advising contemporaries who had won high positions in the Church to place their bets with Isaac O’Brien, of 3 Blue Street, St. James’s—a sound and trustworthy firm, telegraphic address “Ikobee, London.”
    The speeches at these dinners always opened with a long and statistical harangue from the President, who, furtively consulting his paper of notes, announced the various distinctions gained by Old Boys during the past year. On this occasion, accordingly, he began by mentioning that A. B. Bodger (“Good old Bodger!”—from Ukridge) had been awarded the Mutt-Spivis Gold Medal for Geological Research at Oxford University—that C. D. Codger had been appointed to the sub-junior deanery of Westchester Cathedral—(“That’s the stuff, Codger, old horse!”)—that as a reward for his services in connection with the building of the new waterworks at Strelsau J. J. Swodger had received from the Government of Ruritania the Order of the Silver Trowel, third class (with crossed pickaxes).
    “By the way,” said the President, concluding, “before I finish there is one more thing I would like to say. An old boy, B. V. Lawlor, is standing for Parliament next week at Redbridge. If any of you would care to go down and lend him a hand, I know he would be glad of your help.”
    He resumed his seat, and the leather-lunged toastmaster behind him emitted a raucous “My Lord, Mr. President, and gentlemen, pray silence for Mr. H. K. Hodger, who will propose the health of ‘The Visitors.’” H. K. Hodger rose with the purposeful expression only to be seen on the face of one who has been reminded by the remarks of the last speaker of the story of the two Irishmen; and the company, cosily replete, settled down to give him an indulgent attention.
    Not so Ukridge. He was staring emotionally across the table at his old friend Lawlor. The seating arrangements at these dinners were usually designed to bring contemporaries together at the same table, and the future member for Redbridge was one of our platoon.
    “Boko, old horse,” demanded Ukridge, “is this true?”
    A handsome but rather prominent nose had led his little playmates to bestow this affectionate sobriquet upon the coming M.P. It was one of those boyish handicaps which are never lived down, but I would not have thought of addressing B. V. Lawlor in this fashion myself, for, though he was a man of my own age, the years had made him extremely dignified. Ukridge, however, was above any such weakness. He gave out the offensive word in a vinous bellow of such a calibre as to cause H. K. Hodger to trip over a “begorra” and lose the drift of his story.
    “’Sh!” said the President, bending a reproving gaze at our table.
    “’Sh!” said B. V. Lawlor, contorting his smooth face.
    “Yes, but is it?” persisted Ukridge.
    “Of course it is,” whispered Lawlor. “Be quiet!”
    “Then, damme,” shouted Ukridge, “rely on me, young Boko. I shall be at your side. I shall spare no efforts to pull you through. You can count on me to——”
    “Really! Please! At that table down there,” said the President, rising, while H. K. Hodger, who had got as far as “Then, faith and begob, it’s me that’ll be afther——” paused in a pained manner and plucked at the table-cloth.
    Ukridge subsided. But his offer of assistance was no passing whim, to be lightly forgotten in the slumbers of the night. I was still in bed a few mornings later when he burst in, equipped for travel to the last button and carrying a seedy suit-case.
    “Just off, laddie, just off!”
    “Fine!” I said. “Good-bye.”
    “Corky, my boy,” boomed Ukridge, sitting creakingly on the bed and poisoning the air with his noisome tobacco, “I feel happy this morning. Stimulated. And why? Because I am doing an altruistic action. We busy men of affairs, Corky, are too apt to exclude altruism from our lives. We are too prone to say ‘What is there in it for me?’ and, if there proves on investigation to be nothing in it for us, to give it the miss-in-balk. That is why this business makes me so confoundedly happy. At considerable expense and inconvenience I am going down to Redbridge to-day, and what is there in it for me? Nothing. Nothing, my boy, except the pure delight of helping an old schoolfellow over a tough spot. If I can do anything, however little, to bring young Boko in at the right end of the poll, that will be enough reward for me. I am going to do my bit, Corky, and it may be that my bit will turn out to be just the trifle that brings home the bacon. I shall go down there and talk——”
    “I bet you will.”
    “I don’t know much about politics, it’s true, but I can bone up enough to get by. Invective ought to meet the case, and I’m pretty good at invective. I know the sort of thing. You accuse the rival candidate of every low act under the sun, without giving him quite enough to start a libel action on. Now, what I want you to do, Corky, old horse——”
    “Oh heavens!” I moaned at these familiar words.
    “——is just to polish up this election song of mine. I sat up half the night writing it, but I can see it limps in spots. You can put it right in half an hour. Polish it up, laddie, and forward without fail to the Bull Hotel, Redbridge, this afternoon. It may just be the means of shoving Boko past the post by a nose.”
    He clattered out hurriedly; and, sleep being now impossible, I picked up the sheet of paper he had left and read the verses.
