Murder in the Night. Arthur Gask

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      CHAPTER II.—MY EARLY DAYS.

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      I was always such a coward.

      I had no parents that I could remember and it was an old maiden aunt who brought me up.

      She was poor and kept a little greengrocer's shop in Hindmarsh, a suburb of Adelaide, just off the great Port road.

      My childhood days are chiefly memories of the smell of stale vegetables and the worries of very unhappy days at school.

      I was a thin, white-faced little fellow and it seemed the mission in life of all other boys to tease me and make me cry. It was good sport to them to bully me, for I was always so afraid of everyone, with timid, nervous ways that made me an endless source of amusement to the school.

      There was something about me that aways prevented my making friends and no one ever gave me any pity in my troubles. The other boys never seemed to leave me in peace. They took away my marbles and broke up my few occasional toys. They stole my sweets from me, and if ever I brought my dinner with me to school I had to eat it stealthily away from everyone, or it would have been seized at once by my tormentors and passed round. Looking back, it seems strange that I never retaliated, and, I think, never even complained. I seemed to have no spirit at all, and accepting all my persecutions as quite in the natural order of things, I slunk through my lonely boyhood, a little, shrinking, joyless coward.

      Yes, childhood and boyhood brought me sadly unhappy schooldays, and when at fifteen years of age I was taken on, as office boy, by Messrs. Winter and Winter, the big wholesale chemists of Pirie street, my life story was much the same.

      I had the heart of a coward.

      Everybody found me out at once and the timidness of my disposition served only to provoke the cruellest instincts of those about me. The elder boys kicked and cuffed me as a matter of daily routine. They played practical jokes upon me. They hid my caps and inked my collars and generally in all their dealings with me were as brutal and callous as only boys can be.

      As we grew up together and the years went by, they never seemed to get accustomed to me or to accord me the forbearance most generally given to old fellow workers. I was always a new-comer and always outside the pale of their confidences.

      It was not that I purposely made myself unpopular; I did nothing of the kind.

      Quick and sharp at figures as I always am, I had soon mastered the work we had to do, and was often able to give a lift to others in their tasks. Also, I was always ready to do little outdoor services for anyone, to fetch and carry for the office, to put the desks straight when they had been skylarking, to get the water boiling for the tea, and generally to make myself useful in countless little ways. But it was no good. It never made any difference, and everyone held me at best in more or less good-natured contempt.

      When I had been eleven years at Winter and Winter's, I became, by seniority, head clerk in the invoice office, and the firm expressed their appreciation of my work by an increase in salary. It was really no more than I deserved, for I was a good servant to them, and always punctual, painstaking, and thoroughly to be trusted in my work.

      I was never late in the mornings—never exceeded the hour allowed for dinner, and never grumbled when, in busy times, we had to return to the office after tea.

      I don't think, indeed, that I could ever have had any vices at all. I didn't smoke, I was a strict teetotaler, and every Sunday was a zealous frequenter of our little chapel on the Port road. Also I had never had the courage for any of the love adventures the other fellows had.

      In spite, however, of what the heads thought of me, I had no happiness at the office, because of the way the other clerks treated me. There were ten of us in my room, and even when I was formally placed in charge of them all they never showed me the slightest atom of respect, or ceased for an hour to regard me as in any other light than the butt for their cheap wit and the natural object for their silly jokes.

      I rather believe now they thought I didn't really mind it and was quite content to provide amusement for the office. But I did mind it, and it was torture to my little cowardly soul. I was sensitive, very sensitive, behind all my timidity, and it galled me to the quick to be cheeked and insulted by quite young boys.

      Sometimes I would get quite livid with anger at some scornful impertinence of one of the juniors.

      I would spring up from my desk and turn in a blast of fury upon the offender, but no sooner was I on my feet than my cowardice would take possession of me like a seizure, and I would subside ingloriously to half-muttered threats that would only redouble the laughter of my tormentors. They would slap me on the back and tell me mockingly to go back to my hutch or the bow-wows would bite me and I should lose my tail. 'Rabbits' was what they used to call me, and the contempt they put in that one word would sometimes make me wince to the very marrow.

      "Mr. Rabbits," would sneer Waller, my junior by five years, when introducing me to a newcomer. "Mr. Rabbits, our head invoice clerk, and the composer of chess problems," and then would follow a high-colored and spicy account of the latest jokes that had been played upon me, and the helpless way in which I had received them.

      How I hated Waller! He was an idle, well-dressed fellow who always came late to the office, and smoked a lot of cigarettes, and was always in debt to some one or other. He had big fat legs and went in for athletics; also he was great on football, and went to horse-races, and all that sort of thing. He was the very type of man I loathed, chiefly, I think, because he was careless and reckless and never seemed to be afraid of anyone.

      Of course, he was supposed to be under me in the office, but I should sooner have expected the roof to fall upon me than for him to have taken notice of anything I told him.

      And as I have said, it was the same with them all. They just ignored me, and the youngest junior, when he had been three weeks in the office, would have looked upon it as a huge joke if I had tried to insist upon his doing anything he didn't feel inclined to do.

      I began to perceive gradually that the firm was not satisfied with the way I kept order in the office, and our Mr. William began constantly to refer to it.

      "Wacks," he said to me irritably one day, when he had unexpectedly interrupted an exciting game of shove-penny in our room, "why don't you keep order over them all? It's quite a disgrace for a man of your age to let young boys waste their time as they were doing today. You must stop it—do you hear?"

      Mr. William had always been kindness itself to me, and his reproof made me want to burst into tears. But what could I do? I knew that no one would ever obey me, and I hated myself for being what I was.

      I went home very dismally to my lodgings that evening, with no appetite at all for the tasty tea my landlady had, as usual, provided for me.

      I lived in White Street, Bowden, about two miles from the city, and had two comfortable little rooms that I could call my own. My landlady was a hardworking widow, and I shared the house with an old retired sea-captain, who had the two front rooms, and a plain-clothes detective, who lived mysteriously in a back room, off the garden.

      Of the latter, whose name was Meadows, I knew very little, and except for an occasional meeting in the СКАЧАТЬ