THE COINCIDENCER:

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18653, 23 August 1930, Page 9

THE COINCIDENCER:

By NORMAN COLLINS.

The conversation had turned to talk of strange trades and extraordinary employments. There were five of us in the bar -at the time, and the little man with the insecure denture had just told a story about the queerest thing he knew. Everyone, he said, had heard of YE OLDE HARDBAKE TOFFEE SHOPPE in Shanklin; it was one of the sights of the place. Well, the business was run on these lines: first, we learned, the proprietor, with a polite and charming smile, would sell one of his famous slabs of jawbreaking toffee, and then he would slip out of sight round the back of the shop. The optimistic holiday-maker would go outside and set his teeth in a large piece of the toffee. Then, with a yelp of pain, he would intimate that the least of Nature’s handiworks within him had given way. After that, he would, so the little man said, of course, have to look round for a dentist. And there next to YE OLDE BARDBAKE TOFFEE SHOPPE he would s6e a neat sign, “DENTAL SURGERY—PAINLESS EXTRACTIONS.” In he would rush, and the immaculate figure in white would attend to him for half a guinea or so, according to the extent of the damage, would be none other than the rascally confectioner who had sold the toffee. The little man indi-

cated his own unsatisfactory dental apparatus as proof of the truth of the story. ■ After that the conversation became mainly facetious. A young red-faced commercial traveller, up by the fire, told a story about a friend of his who had been engaged by a leading Westend hotel to make holes in the Cheddar cheese so that it could be sold for Gruyere. And the young red-faced man’s friend tried to get back on him with the yarn about the man who did nothing but make the crosses on hot cross buns for an exclusive firm of bak-

At that, the little man told me loudly and sibilantly what he thought of strangers who tried to be funny at another’s expense, and went out. Shortly after, the two humorists winked at me and followed.

That left me alone with a melancholy and asthmatic creature, whose clothtopped boots and knobbed cane combined with a greasy velvet collar and a rather clerical hat to suggest an unsuccessful and declining actor. We were drawn together by those laws of gravitation which control unattached bodies in public-house bars, and after I had loosened his tongue with some of the grossly spurious Napoleon brandy that the barman brought up in a bottle festooned with an artificially luxuriant wreath of cobwebs, the old fellow leaned forward shakily and said: “Well laddie, we’ve heard the bo-boys talking about eshtrarornery (he kept stumbling over words like that) professions, but I’ll lay you a fiver you don’t know what' I am.”

I was diplomatic and, without accepting what would probably be an expensive bet, I suggested that I knew his face. When asked to have three guesses I hazarded actor, author and (with deliberate flattery) barrister. Not on your life,” he chuckled, de-

lightedly, smiling at me over his accusingly red and ample nose. “I’m a

| "A coincidencer?” I faltered, i “I thought that’d get you,” he mur--1 mured, indulgently. “No one has ever ■n d of that because I’m the only coj incideucer in the world—supreme in

my profession—at least I was. I’ll explain.” He slid deeper into his chair, while one hand caressed the brandy bottle. “How often have you seen a brief paragraph,” he asked, “saying that a man named White was charged somewhere or other with entering the home of a householder named Black, and that sort of thing?” I admitted that, in my twenties as a sub-editor, I had even myself prepared such titbits to garnish the journalistic dish.

“Well, there aren’t enough natural coincidences to fill the public maw,” he wheezed, “and that’s where a coincidencer comes in. You can put your shirt on it nowadays, that it was a coincidencer who squared the fellow White to do it. Fifteen bob for the burglar, and five bob for the policeman, and the thing’s done. Then the coincidencer gets to work and attends to the Press. There’s a living in it for a smart man.”

