Edward Dyson - The Missing Link
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Edward Dyson >> The Missing Link
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10 THE MISSING LINK
BY
EDWARD DYSON
1922
CHAPTER I.
DR. CRIPS'S HEALING MIXTURE.
HIS Christian name was Nicholas but his familiars called him Nickie the
Kid. The title did not imply that Nicholas possessed the artless gaiety,
the nimbleness, or any of the simple virtues of the young of the common
goat. Kid was short for "kidder," a term that as gone out recently in
favour of "smoodger," and which implies a quality of suave and
ingratiating cunning backed by ulterior motives.
The familiars of Mr. Nicholas Crips were a limited circle, and all
"beats," that is to say, gentlemen sitting on the rail dividing honest
toil from open crime. They were not workers, neither were they thieves,
excepting in very special circumstances, when the opportunity made
honesty almost an impertinence. The sobriquet coming from such a source
acquires peculiar significance. The god-fathers of Nickie the Kid were
all experts, and obtained bed and board mainly by exercising the art of
dissimulation. To stand out conspicuously as a specialist in such company
one needed to possess very bright and peculiar qualities.
Mr. Nicholas Crips was blonde, bony man perhaps five feet nine in height,
but looking taller because of the spareness of his limbs. This spareness
was not cultivated, as Nickie the Kid was partial to creature comforts,
but was of great assistance to him in a profession in which it was often
necessary to profess chronic sickness and touching physical decrepitude.
Mr Crips despised whiskers, but, as shaving was an extravagant
indulgence, his slightly cadaverous countenance was often littered with a
crisp, pale stubble, not unlike dry grass.
To-day Nickie wore a suit of black cloth. It had once been a very
imposing suit, and had adorned a great person, but having fallen on evil
days, was dusty and rusty, while the knees of Mr. Crips poked familiarly
through a long slit in each leg of the stained trousers. The frock coat
went badly with the damaged tan boots and the moth-eaten rag cap Nicholas
was wearing.
Mr. Crips was making back-door call, and telling housewives what the
doctors at the hospital had said about his peculiar ailment which, it
appears, was an interesting heart weakness.
"Above all, I must be careful never to over-exert myself, madam--those
are the doctor's orders," said Nickie, in his sad, calm way. "The
smallest excitement, the slightest strain, and my life goes out like
that." Nickie puffed an imaginary candle with dramatic significance.
This was the preliminary to a mild appeal for creature and medical
comforts, and it had two objects--to open the soul to compassion, and bar
all considerations of manual labour.
Our hero's manner with women was a gentle manly deference; his begging
showed no trace of servility, but he was always polite. He accepted
failure with good grace, and did not resent scorn, abuse, or even
violence from intended victims. He was rarely combative. Fighting was not
his special gift; he met misfortune with patient passivity Resistance he
found a mistake. But for all this a certain sense of superiority was,
never wanting in Nickie the Kid; the shabbiest clothes, a deplorable hat,
fragmentary boots, shirtlessness, the most distressing situations all
failed to wholly eliminate a touch of impudent dignity, a trace of rakish
self-satisfaction which as a rule escaped the attention of his clients;
but, here and there, a student of human nature found it delightfully
whimsical. Sometimes it appeared that this spice of egotism sprang from a
blackguardly sense of humour that found joy in the abounding weaknesses
and simplicity of the people he imposed upon, but, on the other hand, it
would be sufficient to show that Mr. Crips was inspired only with gross
selfishness or to comprehend that the stability of society depends upon
fair dealing and faithful labour.
Nevertheless there were occasions when Nickie the Kid deliberately
undertook to earn his daily bread. For a week he served as waiter in a
six penny restaurant. He had been a "super" in drama and a practical
crocodile in pantomime and was long in the employ of a fashionable
undertaker as second in command on the hearse. In this latter billet he
had to keep his hair dyed a presentable black, but otherwise the duties
were light, and Nickie might still have been useful mute, only that he
had the misfortune to get drunk at the funeral of an eminent politician
and behaved himself in a way obnoxious to the other mourners.
Some credit must be given to Crips for the above in view of the fact that
he had long, since discovered how unnecessary work was to a man free of
prejudices and unhampered with conscience. Every man should be master of
his own conscience, and the exactions of conscience should be subordinate
to the needs of the body. That was a large part of Nickie's philosophy,
and he had acted up to it with marked success, but this morning
housewives were incredulous and tough, and our hero was faring badly.
He entered the yard of Ebonwell, the chemist, and was about to knock,
when his eye fell upon a well-worn Gladstone bag full of small bottles.
