THAT SORT OF MAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 4074, 12 April 1932, Page 73

THAT SORT OF MAN.

Bv H.H. the Ranee of Sarawak.

(Copyright.—For the Otago Witness.) The sitting room of a country cottage. Lattice windows at the back of it looked on to stretches of meadows and beyond the meadows, a forest of wide-branched elms. A green door led into a little winding pathway across the fields. In the centre of the room was a square table, covered by a red, check cloth. Breakfast was being laid. In front of the empty fireplace, a man sat reading his paper. Bather a pugnacious type, with broad, shoulders and a short, bull neck, upon which rested his aggressive face. He was dressed in a rough tweed suit, thick boots, and gaiters, as if ready for the road. Now and again he grunted to himself over the news he was reading. Knowing and wise he looked, as of a man convinced of his own opinion. There was no one in the world Bill Gemmell liked better than himself. In and out of the room fluttered his wife, preparing breakfast. A fine-looking girl was Kate Gemmell. A wife to be proud of. A wife to be jealous of. Bill was both proud and jealous of her, not so much because he loved her, but because she was Mrs Gemmell, and lie did not wish her to forget it. To see them together you would have thought that this tall, gracious girl could have ruled her man. But Bill, with his thick, bull neck and aggressive face, was master. He was that sort of man. “ What time are you starting for town, Bill ? ” asked Kate, as she placed a steaming pot of coffee at the heal of the table. Bill looked up from his paper. , “ Don’t know,” he replied indifferently. “ Don’t know that I’ll go at all.” Kate went into the kitchen and came out again with some plates. “ Not go? ” she said. “ But I thought you’d got to, Bill. Haven’t you some business to see to in the market?” Bill’s face leered over the edge of the paper; his eyes like black beads pierced into hers. “ Oh, ho, my dear,” he cried. “ Seem mighty anxious to get rid of me. What’s the game, eh ? ” “The game, Bill?” Bill rustled the paper. Whenever he thought he was on the eve of a discovery, his hands shook. Kate hardly noticed it. Smoothly she passed to and fro, laying the breakfast. “ Don’t be so silly, Bill,” - was all she said, and with a grunt Bill resumed his reading. “ Mrs Larking would like you to buy her a pound of rump,” continued Kate, calmly from the kitchen. “ Won’t forget, will you, Bill?” Bill grunted again. “ If Mrs Larking thinks I’m going all over town searching for slabs of meat,’ he said, furiously, “ she’s made a mistake, that’s all.” “You might oblige, Bill.” “And why should I oblige?” replied Bill. “ What’s Larking ever done for me that I should oblige his wife ? ” Kate brought in the rest of the dishes in silence. “ It’s ready, Bill,” she said. “And you haven’t much time.” Bill rose and sat himself down at the head of the table, propping the newspaper in front of him. Kate poured out his coffee and filled his plate. Still reading, he began to eat. “ Listen to this, my dear,” he said at last. “ A hundred pound reward for finding a murderer. That’s a tidy little sum, if ever there was one.” Kate smiled. “We could do with that, couldn’t we?” she replied. “We want a new kitchen range, and Mrs Barking’s done up her parlour ever so nice. I wish we could do ours, Bill,” Bill scowled. “ Done up her parlour, has she?” he replied. ‘All the more reason for letting ours be. Nevertheless,” he sucked the coffee from off his moustache, “ a hundred pounds is a hundred pounds, and I’d like it.” Kate looked at him kindly. “ I should say you would, Bill! ” she said. “ More coffee ? ” Bill held out his cup. “You know, Kate,” he began slowly, “ this is rather in my line—this murderer business. I’m rather good at that sort of thing. I once nabbed a boy that was stealing a bicycle.” He paused, a little ashamed of this rather futile admission. “ I’ll find him,” he muttered, “you see if I don’t. I’m that sort of man.” Kate stirred her coffee. “If he wa» as easy to find as all that,” she said, wisely, “ other people would have nabbed him by now.” Bill did not like opposition, especially from his wife. ‘ Other people aren’t as observant as I am,” he retorted, his little beady eyes frowning at her across the table, “ ‘ Observation ’ is my middle name. Regular sleuth-hound I am; you just watch me! ” Kate laughed. She could not help laughing at the puffed-up indignant face of her husband. “ Mrs Larking says her husband is as sharp as a needle,’ she teased. ‘ Supposing he finds him and gets the reward ?”

Down came Bill’s fist on the table with a bang.

“Airs Larking!—Airs Larking!” he shouted. “ She takes in so much sewing she’s got needles on the brain! If Larking had been sharp he wouldn’t have married her, would he? —the yellow faced cat! ”

Quickly Kate smiled at her husband, that beautiful, gracious smile of hers that always reduced him to a kind of grumbling content. “ With a hundred

pounds you’ll be able to buy yourself everything, won’t you, Bill?” she said, soothingly.

