The firm of Sloper and Dodge, publishers and printers, was in great
distress. These two enterprising individuals had worked up an enormous
business in time-payment books, which they sold all over Australia by
means of canvassers. They had put all the money they had into the
business; and now, just when everything was in thorough working order, the
public had revolted against them.
Their canvassers were molested by the country folk in divers strange bush
ways. One was made drunk, and then a two-horse harrow was run over him;
another was decoyed into the ranges on pretence of being shown a
gold-mine, and his guide galloped away and left him to freeze all night in
the bush. In mining localities the inhabitants were called together by
beating a camp-oven lid with a pick, and the canvasser was given ten
minutes in which to get out of the town alive. If he disregarded the hint
he would, as likely as not, fall accidentally down a disused shaft.
The people of one district applied to their M.P. to have canvassers
brought under the “Noxious Animals Act”, and demanded that a reward should
be offered for their scalps. Reports appeared in the country press about
strange, gigantic birds that appeared at remote selections and frightened
the inhabitants to death—these were Sloper and Dodge's sober and
reliable agents, wearing neat, close-fitting suits of tar and feathers.
In fact, it was altogether too hot for the canvassers, and they came in
from North and West and South, crippled and disheartened, to tender their
resignations. To make matters worse, Sloper and Dodge had just got out a
large Atlas of Australasia, and if they couldn't sell it, ruin stared them
in the face; and how could they sell it without canvassers?
The members of the firm sat in their private office. Sloper was a long,
sanctimonious individual, very religious and very bald. Dodge was a
little, fat American, with bristly, black hair and beard, and quick, beady
eyes. He was eternally smoking a reeking black pipe, and puffing the smoke
through his nose in great whiffs, like a locomotive on a steep grade.
Anybody walking into one of those whiffs was liable to get paralysis.
Just as things were at their very blackest, something had turned up that
promised to relieve all their difficulties. An inventor had offered to
supply them with a patent cast-iron canvasser—a figure which (he
said) when wound up would walk, talk, collect orders, and stand any amount
of ill-usage and wear and tear. If this could indeed be done, they were
saved. They had made an appointment with the genius; but he was
half-an-hour late, and the partners were steeped in gloom.
They had begun to despair of his appearing at all, when a cab rattled up
to the door. Sloper and Dodge rushed unanimously to the window. A young
man, very badly dressed, stepped out of the cab, holding over his shoulder
what looked like the upper half of a man's body. In his disengaged hand he
held a pair of human legs with boots and trousers on. Thus burdened he
turned to ask his fare, but the cabman gave a yell of terror, whipped up
his horse, and disappeared at a hand-gallop; and a woman who happened to
be going by, ran down the street, howling that Jack the Ripper had come to
town. The man bolted in at the door, and toiled up the dark stairs
tramping heavily, the legs and feet, which he dragged after him, making an
unearthly clatter. He came in and put his burden down on the sofa.
“There you are, gents,” he said; “there's your canvasser.”
Sloper and Dodge recoiled in horror. The upper part of the man had a waxy
face, dull, fishy eyes, and dark hair; he lounged on the sofa like a
corpse at ease, while his legs and feet stood by, leaning stiffly against
the wall. The partners gazed at him for a while in silence.
“Fix him together, for God's sake,” said Dodge. “He looks awful.”
The Genius grinned, and fixed the legs on.
“Now he looks better,” said Dodge, poking about the figure—“looks as
much like life as most—ah, would you, you brute!” he exclaimed,
springing back in alarm, for the figure had made a violent La Blanche
swing at him.
“That's all right,” said the Inventor. “It's no good having his face
knocked about, you know—lot of trouble to make that face. His head
and body are full of springs, and if anybody hits him in the face, or in
the pit of the stomach—favourite places to hit canvassers, the pit
of the stomach—it sets a strong spring in motion, and he fetches his
right hand round with a swipe that'll knock them into the middle of next
week. It's an awful hit. Griffo couldn't dodge it, and Slavin couldn't
stand up against it. No fear of any man hitting him twice.