He poured himself a drink long enough to kill a Chicago gangster, and said, “If you can keep your lady friend waiting I could tell you a story that’s true, every line of it, that beats any r thing those boys were telling.” I called for cigars and told him to carry on. “I began on the Halls,” the old fellow said huskily, between puffs. “You remember Professor Broffski and his Human Bears? Well, I used to stand by with a horsewhip and a pistol in case one of the bears got a bit too human. Then the Professor signed a big contract with a circus company, and it was there that I saw my chance in life. The second week, a trainer got his hand bitten off by a wolf, and I just happened to hear that the poor blighter’s name was Fox. I mentioned it to one of the boys on the local rag and before the week was out it was all over the kingdom—Wolf eats Fox, sea? That started me thinking. There s money in it, I says to myself. So I got hold of a little Greek chappie, who did a sword-swallowing turn, and told him that the old Greek organ-grinder who used to entertain the queue had said that sword-swallowing was dead as raising the devil. Now that little , Greek was a perfect spitfire. He slid out of his dressing-room just before the show started and tried to stab the organ-grinder in the back. In no time they were fighting like wild-cats. And, of course, in the end the police ran ’em in. That was what I was waiting for. • I sent out a couple of hundred pars—i ‘When Greek Meets Greek’—you know ' the expression, and I got enough out | of the affair to say good-bye to Proj fessor Broffski and those damn bears I of his, and set up as a coincidencer on my own accord. “Mind you, it wasn’t easy at first. I

was up at seven every morning going throtigh the papers in search of coincidences. You can generally find them when you look for them! It’s just a case of giving Nature a dig in the ribs occasionally. “Sometimes the telephone book would help me. I’d hunt through until I’d found one man named Duck and another called Chicken, and then write insulting letters to ’em in each other's names until in desperation they called the police in. Then it would be all up with ’em. And every paper in the country would have a paragraph about it.

“Well, naturally I mixed up a bit of general publicity with my work, and I got quite a nice little bunch of clients together. Then one day I got a stumper. A letter came in a rather shaky hand in mauve ink from a Mrs Ellen Gwynn, of Cardiff. ‘Where you see mauve ink,’ I said, ‘look out for trouble.’ Sure enough that trouble came. She was a widow and said she wanted to get into the papers. Of course, I sent her the usual form to fill in, and it came back blank—absolutely blank. She didn’t hunt, or shoot, or swim, or dance, or sing. Nothing! She had never done anything in public, and said she couldn’t. She just wanted publicity—picture in the papers and that sort of thing. I thought she was dippy, and told her so pretty clearly. But she insisted. She even offered me a cool five hundred if I could get her name into the top-line of a paper. Short of murdering her I didn’t see how to. And bless me if she didn’t give fifty pounds to

the Polynesian Orphans Fund, just to see her names in the ‘Times.’ Well, I thought if a Polynesian orphan could lift fifty quid off her, I’d see what I could do. Then I hit on an idea: believe me, I hit it right on the head.

“My name’s Charles Cohen, you see. First of all, I saw a solicitor friend of mine, and got it changed to Stuart. Then I borrowed some ‘ready’ on the strength of the offer, and set off to find the lady. I got the three-thirty from Paddington. Lord, I shall never forget that journey: hot as hell the carriage was, and my new boots were sending shooting pains right up to my head. And when I got to Cardiff I found the worst. She was just about the dowdiest little Welsh widow you could clap eyes on—elastic boots, Family Bible, and everything. 3ut I stuck it. I follewed her about like a blooming shadow —mind you, I wasn’t altogether a bad-looking young buck in those days—and by the end of the week I was on visiting terms. I had to be pretty smart about it, I can tell you, because funds were running low. So I braced myself up and took to holding her hand in the evenings while she talked of the poor deceased, and before the week was out I had called her Nell. That did it. She broke down and cried, and accepted me before I had time to propose.

“A couple of days later, as you can guess, there wasn’t a paper printed that didn't have a paragraph about Charles Stuart and Nell Gwynn.’ Fairly went mad about it they did. It got into the weeklies, and it hung on until it was a hit in the panto-

mimes. Best piece of work I ever brought off. “But do you think i pleased her? Not a bit. Said she was heart-broken, and that I’d make her the laughingstock of England. Of course, it was very awkward for me, because I couldn't exactly tell her I’d arranged it all. I had to keep that side devilish

quiet. And when I sent in the bill on my business notepaper. she went into hysterics and said she wouldn’t pay a farthing. There I was, trapped. She came to me for advice, too. and to keep my character I actually had to advise her to cheat me out of my five hundred. Mind you. I'd scouted round pretty thoroughly and it looked worth while sticking on. And she was a business-like little widow, too, I can tell you, and wanted to get herself hitched up. She made all the arrangements and I tried to make the excuses. But I had to give in in the end. She didn’t let me out of her sight for a moment, and before I knew what had happened there was the Minister on the E’oenezer Baptist Chapel booming out a blessing over our heads.

