we met seemed heading for, like night beasts to their water-hole), I saw at once, from very much past experience, that trouble was going on inside. People were peering down the entrance stairs and jabbering, and noise of shouts and crashings floated up. I drew Muriel far into a doorway, as I expected any moment the intrusion of the Law.
Then customers came scurrying up too. Among them I see Montgomery, and with him his Miss Theodora. I said to Muriel to wait, and went across to them.
‘Oh, Mr Fortune,’ Theodora cried. ‘There’s fighting going on downstairs.’
‘Your brother Arthur,’ said Montgomery, ‘and Billy and his friends are battling with some wild West Indians.’
Well, I suppose our African troubles aren’t his business, but all the same, has he not a pair of fists to stay and help my friends?
I’d seen there were two quite old American saloon cars with drivers that seemed Africans to me. I went over quickly and asked were they for hire? They were.
‘What is a place to meet not far from here?’ I asked Miss Theodora.
She said the big radio building of the BBC.
‘Get in,’ I told her, ‘with Montgomery. Muriel,’ I shouted, ‘come over here! Go quickly where this lady says,’ I told the two drivers, putting pound notes in their hands, ‘and all of you wait for me there till I arrive.’
Then I plunged down the Moonbeam stairs.
At the bottom, by the entrance door, I saw Dorothy and Cannibal and various other friends all torn and tattered. The West Indians had expelled them out. I told them where to scatter at the place I’d sent the cars.
‘But, Johnny!’ Dorothy cried out. ‘Billy’s still in there, and Ronson and your brother Arthur.’
‘Do as I tell you, Dorothy, I am always best alone. Cannibal, now, blow with these people to the big radio building. I bring all the others soon whether dead or else alive.’
I heaved and pushed open the club door. The band was still playing, all now up upon their feet. Chicks were standing on the chairs, laughing and screaming, and GIs cheering and acting with no responsibility at all. On the dance floor I saw Billy with Ronson and one other, who were murdering, and being murdered by, the West Indians.
I climbed over the bar counter, and started smashing crates of Coca-Cola by heaving them with loud crashes on the floor. The band stopped and faces began to turn round in my direction. ‘Look, Mr Jasper!’ a tall West Indian cried. ‘Your valuable stock is being depleted.’
I picked up four bottles, and burst through to the dance floor. I grabbed up the microphone, which lay there overturned, and cried out: ‘Billy, we cut out! The Law will soon be intruding! Here, Billy, catch this bottle!’
We battered our way towards the door. The customers were generally friendly, and seemed to regret the ending of this silly mess. ‘Come on, Bumper Woodman,’ they kept crying to a huge West Indian. ‘Show us how you beat Joe Louis to his knees.’
But it was Ronson Lighter he was fighting now, and that crooked boy, even despite his dirty blows, looked like getting massacred by the big West Indian’s bulkiness, till Billy Whispers snatched the microphone from my hands and cracked this Woodman on the skull with a cruel smack. We all beat it up the stairs.
‘Come on, let’s run,’ said Ronson Lighter. ‘I smell the coming of the Law.’ And we saw two beetle cars come sweeping round the distant corner.
‘Not run, no,’ I said, ‘is better stroll rapidly like serious gentlemen.’
‘Thank you,’ said Billy, ‘for your interference.’ He wiped blood from both his hands.
‘Who is this third boy?’ I asked him. ‘Can this be my brother Arthur?’
For I’d seen him fighting also on the Moonbeam floor, and his certain strong resemblance to my dad, and doing him great credit with his vigorous blows; but as I walked beside him now, and he turned smiling to me, smoothing his knuckles, I also caught his mother’s crazy glance in both his eyes.
‘What say?’ said Arthur, as we turned two swift corners. ‘Bless you, my brother – you’re my boy!’ He put his arm around me and said softly, ‘You’ll help me with some loot now, Johnny, won’t you.’
‘We see about this, Arthur. We talk about all those things.’
By twisting around in zigzag circles, we had now arrived outside a big white block building standing on its own. Our friends were by the cars in a cluster on the street, laughing