Glencannon Read online

  Glencannon: Great Stories From The Saturday Evening Post

  Guy Gilpatric

  1968

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  THE LOST LIMERICK

  THE MISSING LINK

  ODDS AND ENDS

  THE GLASGOW SMASHER

  THE CRAFTY JERKO-SLOVAKS

  PARDON THE FRENCH

  ONE GOOD TERN

  THE LADIES OF CATSMEAT YARD

  THE ROLLING STONE

  THE PEARL OF PANAMA

  THE TOAD MEN OF TUMBAROO

  MUTINY ON THE INCHCLIFFE CASTLE

  THE YOGI OF WEST NINTH STREET

  THE HUNTING OF THE HAGGIS

  THE SMUGGLERS OF SAN DIEGO

  WHERE EARLY FA'S THE DEW

  THE GLASGOW PHANTOM

  THE HOMESTRETCH

  CROCODILE TEARS

  THE ARTFUL MR. GLENCANNON

  THE MASKED MONSTER

  INTRODUCTION

  Mr. Colin Glencannon, ship's engineer of the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle, is blessedly, completely, blissfully, belligerently without redeeming social value. If, by some terrible mishap, Guy Gilpatric had been a writer of pornography instead of humor, no judge in any court in any hall of justice anywhere between Alcatraz and Zanzibar would have permitted Glencannon to wind up in print. For he appeals to that strange section of our phrenological chart, the prurient. We lust after the pure, bellyaching, guffawing laughs Glencannon provides us. He is a lewd, low, lascivious fellow who cares no more for his reader than he cares for a dry whistle. Liquor is the guiding principle of his life.

  Food and drink steer Glencannon's course with Rabelaisian directness. The nominal amusement of booze—"leopard’s spit," "Duggan's Dew of Kirkintilloch," "boibon," "apple 'n' corn—smoothed out with glycerine"—and "sumpin' wunnerful called Club Special"—never seems to pall. "Noo," says Glencannon to a New York bartender at an establishment dubbed the Downstairs Yacht Club (located in a cellar beneath a butcher shop in Second Avenue), "the point of the whole thing is: I want a drink. Drink, snort, dollop, spot, bebida, boisson, schloppka.... Whusky hi hi makee-pidgin! You boy fetch 'em bottle, can do. Sahib pull-cork, drink-drink, him feller too much go down, hic-hic pairdon me, all come-uppee. You catch 'em savvy?"

  Glencannon and his cronies Mr. Montgomery and Captain Ball, along with assorted vagabonds and varlets, are forever eating tinned quail, caviar and other gourmet morsels that have as cargo gone "somehow" ("somehow" in Glencannon stories always involving the tartan-breathed engineer's own machinations) astray into the bowels of the Inchcliffe Castle.

  Guy Gilpatric's method of developing a story is hardly a method at all. "I have an idea for a story," he once told a Post editor. "A man buys fifty parrots, and taking each one separately he teaches it a singing part. Pretty soon he's got them all trained and he thinks he's got the greatest act show business ever saw. The parrots singing together sound just like the Vienna Choir boys. Except for one thing. One of the birds—the one with a voice like Ezio Pinza—always insists upon singing 'O'Reilly's Tavern' right in the middle of 'Ave Maria.' I haven't figured how it all turns out but it might be worth a whirl." Gilpatric never lived to write the piece but it would have been masterfully contrived had it appeared. For Gilpatric's plots and action reside in the language of the protagonist—and protagonist is an excellent moniker for Glencannon although his Britannic Majesty's shipowners might have preferred "rabid hound." Gilpatric is a champion in making speech sound obscene without venturing into the reality of profanity. The spattered oaths lie like rust upon the areas west and east, north and south of Suez and are surely audible to the home office in London. But no matter. The board of directors of the shipping line is as efficient and industrious as the crew of the rusty, scarred, dented, dirty Inchcliffe. The wives report to their husbands at sea that the company is buying a new ship which may retire all the old hulks, men and metal alike. The vessel is called receivership. So again the plot and the action hang on words. And the reader who expects a rousing time and no expeditions into the value of the spoken word is surprised by the erudition and power of the author.