“And he's dog-proof, too. His legs are padded with tar and oakum, and if a
dog bites a bit out of him, it will take that dog weeks to pick his teeth
clean. Never bite anybody again, that dog won't. And he'll talk, talk,
talk, like a suffragist gone mad; his phonograph can be charged for
100,000 words, and all you've got to do is to speak into it what you want
him to say, and he'll say it. He'll go on saying it till he talks his man
silly, or gets an order. He has an order-form in his hand, and as soon as
anyone signs it and gives it back to him, that sets another spring in
motion, and he puts the order in his pocket, turns round, and walks away.
Grand idea, isn't he? Lor' bless you, I fairly love him.”
He beamed affectionately on his monster.
“What about stairs?” said Dodge.
“No stairs in the bush,” said the Inventor, blowing a speck of dust off
his apparition; “all ground-floor houses. Anyhow, if there were stairs we
could carry him up and let him fall down afterwards, or get flung down
like any other canvasser.”
“Ha! Let's see him walk,” said Dodge.
The figure walked all right, stiff and erect.
“Now let's hear him yabber.”
The Genius touched a spring, and instantly, in a queer, tin-whistly voice,
he began to sing, “Little Annie Rooney”.
“Good!” said Dodge; “he'll do. We'll give you your price. Leave him here
to-night, and come in to-morrow. We'll send you off to the back country
with him. Ninemile would be a good place to start in. Have a cigar?”
Mr. Dodge, much elated, sucked at his pipe, and blew through his nose a
cloud of nearly solid smoke, through which the Genius sidled out. They
could hear him sneezing and choking all the way down the stairs.
Ninemile is a quiet little place, sleepy beyond description. When the
mosquitoes in that town settle on anyone, they usually go to sleep, and
forget to bite him. The climate is so hot that the very grasshoppers crawl
into the hotel parlours out of the sun, climb up the window curtains, and
then go to sleep. The Riot Act never had to be read in Ninemile. The only
thing that can arouse the inhabitants out of their lethargy is the
prospect of a drink at somebody else's expense.
For these reasons it had been decided to start the Cast-iron Canvasser
there, and then move him on to more populous and active localities if he
proved a success. They sent up the Genius, and one of their men who knew
the district well. The Genius was to manage the automaton, and the other
was to lay out the campaign, choose the victims, and collect the money,
geniuses being notoriously unreliable and loose in their cash. They got
through a good deal of whisky on the way up, and when they arrived at
Ninemile were in a cheerful mood, and disposed to take risks.
“Who'll we begin on?” said the Genius.
“Oh, hang it all,” said the other, “let's make a start with Macpherson.”
Macpherson was a Land Agent, and the big bug of the place. He was a
gigantic Scotchman, six feet four in his socks, and freckled all over with
freckles as big as half-crowns. His eyebrows would have made decent-sized
moustaches for a cavalryman, and his moustaches looked like horns. He was
a fighter from the ground up, and had a desperate “down” on canvassers
generally, and on Sloper and Dodge's canvassers in particular.
Sloper and Dodge had published a book called “Remarkable Colonials”, and
Macpherson had written out his own biography for it. He was intensely
proud of his pedigree and his relations, and in his narrative made out
that he was descended from the original Fhairshon who swam round Noah's
Ark with his title-deeds in his teeth. He showed how his people had fought
under Alexander the Great and Timour, and had come over to Scotland some
centuries before William the Conqueror landed in England. He proved that
he was related in a general way to one emperor, fifteen kings, twenty-five
dukes, and earls and lords and viscounts innumerable. And then, after all,
the editor of “Remarkable Colonials” managed to mix him up with some other
fellow, some low-bred Irish McPherson, born in Dublin of poor but honest
parents.
It was a terrible outrage. Macpherson became president of the Western
District Branch of the “Remarkable Colonials” Defence League, a fierce and
homicidal association got up to resist, legally and otherwise, paying for
the book. He had further sworn by all he held sacred that every canvasser
who came to harry him in future should die, and had put up a notice on his
office-door, “Canvassers come in at their own risk.”
He had a dog of what he called the Hold'em breed, who could tell a
canvasser by his walk, and would go for him on sight. The reader will
understand, therefore, that, when the Genius and his mate proposed to
start on Macpherson, they were laying out a capacious contract for the
Cast-iron Canvasser, and could only have been inspired by a morbid craving
for excitement, aided by the influence of backblock whisky.