In the course of long experience as a beat, Nickie had learned the value
of prompt action. He gently snapped up the bag, and jauntily to the gate.
Here he collided with a female entering in a hurry.
"Was yeh wantin' anythin', mister?" said the woman suspiciously.
"Good morning, madam," said Nickie, with unction. "Can I tune your piano
this morning?" His manner was most courteous, he smiled kindly, but he
did not invite attention to the bag.
"No yeh can't," snapped the woman, "an' a good reason why--coz we ain't
got a pianner to toon."
"A pity," said Nickie, suavely, "a pity, madam. No home should be without
the refining influence of good music."
The woman passed in as Nickie passed out, and the latter looked back over
the gate, and said, "Good morning, lady," with profound respect.
Nickie must have forgotten all about his weak heart; the dash he made out
of that right-of-way, across the street, down a second right-of-way, and
into a public garden, would not have discredited a trained pedestrian. An
hour later Mr. Crips was seated in a secluded spot on the river bank,
taking stock. He possessed one very second-hand black bag and four dozen
four-ounce bottles. The Kid's intention in the first place had been to
dispose of the loot at the nearest marine store, but Nickie was a man of
ideas, and one had come to him there in his loneliness. He hid his bag of
bottles, and wandered into the city. After several misses he succeeded in
begging sixpence to buy cough drops for his influenza.
He paid threepence for the cough drops at a convenient hotel, and took
them in bulk. With his change he purchased threepence worth of small
corks. Back at the Yarra Nickie the Kid dissolved one of three gingernuts
he had taken from the bar lunch in a two pound jam tin of river water,
and started to fill his bottles. He filled one dozen.
Having explained to a small knot of brother professionals that he needed
change of air and scenery, Nickie the Kid started out of town that
afternoon. We next discover him seated under a spreading gum in a
pleasant sweep of sunny landscape at Tarra, with his trousers in his
hands, carefully and systematically repairing and renovating the same.
The frock coat had been "restored," the rag cap was abandoned in favour
of a limp bell-topper, contributed by the family of a benevolent
clergyman, and the tan boots were artistically blacked with stove polish.
Nickie the Kid warbled at his work with the innocent gaiety of a bird.
It was not yet sundown, and Nicholas Crips was clothed, and stood with
his black Gladstone in his right hand, prepared for the campaign. He had
had a clean shave, and his face had a sort of calm dignity touched with
benevolence. He turned round, examining himself, and the coat-tails
floated gracefully in the breeze.
"Eminently satisfactory," said Mr. Crips. "And now for business." He
cleared his throat, as if about to commence an oration, and set off at a
smart pace towards the farm-house whose chimneys peeped over the hill.
A dog barked surlily as Nickie passed up the garden walk, but Nickie knew
the character and quality of dogs, no beat better, and he recognised this
one as harmless to man. A woman came to the door, wiping her fat, red
arms on a canvas apron.
"A very good day to you, madam," said Mr. Crips, lifting his belltopper
with some grace, and bowing slightly. "I have taken the liberty of
calling upon you to bring under your attention my celebrated
medicine--Dr. Crips's Healing Mixture, for coughs, colds, consumption
indigestion, biliousness and all bronchial complaints."
He took a bottle from his bag and shook it invitingly, his voice was
respectful and very persuasive, but by no means subservient. Nickie's
voice was his most valuable possession; it had a note so winning, so
appealing, that it was only with strong effort that ordinary people could
resist it.
"No," said the woman, "we ain't got any o' them complaints."
"Headache, earache, toothache, lumbago, Bright's disease?" said Nickie,
suggestively.
"No." The woman shook her head. "We ain't got nothin' in the 'ouse but
rhoomertism in me ole man's back. He's bin laid up three weeks with it."
"Dr. Crips's Rheumatic Balm!" exclaimed Nickie, with decision, restoring
the first bottle to the bag, and producing another of exactly the same
mixture. "Cures rheumatism in two hours. Gives instant relief in cases of
neuralgia and sciatica. A little to be rubbed on the affected parts night
and morning."
The woman took the bottle, examined it closely, shook it up, and said,
"It looks good."
"It's invaluable, madam," replied Nickie, with quiet conviction. "No
family should be without it. Two shillings, if you please."
The woman took a bottle, and when leaving, Nickie the Kid turned and
said, "I shall be back this way in a week, and shall do myself the honour
of calling on you for a testimonial, if I may?"
At the next farm-house Nickie had a man to deal with. The man began by
wanting to throw Dr. Crips over the fence, and ended by buying a bottle
of his Infallible Hair Restorer, and paying him half-a-crown for
professional advice in the case of a brown cow afflicted with mumps.