  The reader learns things in the Glencannon stories. Things about the sea and ships and other places in the world and human nature. "I love to learn but I hate to be taught," said Winston Churchill, and Gilpatric has the technique down pat.

  Gilpatric was an amazing man. At the age of 16, he set an altitude record just three months after getting his pilot's license. At 21, he was a captain in the U.S. air service in France. Later, he insisted on going everywhere by train, refusing to fly. He was a fine fencer, a crack pistol shot, and one of the earliest exponents of undersea goggle fishing. Despite these accomplishments his friends remember him as the most modest of men.

  Readers were so fond of Gilpatric's stories the magazine had what amounted to a form letter replying to constant pleas for more Glencannon stories. "We publish all the stories we can get. We don't publish more because Mr. Gilpatric doesn't write them."

  THE LOST LIMERICK

  I

  It was a fine sunny morning, and the Inchcliffe Castle was butting her nose into the turquoise swell which surges off North Africa—butting, then rearing back and pouring cascades of white water from her rusty foc'sle head. Off to starboard, the saw-tooth Atlas Mountains loomed in the heat haze, with here and there an ancient crumbling Moorish watchtower repeating itself in the sky above their summits in obedience to the mad whims of Fata Morgana, or lying down sidewise upon a cloud some miles above its proper earthly foundation. Once a three-mile stretch of coast range wavered viscously, broke loose from its anchorage, and stood coyly on its head upon the horizon.

  Mr. Glencannon, viewing these phenomena from the Inchcliffe Castle's deck, paused on his way to breakfast to frown in sour disapproval.

  "Aseenine—pairfickly aseenine!" he declared. "Fortunate it is that I'm no' a drinking mon, or those domned mirages wad gi' me St. Vittle's dance! Still"—and he settled an elbow on the rail the better to pursue his train of thought—"still, yon's a hot an' theersty country, beyont a doot, and I'll be three days in Algiers wi'oot a saxpunce to bless myself. It's a dry prospect, and a lesson never to send hame my savings unless present needs are provided for. But heaven will provide!" And with head bowed deep in thought, he strolled down the deck and stepped through the doorway.

  "Captain Ball and gentlemen, I bid ye a vurra gude morning," he said, touching his cap visor. "I hope your healths are better than my poor shattered ain." There was a scupping sound as he attacked his oat porridge—a heaping quart of which, lubricated with a lump of oleomargarine the size of a cricket ball, constituted his time-honored breakfast.

  Captain Ball, who had heard the greeting and the scupping every morning for nine long years, acknowledged the former with his usual polite concern:

  "We're all quite fit, Mr. Glencannon, thank you; but we're sorry, 'm sure, to hear that your own condition is still unsatisfactory. Er—just what seems to be the trouble today, Mr. Glencannon?"

  "It's my nairves," sighed the engineer, pushing back his empty plate and producing an old plaid sock which served the dual function of tobacco pouch and pipe case. "Yes, my nairves. They've been all a-joomp and a-jangle since we cleared Melilla for Algiers. Yes, captain, since we cleared Melilla. I fear that Melilla wull eventually be the death o' me." And as he filled his pipe he glanced covertly from one to another of them, as if to appraise the effect of his lugubrious prophecy.

  "Melilla?" repeated Mr. Montgomery, the first officer, rising to the bait. "And wot, may I arsk, was so fatal about Melilla?"