Bill leaned back in his chair and picked his teeth with the end of a match. “ So I will, Kate,” he replied, “ and you, too, my girl. You’ll like a new frock now, wouldn’t you ? ” He picked up the newspaper, tore the notice out of it and pinned it up on the , wall by the fireplace. Putting his arm round her shoulders, they stood together contemplating it. “’Fair hair,’” read out Bill. “ ‘ Thin, white face; high cheekbones, and a cast in one eye.’ No fear of you falling for him. Kate, my girl,” and he pinched her cheek. “ Oh, I don’t know,” replied Kate, teasing him again. “I rather like a good cast. Gives a man a kind of ‘winkish’ look. You’d better not go into town, Bill, with a handsome creature like that at large.” Bill was wandering about collecting his things. “ It’s all very fine, Kate,” he said, solemnly. “ It’s no laughing matter. Every time I close the door on you, I’m in a mortal sweat of somebody else opening it. I warn you, Kate, if ever I catch vou out with a bloke, I’ll half kill him, I will.”

Kate laughed. “ You needn’t worry, Bill,” she replied. “ Not you.” Bill wasn’t exactly worrying; he was warning her, that’s all. “Of course, you can let in the murderer,” he said with a chuckle. “ I don’t mind you letting him in.” And they both laughed. “ You know, Kate,” he said as he laced up his boots. “ I feel safe in the springtime with you turning the house all upside down with your hair in a towel, and a saek all over you. ‘ Let them all come,’ I say to myself, ‘ and take a good look at her. That will cure them —the rat*! ” “ Alost men hate the spring clean,” replied Kate. “ Only when they’ve got ugly wives, Kate. That’s all.” Of course, Kate promised that as soon as he went into town, she’d tie her head up in a duster and clean out the kitchen range. Or else she’d go across the fields, and spend the day with Airs Larking. But Bill said it would make Larking think that he didn’t trust his own wife, and he didn’t like the idea. “ Air Larking isn’t a bit jealous of his wife,” argued Kate. “Not like you! ” Bill snorted. “ Air Larking doesn’t need to be jealous of his wife,” he retorted, “ she’s got a face like a kipper. If I’d a wife like Airs Larking I wouldn’t be able to pass a blinking fish shop without thinking of her.” Very soon he was ready to go. He kissed his wife, warned her again that she was not to flirt, and went out.

With a sigh, Kate started to put away the things. Everything she did was gently methodical. She made no noise as she moved about, her large, soft hands carrying plates and crockery, and a loaf of bread. Just as she was about to sweep the crumbs from the cloth the door wt’f; rudely flung open, and a man stood with a revolver in his hand.

“ If you scream,” said the man, “ I’ll shoot. Give me some food, quickly, I'm hungry.” “Hungry?” echoed Kate, her wide eyes on the revolver. “ Yes,” repeated the man, “ I want food—food! Can’t you hear me?” He closed the door behind him with his foot, still covering her with his revolver. “ We’ve just finished breakfast,” replied Kate, stupidly, “ and there isn’t anything left.” The man advanced threateningly. “Look here,” he said, “are you going to get me that food, or not ? ” Kate moved, trembling, towards the kitchen with him after her. She brought a cup of hot coffee, placed it on the table, and then went back, with him still following, to fetch <»£ pork. “ Aly husband’s dinner,” she said abruptly, and dumped it down on the table.

He ate ravenously. Like a wolf he was tearing at the cold meat, and all the time with his mouth full, he was jerking sentences at her. He was a stranger. Where did the fields lead to? He had seen her husband go out, and that’s how he’d known she was alone. “ The fields lead to the railway,” replied Kate, her eyes on the revolver. “ Do the trains stop anywhere near? ” C( J “Do they?” “ Kate moistened her dry lips. “ Yes,” she whispered. “ But not to pick up passengers.”

The man laughed a terrifying laugh. “ They’ve got to pick me up,’’ he said, and she did not know which she hated

most, his frown or his laugh. She had had time to observe him by now. Fair, high cheek bones; a cast in his eye. She looked at the notice on the wall and then back at him, and her face grew pale and stricken. She tried to make for the door, but he was before her. “ Oh no, you don’t, my beauty,” he said. “So you know who I am, eh?” He went over to the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket. Then, with a laugh, he tore the notice down and threw it into the grate. “ Didn’ know you were so fond of me you had to hang up my portrait,” he said. “ I’m flattered—l don’t think.” There was the sound of a man’t footstep—a man’s whistle. Kate's hands twisted together and she gave a little cry:

“ Bill! ” “ Your husband—l thought he'd gone into town! ”

“ Yes,” replied Kate in a whisper. “ I thought so, too.” The man gazed wildly round the room for somewhere to hide, and seeing a corner where some coats and sacking were hung, he concealed himself cleverly behind them. “Now listen, you!” he said to the terrified woman, “ Dare to give me away, and I’ll kill you—see?— you and your husband.”

