He really seemed to have no thought beyond wringing out the rents of his abominable little furnished rooms. As soon as the money was due, up popped Busto like the Devil in a legend. “My landlorda gimme time to pay? Hah? Hooh!” If you asked him for a match he would say: “Buy a box.” There was a quality of doom about his avarice. Professional bilkers took one look at Busto and ran for their lives. Unemployed waiters—always habitual gamblers and irrepressible mutterers-under-the-breath—remained silent in his presence. He uttered few words, but his thin lips, corrugated like the edges of scallop-shells, sawed off a whole repertoire of formidable noises. His Hooh! expressed all the scorn in the world: his Hah? was alive with malice.
About once a month he used to get drunk on red Lisbon—a deadly and incalculable wine concocted of the squeezed-out scrapings of rotted port-casks and laced with methylated spirits—a terrible drink of doubtful origin, which smites the higher centers as with a sandbag. It is otherwise known as lunatic’s broth, or red lizzie. Busto would consume bottles of it, and even offer small saucers-full to his dog, Ouif. This, also, was a taciturn animal; shaggy, half-deaf, suspicious and altogether badly formed. It was as if some amateur Creator had tried to piece together a bull-terrier with odds and ends of airedale, saluki, dachshund, and jackal. Ouif shared his master’s bed. Dogs have no esthetics, so it is easy for them to be noble. Besides, it is physically necessary for a dog to attach himself to somebody, if only a man like Busto, just as a man must love some living thing, even a dog like Ouif.
Without Ouif, how could Busto have lived in the atmosphere of hate with which he surrounded himself? He trailed a tradition of pitilessness. Extortion was his métier. As he went his rounds, his feet seemed to squeeze out of the squeaking stairs all the squealing notes in the gamut of human misery. Hopelessness had soaked into the pores of his ancient house; multitudes of passing tenants had left behind them the ghosts of their anguish and despair. Busto’s was the step before the bottom. People came, lingered, clinging desperately as to a rock overhanging an abyss; then weakened and dropped out of sight. The time always came when Busto said: “Clear out before twellovaclock!” Almost every rent-day, some unhappy defaulter was thrown out.
My rent-day was Saturday. One Saturday evening I was hurrying in with the necessary nine-and-six, when I met Mr. Butts in the passage. He was an addresser of envelopes, a man with a booming voice, no shirt, and a monocle, most of whose earthly possessions were contained in a four-pound biscuit-tin. He was carrying this tin under his arm.
“Going?” I asked.
“Yes, my dear sir, I am,” said Mr. Butts.
“Did Busto——”
“Of course. But he is sorry, now. You know, my dear sir, I never go out of my way to do anybody any harm, but people who wrong me always suffer for it afterwards. Busto throws me out into the street. Very good. An hour ago, his dog was run over. You see?”
“No! His dog?”
“Run over, my dear sir, by a taxi. Could you lend me fourpence?”
“Twopence?”
“A thousand thanks, my dear sir. . . . Good-bye, good-bye!”
The door slammed heavily. The rickety umbrella-stand vibrated to a standstill. Silence, darkness, and the evil odors of dampness and decay settled upon the passage. I went downstairs to the disused wash-house in which Busto lived and slept. I knocked. He tore the door open and cried. “Yes? Yes?” But when he saw me his face fell, and he said: “Oh, you. Hooh! I toughta you was da vet.”
“The vet?” I said. “Why, is Ouif ill?”
“Yes.”
“May I see him? I know a little bit about dogs.”
“Yeh? Come in.”
Ouif lay on Busto’s bed, surrounded with pillows and covered with a blanket.
“Run over, eh?” I said.
“Ah-ah. How you know?”
Without replying, I lifted the blanket. Ouif was crushed, bent sideways. Practically unconscious, he breathed with a strenuous, groaning noise, his mouth wide open.
“Whacan I do?” asked Busto. “I touch ’im, it ’urts. You tella me. What I oughta do?”
I passed my hand gently down the dog’s body. Ouif was smashed, finished. I replied: “I don’t think there’s anything much you can do.”
“A hotawatta-bottle?”
“A hot-water bottle’s no use. Wait till the vet comes.”
“Hooh. But what I do? Dis is my dog. Brandy?”
“Don’t be silly. Brandy’ll make him cough, and it hurts him even to breathe.”
“Hell!” exclaimed Busto, savagely.
I touched Ouif’s stomach. He yelped sharply. I covered him again.
“How did it happen?”
Busto flung up his big, earth-colored fists in a helpless gesture. “Me, I go buya one-two bottla wine ova da road. Ouif run afta me. Dam taxi comes arounda da corner. Brr-rrr-oum! Fffff! Run aright ova da dog, withouta stop!” shouted Busto, opening and closing his hands with awful ferocity. “Hell, Ker-ist! If I getta holda diss fella. Gordamighty I tear ’im up a-to bits! Lissen; I tear outa diss fella’s ’eart an’ tear dat up a-to bits too! Yes!” shrieked Busto, striking at the wall with his knuckles and scattering flakes of distemper. “Lissen, you think ’e die, Ouif?”
“I’m afraid he might. All his stomach’s crushed. And his ribs. All the bones——”
“Basta, basta, eh? Enough.” Busto slouched over to the table, seized a bottle of wine and filled two tea-cups. “Drink!” he commanded, handing one to me; and emptied his cup at a gulp. I swallowed a mouthful of the wine. It seemed to vaporize in my stomach like water on a red-hot stove—psssst!—and the fumes rushed up to my head. Busto drank another cup, banging down the bottle.
“You like this dog, eh?” I said.
“I send my fraynd for the vet. Why don’t dey come, dis vet?”
There was a knock at the front door. Busto rushed upstairs, and then came down followed by a wizened man who looked like a racing tipster, and a tall old man with a black bag.
“Dissa my dog.”
“What happened?” asked the vet.
“Run over,” said the little man, “I told yer, didn’t I?”
“Well, let’s have a look.” The vet stooped, pulled back the blanket, and began to touch Ouif here and there with light, skillful hands; looked at his eyes, said “Hm!” and then shook his head.
“So?” said Busto.
“Nothing much to be done, I’m afraid. Quite hopeless.”
“’E die, hah?”
“I’m afraid so. The best thing to do will be to put him out of his misery quickly.”
“Misery?”
“I say, the kindest thing will be to put him to sleep.”
“Kill ’im, ’e means,” said the wizened man.
“Lissen,” said Busto. “You mak this dog oright, I give you lotta money. Uh?”
“But I tell you, nothing can possibly be done. His pelvis is all smashed to——”
“Yes, yes, but lissen. You maka dis dog oright, I give you ten quid.”
“Even if you offered me ten thousand pounds, Mister . . . er . . . I couldn’t save your dog. I know how you feel, and I’m sorry. But I tell you, the kindest thing you can possibly do is put him quietly to sleep. He’ll only go on suffering, to no purpose.”