Nickie the Kid had put in the busiest day of his varied career, and here
he rested from his labours. With six and six in his pocket he could
afford luxuries. That night he slept in a bed at the Harrow Hotel, and
next morning breakfasted on grilled bacon and boiled eggs. Before
leaving, he sold the publican two bottles of the world-famous Healing
Mixture as a pick-me-up.
On the second day the doctor set out to cover as much ground as possible.
He was astute enough to recognise the wisdom of moving on before his
customers had time to compare notes. Before noon, he sold six bottles of
the Healing Mixture for influenza, two bottles of the Rheumatic Balm, and
one bottle of the same as a certain cure for a peculiar disorder in pigs.
Nickie was going along the main road, heading north, branching off to the
farm-houses by the way to sell his cure-all. He sold one guileless
housewife a bottle, assuring her that it would convert brass spoons into
real silver. A little mercury in a rag helped this trifling deception. On
the third day Nickie had to buy some gingernuts to make a fresh supply of
the Healing Mixture, and bottles were running short. He saw fortune
staring him in the face.
It was about eleven, and Mr. Crips was trudging contentedly along, the
road, swinging his bag and singing his tender lay, at peace with the
world, and buoyed with great hopes, when a trap drove up and a voice out
of the accompanying dust said:--
"That's 'im. That's the bloke!" A man jumped down and advanced to Nickie,
and laid hands on him.
"You're that doctor bloke what's selling the Rheumatic Balm, ain't yeh?"
he asked.
Nickie said nothing. Retribution had overtaken him. He knew that. His
fair dreams fell from him, he sighed deeply, and philosophically, as was
his wont, abandoned himself to the inevitable.
There were two young men in the trap. They hoisted Nickie to the seat
behind, and drove on. No explanation was offered, and Mr Crips expected
none. They would come, he imagined, along with the familiar penalties.
One of the young men did remark, with cheerful enthusiasm: "You're in fer
it all right, blokie," but Nickie the Kid only sighed.
Crips recognised the farm-house they drove to as that of the farmer with
rheumatism in the back, his first customer. One young man ran in with the
news, and presently reappeared in company with a large, elderly,
energetic man, who was crying, excitedly: "Where is he? Bring him to me!"
This large man dashed at Nickie the Kid, and fell on him bodily. He was
followed by the housewife who purchased the Rheumatic Balm, and she also
fell upon Nickie, who put up a short prayer. But to the doctor's immense
surprise he found presently that he was not being assaulted, but hugged,
that it was not curses, but blessings the old couple were showering upon
his head.
"Lor love yeh, I'll never forget yeh fer this," cried the farmer.
"Come inside an' have a bit to eat," exclaimed his wife.
The pair literally dragged Nickie into the house and dumped him down at a
loaded table. He was waited upon by a rather nice-looking girl of twenty.
"This is him, Millie," said the farmer, with enthusiasm. "This is Dr.
Crips what cured yer old dad. Gord bless you, sir."
The girl shook Nickie by the hand, and smiled on him sweetly, and said
she could never forget the man that cured her dear pa, and all Nickie's
happiness and his great content came back to him like refreshing waters.
Dr. Crips stood up straight, he shook hands enthusiastically with farmer
Dickson.
"So the Rheumatic Balm has set you up again?" he said, heartily.
"Hasn't it, by gum! Look at this." The farmer capered about the room.
"Every bit o' pain's gone. I'll buy every drop of that balm you've got.
That's why I had you brought back. But sit down, and eat, man--eat!"
They simply squandered hospitality on Nickie the Kid that night; they had
neighbours in to see him; they had music, and Dr. Crips sang, and danced,
and drank, and made love to Miss Dickson out under the elderberries. Out
under the elderberries, for the edification of Millie Dickson, Nicholas
Crips was a medical man of high attainments, but the victim of
extraordinary vicissitudes. It was very touching, most romantic. Nickie
lied with great splendour. He displayed no little aptitude in the
character of Don Juan too. Miss Dickson thought him a perfect dear.
Returning to the house for supper, Nickie and the ingenuous Millie
loitered by the open kitchen window, and Nickie saw and heard things of
no little interest to him professionally. Farmer Dickson and three
neighbours were comparing bottles of Dr. Crip's Celebrated Healing
Mixture.
"Anyhow," said one, "I'll swear his nibs sold me this ez a cure fer pip
in chickens."
"And he told me this was a dead sure cure fer corns 'n' ingrowin'
toe-nail," ejaculated another.
