Adventures of Bindle

"Wouldn't 'elp you much, ole son, if you did know it," said Bindle with conviction. "Seemed to me like a patent gargle. Never 'eard anythink like it."

"'Ere!" said Bindle to Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino, who was darting past on his way to another table. The Italian paused, hatred smouldering in his dark eyes.

"I can't remember that name o' yours, ole sport," said Bindle. "Sorry, but I ain't a gramophone. Wot 'ave I got to call you?"

"Call me sair," replied Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino with dignity.

"Call you wot?" cried Bindle indignantly. "Call you wot?"

"Call me sair," repeated the Italian.

"Me call a foreigner 'sir!'" cried Bindle. "Now ain't you the funniest ole 'Uggins."

Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino cast upon Bindle a look of consuming hatred.

"Look 'ere," remarked Bindle cheerfully, "if you goes about a-lookin' like that, you'll spoil the good impression them whiskers make."

Murder flashed in the eyes of the Italian, as he ground out a paralysing oath in his own tongue.

"There's a-goin' to be trouble between me an' ole 'Okey-Pokey. Pleasant sort o' cove to 'ave about the 'ouse."

Customers began to drift in, and soon Bindle was kept busy fetching and carrying for Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino, who by every means in his power strove to give expression to the hatred of Bindle that was burning in his soul.

At the end of the first day, – it was in reality the early hours of the next morning, – as Bindle with Scratcher walked from Napolini's to the Tube, he remarked, "Well, I ain't 'ungry, though I could drink a deal more; still I says nothink about that; but as for tips, well, ole 'Okey-Pokey's pocketed every bloomin' penny. When I asked him to divvy up fair, 'e started that machine-gun in 'is tummy, rolled 'is eyes, an' seemed to be tryin' to tell me wot a great likin' 'e'd taken to me. One o' these days somethink's goin' to 'appen to 'im," added Bindle prophetically. "'E ain't no sport, any'ow."

"Wot's 'e done?" enquired Scratcher.

"I offered to fight 'im for the tips, an' all 'e did was to turn on 'is rattle;" and Bindle winked at the girl-conductor, who clanged the train-gates behind him.

For nearly a week Bindle continued to work thirteen hours a day, satisfying the hunger of others and quenching alien thirsts. Thanks to judicious hints from Scratcher, at the same time he found means of ministering to his own requirements. He tasted new and strange foods; but of all his discoveries in the realm of dietetics, curried prawns held pride of place. More than one customer looked anxiously into the dark brown liquid, curious as to what had become of the blunt-pointed crescents; but, disliking the fuss attending complaint, he ascribed the reduction in their number to the activities of the Food Controller.

When, as occasionally happened in the absence of his chief, Bindle came into direct contact with a customer and received an order, he invariably found himself utterly at a loss.

"Bouillabaisse de Marseilles, pommes sautées," called out one customer. Bindle, who was hurrying past, came to a dead stop and regarded him with interest.

"D'you mind sayin' that again, sir," he remarked.

"Bouillabaisse de Marseilles, pommes sautées," repeated the customer.

"Well, I'm blowed!" was Bindle's comment.

The customer stared, but before he had time to reply Bindle was unceremoniously pushed aside by Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino, who, pad in hand, bent over the customer with servile intentness.

"Wot did 'e mean? Was 'e tellin' me 'is name?" enquired Bindle of a lath-like youth, with frizzy hair and a face incapable of expressing anything beyond a meaningless grin. It was Scratcher, however, who told the puzzled Bindle that the customer had been ordering lunch and not divulging his identity.

"Bullybase de Marsales pumsortay is things to eat, Joe," he explained; "you got to learn the mane-yu."

"Well, I'm blowed!" was Bindle's sole comment. "Fancy people eatin' things with names like that." He followed Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino towards the "service" regions in response to an imperious motion of his dark, well-greased head.

When Bindle returned to the dining-room, after listening to the unintelligible rebukes of his immediate superior, he found himself beckoned to the side of the customer whose wants he had found himself unable to comprehend.

"New to this job?" he enquired.

"You've 'it it, sir," was Bindle's reply. "New as new. I'm in the furniture-movin' line myself; but Scratcher told me this 'ere was a soft job, an' so I took it on. 'E didn't happen to mention 'Okey-Pokey 'owever."

"Hokey-Pokey!" interrogated the guest.

"That chap with 'is whiskers growin' up 'is nose," explained Bindle. "All prickles 'e is. Can't say anythink without 'urtin' 'is feelin's. Never come across such a cove."

Later, when the customer left, it was to Bindle and not to Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino that he gave his tip. This precipitated a crisis. Once out of the dining-room the Italian demanded of Bindle the money.