The Inventor wound the figure up in the back parlour of the pub. There
were a frightful lot of screws to tighten before the thing would work, but
at last he said it was ready, and they shambled off down the street, the
figure marching stiffly between them. It had a book tucked under its arm
and an order-form in its hand. When they arrived opposite Macpherson's
office, the Genius started the phonograph working, pointed the figure
straight at Macpherson's door, and set it going. Then the two conspirators
waited, like Guy Fawkes in his cellar.
The automaton marched across the road and in at the open door, talking to
itself loudly in a hoarse, unnatural voice.
Macpherson was writing at his table, and looked up.
The figure walked bang through a small collection of flower-pots, sent a
chair flying, tramped heavily in the spittoon, and then brought up against
the table with a loud crash and stood still. It was talking all the time.
“I have here,” it said, “a most valuable work, an Atlas of Australia,
which I desire to submit to your notice. The large and increasing demand
of bush residents for time-payment works has induced the publishers of
this——”
“My God!” said Macpherson, “it's a canvasser. Here, Tom Sayers, Tom
Sayers!” and he whistled and called for his dog. “Now,” he said, “will you
go out of this office quietly, or will you be thrown out? It's for
yourself to decide, but you've only got while a duck wags his tail to
decide in. Which'll it be?”
“—— works of modern ages,” said the canvasser. “Every person
subscribing to this invaluable work will receive, in addition, a
flat-iron, a railway pass for a year, and a pocket-compass. If you will
please sign this order——”
Just here Tom Sayers came tearing through the office, and without waiting
for orders hitched straight on to the canvasser's calf. To Macpherson's
amazement the piece came clear away, and Tom Sayers rolled about on the
floor with his mouth full of a sticky substance which seemed to surprise
him badly.
The long Scotchman paused awhile before this mystery, but at last he
fancied he had got the solution. “Got a cork leg, have you?” said he—“Well,
let's see if your ribs are cork too,” and he struck the canvasser an awful
blow on the fifth button of the waistcoat.
Quicker than lightning came that terrific right-hand cross-counter.
Macpherson never even knew what happened to him. The canvasser's right
hand, which had been adjusted by his inventor for a high blow, had landed
on the butt of Macpherson's ear and dropped him like a fowl. The gasping,
terrified bull-dog fled the scene, and the canvasser stood over his fallen
foe, still intoning the virtues of his publication. He had come there
merely as a friend, he said, to give the inhabitants of Ninemile a chance
to buy a book which had recently earned the approval of King O'Malley and
His Excellency the Governor-General.
The Genius and his mate watched this extraordinary drama through the
window. The stimulant habitually consumed by the Ninemilers had induced in
them a state of superlative Dutch courage, and they looked upon the whole
affair as a wildly hilarious joke.
“By Gad! he's done him,” said the Genius, as Macpherson went down, “done
him in one hit. If he don't pay as a canvasser I'll take him to town and
back him to fight Les Darcy. Look out for yourself; don't you handle him!”
he continued as the other approached the figure. “Leave him to me. As like
as not, if you get fooling about him, he'll give you a clout that'll
paralyse you.”
So saying, he guided the automaton out of the office and into the street,
and walked straight into a policeman.
By a common impulse the Genius and his mate ran rapidly away in different
directions, leaving the figure alone with the officer.
He was a fully-ordained sergeant—by name Aloysius O'Grady; a squat,
rosy little Irishman. He hated violent arrests and all that sort of thing,
and had a faculty of persuading drunks and disorderlies and other
fractious persons to “go quietly along wid him,” that was little short of
marvellous. Excited revellers, who were being carried by their mates,
struggling violently, would break away to prance gaily along to the
lock-up with the sergeant. Obstinate drunks who had done nothing but lie
on the ground and kick their feet in the air, would get up like birds,
serpent-charmed, to go with him to durance vile.
As soon as he saw the canvasser, and noted his fixed, unearthly stare, and
listened to his hoarse, unnatural voice, the sergeant knew what was the
matter; it was a man in the horrors, a common enough spectacle at
Ninemile. He resolved to decoy him into the lock-up, and accosted him in a
friendly, free-and-easy way.
“Good day t'ye,” he said.
“—— most magnificent volume ever published, jewelled in
fourteen holes, working on a ruby roller, and in a glass case,” said the
book-canvasser. “The likenesses of the historical personages are so
natural that the book must not be left open on the table, or the
mosquitoes will ruin it by stinging the portraits.”