"I bought this bottle fer me diabetes," explained Coleman. "He said it ud
root out diabetes in nine hours."
Farmer Dickson shook his bottle, and looked at it very dubiously. "It
seems t' me it's all the same mixture," he said. "It looks like it,
tastes like, 'n' it smells like. Now I come t' think iv it, I ain't too
sure 'bout these blanky rheumatics o' mine." He reached down his back and
rubbed himself anxiously.
"I thought my diabetes was a-movin', but they're all back at me agin,"
said Coleman.
"The chicken died what I gave the mixture to," explained Anderson.
Dickson scowled and felt himself, for as far as he could reach up and
down his spine. "I'm pretty certain the rheumatics 're comin' back," he
murmured. "Wow!" he gasped, as a bad twinge took him. "It is back!"
"Tell yeh what," Anderson remarked plaintively, "we've been done."
"He's a blanky fraud!"
"A robber!"
"Let's look him up, 'n' 'ave a word or two."
The farmers seized their sticks. They moved towards the door, but already
Nickie had begged to be excused, and passed into the night. The stillness
and mystery of the bush enveloped him.
Next day the neighbours compared notes and bottles, and found that the
medicine for influenza, consumption, liver disease, indigestion and cold
feet, the embrocation for rheumatism, sprains, corns, bruises and
headaches, the cure for pigs, the wash for silvering spoons, and the
hair-restorer were all the same mixture. Then a great popular demand for
Dr. Crips set in at Tarra, but by this time Nickie the Kid was back in
town, amazing his friends with his lavish hospitality in threepenny bars.
CHAPTER II.
A FAMILY MATTER.
EVEN Nickie's intimates of the wharves and the river banks knew nothing
of his ancestors or relations. Nickie was naturally reticent about his
own business; On the point of family connections he was dumb. It was
assumed that he had had a father and mother at some stage of his career,
but the evolution of Nickie the Kid from a schoolboy, with shining
morning face, to a homeless rapscallion, living on his impudence, was
never dwelt upon by our hero, which is a great pity, as the process of
degeneration must have been highly interesting.
Certainly, Nickie did not regret his respectable past, if he were ever
respectable, and it is equally certain that he had no craving for high
things in the way of tall hats and two-storey houses. He appreciated the
value of money, since it enabled him to gratify his tastes, but it must
be admitted his tastes were scandalous in the main.
However, at Banklands Nickie solicited work, laborious and painful work.
Moreover, he went to the job of his own free will, when sober and in his
right mind. This seemed to imply an awakening of conscience, a dawning
sense of his utter uselessness to the body politic, and a desire to
figure as a useful member of society. On the other hand, it may have been
a symptom of brain-softening. But it happened to be neither; it was in
fact a means to a wicked end. On the fading end of a superior suburb,
where the streets of fine villas and mansions thinned off and dwindled,
and were lost among the gum trees of the original wilderness, Nickie
found his billet.
The suburb was coming ahead. The motor-car had made it easy and
accessible to the rich. Splendid dwellings were going up all over the
place, the road makers were exceedingly busy, and hammers of the
stone-knappers rattled an incessant fusillade.
Nickie the Kid came to Banklands one pleasant summer day, watched the
busy people with a desultory sort of interest, and moralised within
himself.
"Do these people expect to live a thousand years?" mused Mr. Crips, "that
they build such solid houses? Or do they regard them as monuments? Look
at that palace, and I sleep well on a potato sack under four boards!"
Nickie was examining a fine, white house, ornate as a wedding cake, with
plentiful cement, and balconies as frivolous as those of a Chinese
pagoda. It stood within capacious grounds, and proclaimed aloud the fact
that its proprietor was a rich man, ostentatious of his riches.
"I expect there's a matter of thirty rooms in that house," mused Nicholas
Crips, "and after all, a man can get just as drunk in a threepenny bar."
Nickie put in a couple of days skirmishing at Banklands, and fared well,
but as there was no hotel in the suburb Nicholas did not contemplate
making a lengthy stay. Something he saw on the second afternoon induced
him to change his mind, and threw him into a state of profound reflection
lasting for nearly an hour; then he sauntered over to the man working on
the pile of stones before the gates of the cemented mansion, and seating
himself on the broken metal, entered into conversation with the two-inch
mason wielding the hammer.
"Pretty hard work this," ventured Nicholas.
"Blanky hard," assented the stonebreaker.
"Did you ever try the softening influence of beer?" asked Nickie, drawing
a bottle from his pocket.
"Well, I won't make yeh force it on me," said the stonebreaker.