Bill tried the door. Finding it locked, he began to thunder and kick. The man stretched out his hand with the key in it. “If you squeal,” he said, “or give me away, I’ll shoot your pretty face in —now —open the door!’” With palsied fingers Kate unlocked the door. She dared not look at her husband —with that revolver pointing at them both. “ That’s a nice sort of welcome—that is! ” shouted Bill. “What the devil do you mean by locking the door? ” “ I was afraid,” replied Kate. “ I—l thought perhaps that murderer might come in and—and ”

Bill was beside himself with rage and disappointment. “ And if he had come in,” he bellowed, “ Wasn’t he the very man we wanted ? You asked me to do up the house, didn’t you? You asked to have a new dress, and they you go and lock the door.” “ But—Bill!”

Bill flung down his hat and stamped about the room. They hadn’t let him go into the town, he said, because they knew he was the very man to nab the murderer. They had told him he had it in him, and so he had if he hadn’t been cursed with a fool of a wife. All the time he was talking, that awful revolver was following him about. He wasn’t afraid, he told his wife—not he! A palefaced squinting little rat, frightened to death, himself, as likely as not. If he came anywhere near theii - house, he’d nab him as easy as winking—as easy as winking. He was that sort of man. Kate listened to him, her mind in a whirl.

“ Wouldn’t it be funny,” site said at last, “ if all this time he was in somebody’s house, and they didn’t know it? ” Bill puffed himself out with pride in his own perception. “ Can you imagine anyone being here,” he replied, “ with my knowing—can you, Kate?” His eyes fell on the empty space on the wall where the notice had been, and he pointed to it wth his finger shaking. “Where’s the notice?” he cried. “ Where is it? ” “ Notice—Bill ? ” “ You heard,” repeated Bill, “ where is it?” There was a slight movement from the darkened corner. Kate noticed it. “ I—l took it down,” she whispered. “ And why do you suppose I pinned it up? ” Bill’s eyes glanced round the room, suspiciously. He saw the mess on the table—the empty coffee cup, and the half-empty plate. “ Hullo—that’s queer! ” “What’s queer, Bill?” Bill pointed to the table. “ Have you been having more coffee,” he asked, “ or what? ” Of course she hadn’t been having more coffee. Then what was the cup doing

there, quite warm? And, jumping Aloses, there was cold pork—his cold pork! She’d been feeding somebody—that’s

'what it was! That’s why the door had been locked. A man had been there—

a man —that was it —wasn’t it? So that’s the sort of woman she was! Accommodating husband goes out —enter complacent lover. Nice little breakfast scene. Cold pork —his cold pork. Husband returns unexpectedly. Distracted wife conceals lover; the question was, “Where did she conceal him?”

Savagely he gazed round the room. In vain she told him it wasn’t true. All he replied was: Then why the pork? Why the locked door? Where was he? Out with him! All he wanted to see was what sort of a lover she had chosen. “ But there isn’t anybody,” cried Kate. “I swear there isn’t, Bill! I—l was hungry. I didn’t have much breakfast.” Hungry be hanged. He knew there was someone in that room. His eyes

darted into the corner, and the coats shivered. With an oath Bill flung himself forward. There was a shot. Bill stooped as the man rushed past him, but it only took Bill one second to get hold of the revolver. “ Out you go—you swine! ”he said. Do you hear me? ” He went to the door, flung it open, and stood there threatening with the revolver. “ Get out,” he repeated, “ before I murder you! ” All the time Kate was doing her utmost to convey to her husband who this man was. Words would not come.

Bill turned on her. snarling: “You keep quiet! ” he said fiercely. “I know what I’m doing. I don’t stand this kind of thing—not I.” Before Kate had time to explain the little man with the white face and the twisted eye had darted out of the room. Like a streak of lightning, he was, and Bill, puffed with pride, threw the revolver on to the table. “There,” he said, “you see! ” Kate burst into tears. “ I flatter myself I know how to get rid of a lover when I ' see one,” continued Bill. “ I’m that sort of man.” Then Kate told him—told him how he had let a hundred pounds slip through his fingers. “You fool!” she sobbed “he was behind the coats pointing the revolver. I couldn’t tell you before. We had him in our hands—and you let him go! ” Bill crumpled up like a burst balloon.

It took him seven days to recover. “ Well,” he said at the end of the seventh day, expanding his chest, “ I’m all for giving even a sewer rat a chance. I’m that sort of man.”