  "Weel," explained Mr. Glencannon, his canny Caledonian eye gleaming through the toxic mixture of smoke and steam which arose from his pipe, "it's a seetuation so strange as to be no less than eunuch.
As some of you know, Captain Ball and gentlemen, I've always been a great one for lummericks—silly veerses o' poesy, like, for instance, the one aboot a sairtain young mon from Bombay who went oot a-riding one day, and the coolie who lived in Hong Kong whose job was to hammer a gong. You know the sort o' thing?... O' course: Weel, there are leeterally hundreds o' them, a' more or less immoral, but a' o' them vurra comic—yes, vurra, vurra comic indeed! It's been a hobby o' mine to collect and meemorize a lummerick for every port in the world; in fact, it's been a matter o' pride that no living mon, aship or ashore, could stump me when it comes to lummericks. Weel, when I heard aboot our nuxt port o' call being Melilla, I o' course thought o' the famous lummerick which goes—weel, the feerst line goes something aboot Melilla. Ye know it?" And tensely he leaned forward.

  "Oh, ha-ha—why, my word, certainly I know it!" chuckled Captain Ball patronizingly. "It goes—it goes—er—wait a moment. Let's see now—"

  Mr. Montgomery spoke up: "Oh, I've 'eard that one, sir! It's about the—er—"

  "It's about Melilla, sir!" volunteered the third mate, who was extremely young. "I've recited it a thousand times, I 'ave! Er—funny, though; it seems to eskype me."

  Captain Ball shot him a withering glance. But the mate's eyes were closed and his fingers were beating time upon the table,

  "Ah!" sighed Mr. Glencannon. "There, gentlemen—there is the deeficulty! I know that lummerick, you know that lummerick; but I canna think o' it and neither can you! And because my health is frail at best, the domned thing has become an obseesion wi' me nicht and day, and my nairves are shattered in conseequence."

  "Well, I'll think of it in a minute," said Captain Ball doggedly—"that is, I will if you gentlemen will do me the favor to shut up and stop drumming on the table. I've got a pretty good memory for such things."

  "So 'ave I," declared Mr. Montgomery.

  "Well, mine's a bit above the average," said Mr. MacQuayle, the second engineer.

  "Oh, and is it?" inquired Captain Ball. "Well, I'll have you know, sir, that I'm in command of this vessel, and when it comes to memory—"

  "'Old 'ard—I mean excuse me, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Montgomery, springing to his feet. "The Melilla limerick goes like this—er—wyte a minnit now, 'arf a mo'.... Oh, 'ell, I do believe it's slipped me!"

  The mess boy paused in gathering the dishes and cleared his throat respectfully. "Beggin' pardon, sorrh, if Oi moight say a word to the captain, sorrh, Oi've 'eard that Melilla limerick monny's the toime, sorrh! It's—ha-ha!—it's something—a—um—er—er—just a second, sorrh, whoile Oi goes and arsks the cook."

  There was silence at the table, broken only by tense mutterings and the ruminative drumming of fingers upon oilcloth.

  The mess boy returned, hand pressed to brow, and walking as if in a trance.

  "Well?" Captain Ball snapped at him.

  "Sorrh, the cook says 'e knows it loike a beggar in 'is cups; in fact, 'e was on the very point of tellin' me, sorrh, when it slipped 'im, it did. But 'e says as 'ow 'e'll 'ave it in a jiffick."

  "Weel, I ha' me doots," declared Mr. Glencannon, wagging his head sagaciously. "Dinna meesunderstand me, captain and gentlemen, when I say that if a meemory like mine—which has mastered Bobby Burns from cover to cover—fails in recalling a sumple lummerick, there's no' much chance on a ship like this!"

  "Oh, we don't misunderstand you a bit!" bristled Mr. Montgomery. "What you mean is that the rest of us is so many 'arf-wits, so to say!"

  Mr. Glencannon blew a stifling cloud and through it smiled a seraphic smile.

  "Oh, no!" he protested. "To you, Muster Mate, I wad no' say as much as that."

  "Wait!" interrupted Captain Ball in a voice of frozen fury. "I said before, and I say again, that I've got the best memory on this ship, and what's more, I've got money to prove it! What's your answer to that, gentlemen?"

  "You mean you'll bet, sir?"