They divided the liquor like brothers dear, and the stonebreaker
developed a sudden affection for Nicholas Crips, who after twenty minutes
casual conversation, introduced his plea.
"Must be splendid exercise for the liver, stoneknapping," he said. "I've
been troubled with liver complaint lately. Living too high. Could you
give a man a job?"
"Well," said the breaker, "I got a sorter contrac' t' break so many
yards. If you'll do it at bob a yard you can get gain' on the other end
iv th' 'eap."
The price was far below current rates for cutting metal, but Nickie was
not penurious and grasping. He threw off his tattered coat, and, draped
in fragments of a shirt, in a pair of trousers, half of which fluttered
in the breeze, and boots that looked like a collection of fragments, he
set to work.
Certainly Nicholas Crips did not show any disposition to work himself to
death. After an hour his employer told him he wasn't likely to earn
enough to keep a rag-gatherer in toilet soap, but Nickie explained again
that he was merely exercising his liver, and had no intention of making
an independence as a breaker of road metal.
Nickie's heap was right opposite the great, fanciful iron gates of the
cemented residence. He could see the well-kept garden and the showy house
from where he worked, and he frequently ceased his half hearted rapping
at the tough stone to watch children playing on the lawn. He was
particularly interested in a tall, `severe-looking, fair-haired woman,
who appeared on the balcony for a moment.
Mr. Crips had been at work for about three hours, during which time he
had perspired a good deal and gathered much dust, for Nickie was
habitually easy going, and his task, although pursued with no diligence,
had "taken it out of him" to some extent. He was certainly a deplorable
scarecrow. A fine, polished carriage, with rubber tyres, drawn by a
splendid pair of chestnuts, was driven down the side drove by a livened
menial. It drew up near the centre gates, and Nickie leaned on his hammer
and waited.
The tall, dignified lady, accompanied by a short, important man in
immaculate black, came along the path, and approached the open door of
the vehicle. Nickie advanced carelessly, and intercepted them. He bowed
grotesquely.
"Good day, Billy," he said, familiarly. He lifted his hat pointedly to
the lady. "'Ow's yerself Jinny?" he asked.
The lady and gentleman stared at him in utmost astonishment for a moment,
then consternation seized them, and they made a dive for the vehicle.
Nickie followed to the door.
"So long, if yer mus' be goin', Willyum," he said, pleasantly. "So long,
Jinny. How's the old man's fish business?"
"Drive on!" gasped the gentleman. He had the scared expression of one who
had seen a spectre.
The liveried menial whipped up, and the carriage was swept away. Nickie
returned to his heap, and for fully two minutes Stub McGuire, his
employer, gazed at him in speechless, open-mouthed amazement.
"Well, of all the blarsted cheeks!" gasped McGuire, when speech came to
him.
"Don't mention it," said Nickie.
"Don't mention it!" yelled Stub. "No, iv course not, but what price his
nibs in the noble belltopper mentionin' it t' th' Johns, an' gettin' you
seven days fer disgustin' behaviour?"
Nickie smiled inscrutably, and continued his work. When the carriage
returned, he made an adroit movement, and courteously opened the door.
"'Low me, Jinny, my dear," he said, offering his grimy hand.
The lady stepped down, and passed him disdainfully. The gentleman brushed
him aside.
"'Ope yeh 'ad er pleasant ride in yer cart, Billy?" said Nicholas.
He followed them to the gate, and called through the bars.
"Very sorry, Jinny, but I carn't haccept yer pressin' invitation ter
dinner, havin' er previous engagement."
He returned to his work again, smiling sweetly. He seemed to enjoy Stub
McGuire's horror.
"'Ere, 'ere," said McGuire, "off this job you go if you don't know better
than to insult people that way. You'll be gettin' me inter mischiff."
"Not at all," said Nickie, "not at all. Surely a man may offer ordinary
civilities to his friends. Bless my soul, you wouldn't have me cut old
Billy in the streets, would you? If I didn't speak to Jinny she'd think I
was angry with her, and cry her eyes out. She has a tender heart, poor
girl. She is a sensitive soul, and craves for social distinction. She
looks to me to secure them a footing in exclusive circles, Mr. McGuire."
"I don't know what y're talkin' about," Stub grumbled, "but that's enough
of it, see?"
Nickie took no notice of his employer's admonitions, however, and when a
clergyman drove up in a buggy an hour later, our hero intercepted him at
the gate.
"Good afternoon, sir," he said. "Would you mind tellin' Willyum inside
there how Nickie sends him his compliments, and 'opes Jinny's quite
well."
"My good fellow, you must not be insolent," ejaculated the minister.
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