"You shall 'ave 'alf, ole son," said Bindle magnanimously. "if you forks out 'alf of wot you've 'ad given you, see?" Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino did not see. His eyes snapped, his moustache bristled, his sallow features took on a shade of grey and, discarding English, he launched into a torrent of words in his own tongue.

Bindle stood regarding his antagonist much as he would a juggler, or quick-change artist. His good-humoured calm seemed to goad Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino to madness. With a sudden movement he seized a bottle from another waiter and, brandishing it above his head, rushed at Bindle.

Bindle stepped swiftly aside; but in doing so managed to place his right foot across Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino's path. The Italian lurched forward, bringing down the bottle with paralysing force upon the shoulder of another waiter, who, heavily laden, was making towards the dining-room.

The assaulted waiter screamed, Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino rolled on the floor, and the assaulted waiter's burden fell with a crash on top of him. The man who had been struck hopped about the room holding his shoulder, his shirt-front dyed a deep red with the wine that had flowed over it.

"Never see such a mess in all my puff," said Bindle in describing the scene afterwards. "Pore ole 'Okey-Pokey comes down on 'is back and a lot o' tomato soup falls on 'is 'ead. Then a dish o' whitebait gets on top of that, so 'e 'as soup and fish any'ow. Funny thing to see them little fishes sticking out o' the red soup. 'E got an 'erring down 'is collar, and a dish of macaroni in 'is ear, an' all 'is clothes was covered with different things. An 'ole bloomin' mane-yu, 'e was. 'Oly Angels! but 'e was a sight."

For a moment Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino lay inert, then he slowly sat up and looked about him, mechanically picking whitebait out of his hair, and removing a crème caramel from the inside of his waistcoat.

Suddenly his eyes lighted on Bindle.

In an instant he was on his feet and, with head down and arms waving like flails, he rushed at his enemy.

At that moment the door leading into the dining-room was opened and, attracted by the hubbub, Mr. James Smith, who before the war had been known as Herr Siegesmann, the chief superintendent, entered. He was a heavy man of ponderous proportions, with Dundreary whiskers and a pompous manner. His entrance brought him directly into the line of Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino's attack. Before he could take in the situation, the Italian's head, covered with tomato soup and bristling with whitebait, caught him full in the centre of his person, and he went down with a sobbing grunt, the Italian on top of him.

The shock released a considerable portion of the food adhering to Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino on to the chief superintendent. Whitebait forsook the ebon locks of the waiter and dived into the magnificent Dundrearys of Herr Smith, and on his shirt-front was the impression of Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino's features in tomato soup.

Without a moment's hesitation Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino was on his feet once more; but Bindle, feeling that the time had arrived for action, was equally quick. Taking him from behind by the collar he worked his right arm up as high as it would go behind his back. The Italian screamed with the pain; but Bindle held fast.

"You ain't safe to be trusted about, ole sport," he remarked, "an' I got to 'old you, until Ole Whiskers decides wot's goin' to be done. You'll get six months for wastin' food like this. Why, you looks like a bloomin' restaurant. Look at 'im!" Bindle gazed down at the prostrate superintendent. "Knocked 'is wind out, you 'ave. Struck 'im bang in the solar-plexus, blowed if you didn't!"

With rolling eyes and foaming mouth Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino screamed his maledictions. A group of waiters was bending over Herr Smith. One was administering brandy, another was plucking whitebait out of his whiskers, a third was trying to wipe the tomato soup from his shirt-front, an operation which transformed a red archipelago into a flaming continent.

When eventually the superintendent sat up, he looked like a whiskered robin redbreast. He gazed from one to the other of the waiters engaged upon his renovation. Then his eye fell upon Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino. He uttered the one significant British word.

"Berlice!"

When Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino left Napolini's that evening, it was in the charge of two policemen, with two more following to be prepared for eventualities. Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino was what is known professionally as "violent." Not satisfied with the food that was plastered upon his person, he endeavoured by means of his teeth to detach a portion of the right thigh of Police-constable Higgins, and with his feet to raise bruises where he could on the persons of his captors.

"Pore ole 'Okey-Pokey!" remarked Bindle, as he returned to the dining-room, where he had now been allotted two tables, for which he was to be entirely responsible. "Pore ole 'Okey-Pokey. I'm afraid I got 'is goat; but didn't 'e make a mess of Ole Whiskers!"

Herr Smith had gone home. When a man is sixty years of age and, furthermore, when he has been a superintendent of a restaurant for upwards of twenty-five years, he cannot with impunity be rammed in the solar-plexus by a hard-headed and vigorous Italian.

While Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino in a cell at Vine Street Police Station was forecasting the downfall of the Allies by the secession of Italy from the Entente, Bindle was striving to satisfy the demands of the two sets of customers that sat at his tables. He made mistakes, errors of commission and omission; but his obviously genuine desire to satisfy everybody inclined people to be indulgent.