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of his new-found affluence he was an apt pupil.
He sat behind a whisky and soda "Only bums drink beer," insisted Ted with his
derby hat tipped cockily over one ear in what was meant to be an imitation of
Ted Orping's swagger, listening to a lecture from his hero.
"Protection," said Ted Orping impressively. "That's what we're goin' for.
Protection."
"I thought that was somethink to do wiv politics," said Clem hazily.
"Not that sort of protection, you chump," snarled the scornful Ted. "Who cares
about that? I mean protection like they do it in America. Ain't you never
heard of it? What I mean is, you say to a guy: 'Here you are with a big
business, an' you never know when some gang may hold you up or chuck a bomb at
you. You pay us for protection, an' we'll see nothing hap-pens to you."
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"But I thought we was doing the 'old-ups," said Clem.
Ted Orping sighed and spat a loose strand of tobacco through his teeth.
"Course we are, fathead. That's just to show 'em what may happen if they don't
pay. Then when they're all frightened, we come an' talk about protection. We
get just as much money, an' we don't have to work so hard."
"Sounds all right," said Clem.
He took a drink from his glass and tried to conceal his grimace. He'd never
cared for whisky and never would, but it cost twice as much as beer, and a
toff always had the best. They were toffs now Ted Orping said so. They owned
cigarette cases, had their nails manicured, and changed their shirts twice a
week.
"This is a big thing," said Ted, leaning sideways confidentially. "It's goin'
to grow an' grow there ain't no limits to it. An' we're in at the beginnin',
like the guys who started motorcars an' wireless. An' what are they now? Look
at 'em!"
"Marconi," hazarded Clem helpfully, "Austin,Morris, 'Enry Ford "
"Millionaires," said Ted. "That's what. And why? Because they were in first.
Just like we are. An' we can be millionaires too. Ain't Tex told you what them
guys in Chicago live like? Sleepin' in silk sheets, tickin' off judges, an'
havin' the mayor to dinner off gold plates. That's what we'll be like one day.
Have another drink."
He went to the bar to have the glasses replenished and came back to the corner
where they were sitting. A barmaid began to cry "Time, please!" and Ted put
his tongue out at her impudently.
"We won't have none of this, either," he said. "We'll have it in our own
homes, an' nobody can say 'Time' there. Why, we're better off in England,
because there ain't no third degree here."
"Wot's that mean?" asked Clem.
"Well, when you get pinched they don't treat you friendly like they do here.
They don't just ask you a few questions which you needn't answer, an' then
lock you up till you see the beak in the mornin'. What they do is, they take
you into a room, about half a dozen bloody great coppers, an' they make you
talk whether you know anything or not."
Enright regarded him owlishly.
" 'Ow do they do that?"
"They know how," said Ted Orping. "There's noth-ing they won't do to make you
confess. Keep you with-out water, bash you about, beat you with a rubber hose,
grind your teeth down with a dentist's drill just any torture they can think
of. You got to be tough to keep your trap shut when they do things like that."
Clem Enright shuddered as Orping proceeded to explain other methods of
persuasion that he had read of. Clem didn't feel tough not in that way. He had
had his arms twisted often enough by bigger boys in his ragamuffin youth to
know what acute physical pain was like, and he didn't fancy any of its more
agonizing refinements.
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"Time, please," said the barmaid again, and a shirt-sleeved potman began to
take up the refrain as he collected glasses off the tables with every
circumstance of the spiteful satisfaction which public-house em-ployees seem
to feel when they enforce that fatuous law.
"Come on," said Ted finally. "Let's get out of here."
He turned his glass defiantly upside down and swaggered out of the bar, with
Clem following him. On the pavement they paused.
"Where are you goin'?" asked Ted. "I got a date with a dame."
He had spent three hours in a cinema the day before and learnt several new
words.
"I'll go down to the revolver range and practise a bit of shooting," said
Enright.
"Right-oh," said Ted heartily. "You can't get too much practice, but don't let
'em know you got a gun of your own. See you tonight."
They separated there, and Clem Enright walked slowly and a little unsteadily
down Villiers Street. He was always conscious of his inferior toughness in the
presence of Ted Orping, who had killed two men and wounded others. The weight
of the automatic in his hip pocket gave him the feeling of being a genuine
desperado only occasionally at other times it seemed to bulk out under his
clothes like a poached pheasant, and he went into a cold sweat at the
momentary ex-pectation of feeling a heavy hand on his shoulder and hearing
familiar words of invitation murmured genially in his ear. Of late he had
spent a lot of his money on ammunition at the range and had once scored a
target of twenty-four at twelve paces.
They didn't believe he had it in him to be tough that was the trouble. He was
a good man with the brick in a smash-and-grab, and he could drive a car pretty
well in an emergency, but they didn't class him as a man to take the
initiative in any violence. And it rankled. He was as good as they were, but
they had never let him play a prominent part in a hold-up. He had a sense of
injustice about it, and in his daydreams he lived for the glory of the day
when he could demand the right to equality with them by virtue of the notch on
his own gun.
Sometimes he heard in imagination the horrible grunt of the policeman whom
Basher Tope had shot, the way the man clutched at his stomach and kicked like
a wounded rabbit. And then the cold sweat came out on him again.... He closed
his eyes to the vision and tried to think of it differently. He saw his own
eyes behind the sights, his own finger curling steadily and ruthlessly round
the trigger, the gun held as firmly as if in a vise he had read plenty of the
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