CHINA MAIL
FRIDAY
•
EAL life was lived in the
REA
little back parlour behind Mikey Eisenstein's shop. Seeing the shop with its width of plate glass and its few pieces of quisitely-grained walnut, its one or two perfect Persian rugs, its shaded Lalique lamps and tall mir- rors, you would never have guess- ed that such magnificence could recede to anything so shabbily homely as Mikey's back parlour:
The parlour possessed a
low, shiny horsehair seat along one wall, a table with red-bobbled, red-- plush cloth, a row of pegs for coats and hats and one or two
weary chairs, Nothing else ex- cept Mikey's private safe, which was so much smaller, so much more venerable and battered than the safe that housed ledgers and cashbooks and documents in the outer office, That one had an air of opulence; this one told, you,” quite clearly, that all Mikey's days had not been palmy; that there had been small, but profitable, beginnings.
Mikey was a Jew, but he once confessed to an Irish mother and earned his life-long nickname, Mikey. He was a little man with re- ceding grizzled hair, bright, ac- quisitive eyes, semitic nose, and a mouth bitten down at one corner by the long-chewed stem of his pipe. There were times when, sitting there in the back room, hunched over a full house," his jacket swinging on a peg and his old, grey, worsted cardigan but- toned across him by the middle
Short Story
button, well!
He looked every bit the organ-grinder's monkey, even to his hands which were small and uncommonly slight.
The boys loved him. There was never a day passed but someone came stepping up the back alley and into the parlour at closing time. But they only came in the back way, stepping in quietly, un- obtrusively, often with a back- ward glance, for Mikey's friends -the ones he entertained in his sanctum were down-and-outs, the raggletaggle of the town- - men who had done time and would do more before they quit this world; men without Д soul to bless themselves; out-of-works; drunks; pickpockets; men who had jumped their ships, others who couldn't get a passport for love or money--the boys!
"Let 'em all come!" said Mikey. What he hoped to do with them one cannot even guess, unless he just meant to put new heart into them and, maybe you never know--keep them straight. But he gave them fish and chips from - the joint down by the jetty, and beer în old tin mugs, and it was to his everlasting・・ honour and glory that in some thousand and one poker games no one ever play-- ed about with the cards. An un- written law pervaded that room. Play Straight! Even Mikey, crook that he was, „played straight.
To meet Mikey in his public life you would never have guessed what an old and wary for he was. He had a big, blonde wife and a service dat up on Donkin Hill, a reputation, for having his name on
SUPPLEMENT, JULY 7,
"JEALOUS GOD"
every charity subscription list. that was ever thought of, a benign manner with strangers and chil dren and such a host of friends 28 only the most scrupulous honesty should have earned him. Yet the police had been watching for years. He had a dossier shut away in the C.I.D. cabinets packed with details of his career, and never photographs, but they
never caught him. There was anything definite.
You couldn't run a man because he was Hymy Rothenberg's part- ner before Hymy went bust and shot himself, or because he one of the Directors of a certai company before his successors were caught faking balances and had to run for their lives. You couldn't put him in the dock be- cause he got a cheque for £8,000 just one week after the Horzt Brothers were paid out damages by their insurance company for the huge fire at their works. And after all, why shouldn't he stand bail for his only brother when Morris Eisenstein got mixed up with that crowd, who were manu- facturing cigarettes out of factory sweepings? Why shouldn't he; even if some one in the factory offices had let out that Mikey had been in the habit of dropping in on Morris once a week, or even twice a week, to talk "shop." There was never anything more
By Janet
Leslie
concrete than conjecture to go on, and so many people swore by Mikey's honesty that it was hard to disprove.
Then there was the back par- lour. The police knew about that. From the fish and chips shop.they knew about all the meals that went over.. Saturday nights especially. From the brewery they knew about the beer, and men were seen going in and coming out who should never have been going into or coming out of respectable pre- mises. But they couldn't catch Mikey. And with a twinkle in his eye Mikey always had a word or two with the bobby on his beat as he let himself put at the main door of the shop at night. They liked him, the young bob- bies, but they watched him,
Mikey's big, blonde wife watch- ed him too. He spent too much, time at the shop in that stuffy little back parlour. Once she went down, at ten o'clock at night, to fetch him home, but the shop was shut, of course, and she had nover discovered where they went in at the back. So she shrugged her big shoulders and went off home' again. She was sorry for Mikey. When two people have shared a common sorrow,
big one,... they make allowances.