    They were well meant, but that let them out. Ukridge was no poet or he would never have attempted to rhyme “Lawlor” with “before us.”
    A rather neat phrase happening to occur to me at the breakfast table, coincident with the reflection that possibly Ukridge was right and it did behove his old schoolfellows to rally round the candidate, I spent the morning turning out a new ballad. Having finished this by noon, I despatched it to the Bull Hotel, and went off to lunch with something of that feeling of satisfaction which, as Ukridge had pointed out, does come to altruists. I was strolling down Piccadilly, enjoying an after-luncheon smoke, when I ran into Looney Coote.
    On Looney’s amiable face there was a mingled expression of chagrin and satisfaction.
    “It’s happened,” he said.
    “What?”
    “The third misfortune. I told you it would.”
    “What’s the trouble now? Has Spencer broken his other leg?”
    “My car has been stolen.”
    A decent sympathy would no doubt have become me, but from earliest years I had always found it difficult to resist the temptation to be airy and jocose when dealing with Looney Coote. The man was so indecently rich that he had no right to have troubles.
    “Oh, well,” I said, “you can easily get another. Fords cost practically nothing nowadays.”
    “It wasn’t a Ford,” bleated Looney, outraged. “It was a brand-new Winchester-Murphy. I paid fifteen hundred pounds for it only a month ago, and now it’s gone.”
    “Where did you see it last?”
    “I didn’t see it last. My chauffeur brought it round to my rooms this morning, and, instead of staying with it as he should have done till I was ready, went off round the corner for a cup of coffee, so he says! And when he came back it had vanished.”
    “The coffee?”
    “The car, you ass. The car had disappeared. It had been stolen.”
    “I suppose you have notified the police?”
    “I’m on my way to Scotland Yard now. It just occurred to me. Have you any idea what the procedure is? It’s the first time I’ve been mixed up with this sort of thing.”
    “You give them the number of the car, and they send out word to police-stations all over the country to look out for it.”
    “I see,” said Looney Coote, brightening. “That sounds rather promising, what? I mean, it looks as if someone would be bound to spot it sooner or later.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Of course, the first thing a thief would do would be to take off the number-plate and substitute a false one.”
    “Oh, Great Scott! Not really?”
    “And after that he would paint the car a different colour.”
    “Oh, I say!”
    “Still, the police generally manage to find them in the end. Years hence they will come on it in an old barn with the tonneau stoved in and the engines taken out. Then they will hand it back to you and claim the reward. But, as a matter of fact, what you ought to be praying is that you may never get it back. Then the thing would be a real misfortune. If you get it back as good as new in the next couple of days, it won’t be a misfortune at all, and you will have number three hanging over your head again, just as before. And who knows what that third misfortune may be? In a way, you’re tempting Providence by applying to Scotland Yard.”
    “Yes,” said Looney Coote, doubtfully. “All the same, I think I will, don’t you know. I mean to say, after all, a fifteen-hundred-quid Winchester-Murphy is a fifteen-hundred-quid Winchester-Murphy, if you come right down to it, what?”
    Showing that even in the most superstitious there may be grains of hard, practical common sense lurking somewhere.
    It had not been my intention originally to take any part in the by-election in the Redbridge division beyond writing three verses of a hymn in praise of Boko Lawlor and sending him a congratulatory wire if he won. But two things combined to make me change my mind. The first was the fact that it occurred to me—always the keen young journalist—that there might be a couple of guineas of Interesting Bits money in it (“How a Modern Election is Fought: Humours of the Poll”); the second, that, ever since his departure Ukridge had been sending me a constant stream of telegrams so stimulating that eventually they lit the spark.
    I append specimens:—
    “Going strong. Made three speeches yesterday. Election song a sensation. Come on down.—Ukridge.”
    “Boko locally regarded as walk-over. Made four speeches yesterday. Election song a breeze. Come on down.—Ukridge.”
    “Victory in sight. Spoke practically all yesterday. Election song a riot. Children croon it in cots. Come on down.—Ukridge.”
    I leave it to any young author to say whether a man with one solitary political lyric to his credit could have resisted this. With the exception of a single music-hall song (“Mother, She’s Pinching My Leg,” tried out by Tim Sims, the Koy Komic, at the Peebles Hippodrome, and discarded, in response to a popular appeal, after one performance), no written words of mine had ever passed human lips. Naturally, it gave me a certain thrill to imagine the enlightened electorate of Redbridge—at any rate, the right-thinking portion of it—bellowing in its thousands those noble lines:—
    “No foreign foe’s insidious hate Our country shall o’erwhelm So long as England’s ship of state Has LAWLOR at the helm.”
    Whether I was technically correct in describing as guiding the ship of state a man who would probably spend his entire Parliamentary career in total silence, voting meekly as the Whip directed, I had not stopped to enquire. All I knew was that it sounded well, and I wanted to hear it. In addition to which, there was the opportunity, never likely to occur again, of seeing Ukridge make an ass of himself before a large audience.