“We didn’t have a honeymoon. I faked up a telegram about business losses, and threw myself on her mercy. Well, at first she flared up, as I thought she would, and called me names, and said that I was after her money. Of course, I couldn’t let that pass. So I said she couldn’t have hurt me more if she had stuck a knife into me. and if that was the way she felt we'd better part. That quietened her. She couldn’t bear the thought of the scandal—she was one of the leading local lights in a small way. So after a bit, she contented herself with telling me that I must give up trying, and then perhaps some day I should be able to pay her back all the money I owed her. Kept on rubbing it in, she did, until I could-Vt take a mouthful of peas without feeling that she was counting them.

“I stood it for three months —in at nine-thirty every evening, no smoking in the house, and a mouthful of cloves if I had a single drink. My nerves began to go wrong after that. And when I began to talk in my sleep—fan rave, I did—l guessed that it would be all up with me. and I’d let the secret out. But just then things took a new turn. Some friend o 1 her schooldays turned up to tea once or twice, and it didn’t take me long to see how things were going. When I got back from the boys one night, I thought the house seemed quieter than usual, and I found just what I didn't want to find. A note on the dressing-table. It was all smudged, and kept saying that she could never forgive herself, but Love must find a way, and how she hoped my heart would mend, and all that kind of thing. Asked me to free her,

and said she hoped I wasn’t the sort of man to keep a woman against her will!

“I was fair dazed. I just sat down in a chair by the window trying to collect myself. I sat there till after the milk-boy had been, and then I shaved and went downstairs —the girl we had had got breakfast —and tried to look as though nothing had happened. And by the first post, the bills began to come in. Bakers’ bills, butchers’ bills, milk bills—there wasn’t a tradesman in that part of the town old Nell didn’t owe money to. And the big stores in town began to send nasty, threatening letters that scared me. too—husband responsible for his wife’s debts and all that, you know. The only thing that was Nell’s was ‘Belle Vue.’ So, in desperation. I sent for my solicitor friend, and he came down, swearing horribly at me for the way I’d been taken in, and settled matters. When the house was sold, and the bills paid, there was twenty-three pounds left over. And my friend took the twenty for himself as what he called his legal due.

“But that wasn’t all. A letter turned up one morning beside my plate in the little boarding-house in Brixton wh£re I was living. I knew that mauve ink; it was from Nell. Offered

me fifty pounds if I’d divorce her. I cursed her, but I was pretty hard up. So I ran her up to seventy-five, and said I would. She had a wonderful head for business, and accepted my offer. A couple of days later up came the solicitor ” The old fellow took another drink of brandy. He took it carelessly, the way a man would drink a thin claret. I could see that he was pretty upset. “Believe me,” he went on, “I didn’t even know Lothario’s name until I saw it on the law list that a little clerk brought along. I was stunned. I tell you a plain fact when I say that man's name was Cromwell. I’d stepped right into a coincidence without knowing it. He was a tobacconist in Norwich—and with a name like that. I fairly rushed off to the telephone—l'd got a bit stale in double harness, you see—and rang up those of the boys I could remember. But it was no use. The dirty little solicitor’s clerk got in before, and the News Agencies wouldn’t look at my story. “Of course, the papers fairly lost their heads over it. ‘Cromwell v. Charles Stuart, was stuck up everywtere. And old Nell actually wrote to me, on a plain postcard, asking me not to take it to heart.” Just then the landlord made his melancholy cry and began to turn down the lights. Charles Stuart, ne Cohen, got up and swayed about, tiying to see in which direction the door lay. Then the landlord helped him and he found it. I was staying at the inn, and that was the last time—indeed, the only time—l ever saw him. But about a month later my eye was caught by a small paragraph in a local paper, which read:— Mr Charles Stuart, who was plaintiff in the famous Stuart-Cromwell divorce case in the 'eighties, died here in humble circumstances in his seventyfirst year. He retired into obscurity nearly half a century ago, expressing himself as broken-hearted over the unwelcome publicity he had obtained. Poor Cohen! I feel he could have managed his obituaries better himself. For, in his way, he was a nfiui of genius.