Mikey and Mrs. Eisenstein had lost their only son, Morris, called after Mikey's brother, Morris Eisenstein. And they had lost him in a worse way than if he had died. - If he'd been” dead they'd have known where he was, but ns it was they ddin't
Ten years back the Kid had run
-
away, let out one afternoon in the school holiday. In the back par- lour, from a lad who'd been stev- ing on the dock, Mikey learnt where he'd gone. There'd been a German freighter in the bay with a couple of globe-trotting passen- gers and eight of the crew down with dysentery, bad. The Kid heard one of them was the cabin- boy dishwasher and he jumped on to one of the loaded barges head- ing for the freighter and signed They had no right to take him, but who was to know that the lanky youth who said he was 16 was a mere kid of 14 still at school! He didn't even go back for his overcoat, and the freigh- ter sailed that evening. Mikey let him. be. If he wanted to run, let him run, but at times you could catch the old man out with a sad sort of yearning look on his face, wondering...
on.
His wife left him to his pals and his poker, and he seemed to get along all right, Grand nights they were, too,--in-the parlour. No fuss, no women, just the boys and the "deckers" com- “ingover" steaming from the fish and chips shop, and a pile of “dead men" collecting in the corner as bottles Mikey-snapped the beer open and pitched them, empty, away.
To-night there was news,
The parlour was full. Old Jem, who'd been in and out there ever since the beginning of things, had his big chair at the corner of the table. Mikey was in the middle of the horsehair seat with two of the boys on either side, and they'd had to bring in a couple of bent- wood chairs from the shop to ac commodate the crowd. Jonah Hanssen brought the news.
"Bin a thieving next door!" he said, jerking his head in the direc tion of. Mikey's neighbour on the street, a jeweller watchmaker fellow. "Joolery. Coupla watches and " he sniggered; "coupla knives and forks. Silly bit. o'
work!"
Mikey chewed on his pipe. "Thieving's always silly. Gets you nowhere."
"Cept in clink!”
"Huh! Clink! If anybody ever caught me thieving they could shoot me on sight. Thieving's kid's nonsense. How'd they get in ?"!
"Fanlight at the back..Robert heard the glass.”
“Caught ?”......
"Nope. Not a sign. If you ask me, they're in there yet, hiding some place."
Mikey's sympathy for the hare in the teeth of the hounds got the better of his scorn at their silly
dode. He went to the back
and took a look at his neigh bour's walls and windows
and roofing.
"Maybe get away along that roof there, if they're lucky! Might even drop in here!"
He stood for a moment, turning over an idea, still looking scornful, then he ambled casually through into the main shop, closing door behind him. There were windows upstairs looking the next door roof, all locked. charm in unlod
ding, tham k he came back and got himself other beer and got out the
1939
The parlour was silent, nine men chewing over the deal. Old Jem had first shout. It always took him a bit of time to get his words out. Some impediment in his speech, between a stutter and a stammer, had him mouthing. the shape of words long before any sound came. He was getting ready. The men waited.
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ณ
You could hear the clop of hotse going down the cobbled street at the back and a train down in the station yards letting off steam." If you listened hard you could even hear the faint rum- ble of the sea on the rocks out past the old jetty, provided the trams weren't roaring along the main street at the front, .” And then, suddenly, there was other sound, a scraping that made Mikley lift his head and look up as if to penetrate the ceiling boards. Only he knew about the unlocked windows.
an-
Jem had said his bit and the men were deep in the game; a motley crowd, eagerly scanning their cards. Stakes were small to cope with pockets often empty, and there was a friendly rivalry hardly in keeping with such a tough lot of customers. Mikey loved them all, every one of them. And there was another, maybe two others, upstairs. If they knew the place they'd come down, sure of a welcome,
Mikey was dealing the new hand when the inner door opened slowly, without a sound, and he stopped with the cards in his hand and stared. They'd come down then! Good for them! Eight heads slewed round to follow his gaze and the door went on open- ing wider.
"Come right in, you!" shouted Mikey. "What's this creeping around like thieves in the night?”
There was a shout of laughter, and a well-known, tangled red- head poked round the door. Blue eyes twinkled like sapphires, and a broad grin, missing one white- tooth, broadened still more at sight of Mikey.
"Och and, begorrah, Charlie!" Mikey hailed him. “Ye'll be the death o' me yet! Come in. Where'- ve ye bin?
"No 'askin I've a friend. Come in, you!” and he shepherded into the room a tall, blonde youth, glum-looking and sheepish,
(Continued on Page 7)
PLEASE, MOTHER-
I WANT POWDER THAT'S ANTISEPTIC
MENNEN