    I went to Redbridge.
    The first thing I saw on leaving the station was a very large poster exhibiting Boko Lawlor’s expressive features, bearing the legend:—
    Lawlor for Redbridge.
    This was all right, but immediately beside it, evidently placed there by the hand of an enemy, was a still larger caricature of this poster which stressed my old friend’s prominent nose in a manner that seemed to me to go beyond the limits of a fair debate. To this was appended the words:—
    Do You Want THIS For a Member?
    To which, if I had been a hesitating voter of the constituency, I would certainly have replied “No!” for there was something about that grossly elongated nose that convicted the man beyond hope of appeal of every undesirable quality a Member of Parliament can possess. You could see at a glance that here was one who, if elected, would do his underhand best to cut down the Navy, tax the poor man’s food, and strike a series of blows at the very root of the home. And, as if this were not enough, a few yards farther on was a placard covering almost the entire side of a house, which said in simple, straightforward black letters a foot high:—
    Down With Boko, The Human Gargoyle.
    How my poor old contemporary, after passing a week in the constant society of these slurs on his personal appearance, could endure to look himself in the face in his shaving-mirror of a morning was more than I could see. I commented on this to Ukridge, who had met me at the station in a luxurious car.
    “Oh, that’s nothing,” said Ukridge, huskily. The first thing I had noticed about him was that his vocal cords had been putting in overtime since our last meeting. “Just the usual give-and-take of an election. When we get round this next corner you’ll see the poster we’ve got out to tickle up the other bloke. It’s a pippin.”
    I did, and it was indeed a pippin. After one glance at it as we rolled by, I could not but feel that the electors of Redbridge were in an uncommonly awkward position, having to choose between Boko, as exhibited in the street we had just passed, and this horror now before me. Mr. Herbert Huxtable, the opposition candidate, seemed to run as generously to ears as his adversary did to nose, and the artist had not overlooked this feature. Indeed, except for a mean, narrow face with close-set eyes and a murderer’s mouth, Mr. Huxtable appeared to be all ears. They drooped and flapped about him like carpet-bags, and I averted my gaze, appalled.
    “Do you mean to say you’re allowed to do this sort of thing?” I asked, incredulously.
    “My dear old horse, it’s expected of you. It’s a mere formality. The other side would feel awkward and disappointed if you didn’t.”
    “And how did they find out about Lawlor being called Boko?” I enquired, for the point had puzzled me. In a way, you might say that it was the only thing you could possibly call him, but the explanation hardly satisfied me.
    “That,” admitted Ukridge, “was largely my fault. I was a bit carried away the first time I addressed the multitude, and I happened to allude to the old chap by his nickname. Of course, the opposition took it up at once. Boko was a little sore about it for a while.”
    “I can see how he might be.”
    “But that’s all over now,” said Ukridge, buoyantly. “We’re the greatest pals. He relies on me at every turn. Yesterday he admitted to me in so many words that if he gets in it’ll be owing to my help as much as anything. The fact is, laddie, I’ve made rather a hit with the manyheaded. They seem to like to hear me speak.”
    “Fond of a laugh, eh?”
    “Now, laddie,” said Ukridge, reprovingly, “this is not the right tone. You must curb that spirit of levity while you’re down here. This is a dashed serious business, Corky, old man, and the sooner you realise it the better. If you have come here to gibe and to mock——”
    “I came to hear my election song sung. When do they sing it?”
    “Oh, practically all the time. Incessantly, you might say.”
    “In their baths?”
    “Most of the voters here don’t take baths. You’ll gather that when we reach Biscuit Row.”
    “What’s Biscuit Row?”
    “It’s the quarter of the town where the blokes live who work in Fitch and Weyman’s biscuit factory, laddie. It’s what you might call,” said Ukridge, importantly, “the doubtful element of the place. All the rest of the town is nice and clean-cut, they’re either solid for Boko or nuts on Huxtable—but these biscuit blokes are wobbly. That’s why we have to canvass them so carefully.”
    “Oh, you’re going canvassing, are you?”
    “We are,” corrected Ukridge.
    “Not me!”
    “Corky,” said Ukridge, firmly, “pull yourself together. It was principally to assist me in canvassing these biscuit blighters that I got you down here. Where’s your patriotism, laddie? Don’t you want old Boko to get into Parliament, or what is it? We must strain every nerve. We must set our hands to the plough. The job you’ve got to tackle is the baby-kissing——”
    “I won’t kiss their infernal babies!”
    “You will, old horse, unless you mean to spend the rest of your life cursing yourself vainly when it is too late that poor old Boko got pipped on the tape purely on account of your poltroonery. Consider, old man! Have some vision! Be an altruist! It may be that your efforts will prove the deciding factor in this desperately close-run race.”