It then dawned on the sergeant that this was no mere case of the horrors—he
was dealing with a book-canvasser.
“Ah, sure,” he said, “fwhat's the use uv tryin' to sell books at all, at
all; folks does be peltin' them out into the street, and the nanny-goats
lives on them these times. Oi send the childer out to pick 'em up, and we
have 'em at me place in barrow-loads. Come along wid me now, and Oi'll
make you nice and comfortable for the night,” and he laid his hand on the
outstretched palm of the figure.
It was a fatal mistake. He had set in motion the machinery which operated
the figure's left arm, and it moved that limb in towards its body, and
hugged the sergeant to its breast, with a vice-like grip. Then it started
in a faltering and uneven, but dogged, way to walk towards the river.
“Immortial Saints!” gasped the sergeant, “he's squazin' the livin' breath
out uv me. Lave go now loike a dacent sowl, lave go. And oh, for the love
uv God, don't be shpakin' into me ear that way;” for the figure's mouth
was pressed tight against the sergeant's ear, and its awful voice went
through and through the little man's head, as it held forth about the
volume. The sergeant struggled violently, and by so doing set some more
springs in motion, and the figure's right arm made terrific swipes in the
air. A following of boys and loafers had collected by this time. “Blimey,
how does he lash out!” was the remark they made. But they didn't
interfere, notwithstanding the sergeant's frantic appeals, and things were
going hard with him when his subordinate, Constable Dooley, appeared on
the scene.
Dooley, better known as The Wombat because of his sleepy disposition, was
a man of great strength. He had originally been quartered at Sydney, and
had fought many bitter battles with the notorious “pushes” of Bondi, Surry
Hills and The Rocks. After that, duty at Ninemile was child's play, and he
never ran in fewer than two drunks at a time; it was beneath his dignity
to be seen capturing a solitary inebriate. If they wouldn't come any other
way, he would take them by the ankles and drag them after him. When the
Wombat saw the sergeant in the grasp of an inebriate he bore down on the
fray full of fight.
“I'll soon make him lave go, sergeant,” he said, and he caught hold of the
figure's right arm, to put on the “police twist”. Unfortunately, at that
exact moment the sergeant touched one of the springs in the creature's
breast. With the suddenness and severity of a horse-kick, it lashed out
with its right hand, catching the redoubtable Dooley a thud on the jaw,
and sending him to grass as if he had been shot.
For a few minutes he “lay as only dead men lie”. Then he got up bit by
bit, wandered off home to the police-barracks, and mentioned casually to
his wife that John L. Sullivan had come to town, and had taken the
sergeant away to drown him. After which, having given orders that anybody
who called was to be told that he had gone fifteen miles out of town to
serve a summons on a man for not registering a dog, he locked himself up
in a cell for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile, the Cast-iron Canvasser, still holding the sergeant tightly
clutched to its breast, was marching straight towards the river. Something
had disorganised its vocal arrangements, and it was now positively
shrieking in the sergeant's ear, and, as it yelled, the little man yelled
still louder.
“Oi don't want yer accursed book. Lave go uv me, Oi say!” He beat with his
fists on its face, and kicked its shins without avail. A short, staggering
rush, a wild shriek from the officer, and they both toppled over the steep
bank and went souse into the depths of Ninemile Creek.
That was the end of the matter. The Genius and his mate returned to town
hurriedly, and lay low, expecting to be indicted for murder. Constable
Dooley drew up a report for the Chief of Police which contained so many
strange statements that the Police department concluded the sergeant must
have got drunk and drowned himself, and that Dooley saw him do it, but was
too drunk to pull him out.
Anyone unacquainted with Ninemile might expect that a report of the
occurrence would have reached the Sydney papers. As a matter of fact the
storekeeper did think of writing one, but decided that it was too much
trouble. There was some idea of asking the Government to fish the two
bodies out of the river; but about that time an agitation was started in
Ninemile to have the Federal Capital located there, and nothing else
mattered.
The Genius discovered a pub in Sydney that kept the Ninemile brand of
whisky, and drank himself to death; the Wombat became a Sub-Inspector of
Police; Sloper entered the Christian ministry; Dodge was elected to the
Federal Parliament; and a vague tradition about “a bloke who came up here
in the horrors, and drownded poor old O'Grady,” is the only memory that
remains of that wonderful creation, the Cast-iron Canvasser.