  "Well," said the captain, with such effort at repression that he almost bit off his palate, "that was the idea I intended to convey. But I doubt if there's anybody in the crowd who's sportsman enough to bet with me!"

  "Let's myke it a pool. How about that, sir?" suggested Mr. Montgomery. "All fork up a percentage of our pay, winner tyke all."

  "Right-o for me," agreed Captain Ball. "The more I win, the merrier! What do you say, Mr. Glencannon?"

  There was a pause while the engineer thought it over. "Aweel," he said at length and doubtfully, "I'm no' a gambling mon, such being contrary to my streect Preesbyteerian principles. Also, I'm extremely conseervative in a' matters conceerning finance. But if you yoursel' wull admeenister the thing, captain—taking it oot o' the hands o' the mates and thus assuring fair play—I'll sairtainly parteecipate."

  And so it was arranged that the first man to hand Captain Ball a copy of the limerick, before the Inchcliffe Castle docked at Algiers the following day, would receive 10 percent of the monthly pay of all of them.

  This was, in itself, a tidy sum; but later in the morning the second mate was waited upon by Bos'n Hughes.

  "Sorrh," said the bos'n, "the foc'sle is in a huproar! Oi've 'ad to broike three 'eads, Oi 'ave, to muntain discipline. And all habout the ruddy limerick which the hengineer arsked the captain and the captain arsked the mess boy and the mess boy arsked the cook. All of us knows it, of course, but none of us can quoite think of it!"

  "Ah," said the mate absently, gazing toward a soaring sea gull and moving his lips in futile quest of vague and fleeting words. "Ah? That is, I mean to say, yes?"

  "Yes," said Bos'n Hughes, "and wot Oi'd loike to s'y, sorrh, is that the men would loike to come in on the pool, they would, syme as the horfficers, and settle once and for all 'oo's got the best memory in this 'ere ship."

  Thus the pool was swelled to mammoth proportions, and by midday the Inchcliffe Castle had taken on a strangely preoccupied air. On the bridge, Mr. Montgomery was pacing back and forth, eating one cigar after another, and pausing at intervals to smite himself upon the forehead as does one who strives to summon an elusive memory. The man at the wheel was gnawing his mustache and peering off into space for minutes at a time, recalling himself to the binnacle and business only by the fear that Mr. Montgomery might glance astern, see the wavers in the wake, and kick him as Mr. Montgomery alone knew how. Though the British Board of Trade, in its wisdom, has decreed that no officer shall strike a seaman, it has said nothing at all about kicking him; and the Inchcliffe Castle's mate, observing the letter of the law, had also mastered the technic of the boot.

  Only, just now, Mr. Montgomery was too busy thinking of something else to bother about the extremely untidy wabbles in the soapsuds. Suddenly his face brightened; he stepped to the engine-room speaking tube and whistled down it.

  "Second engineer," answered a voice.

  "I'll speak to the chief if he's down there," barked Mr. Montgomery.

  There was a long pause, during which the mate beat time upon the tube nozzle. "'Ell!" he growled impatiently. "If 'e don't 'urry up it'll slip me.... 'De-da-de-de-de-de Melilla'.... I s'y, are you there, Mr. Glencannon?"

  "No, sir; it's MacQuayle again. The chief says he canna speak to ye the noo, and says he's vurra annoyed at bein' deesturbed, sir."

  "Well, tell 'im I almost 'ad it!"

  "So did he, sir, but he says ye bruck his train of thought. He's standing nuxt the crank pit noo, sir, seerching for it in the rhuthm o' the engines."

  "Rhythm your eye!" shouted Mr. Montgomery, beating on the tube with his fist. "I know the rhythm—it's the words! The rhythm goes 'De-da-de-de-de-de Melilla.'"

  "I beg to deefer wi' ye, sir!" and the voice came through the tube a trifle tartly. "The proper rhuthm is 'Da-da-DE-da-de-Melilla," and ye'll obsairve it's wuth three da's an' twa de's, and no' wi' one da and five de's, as ye reheersed it, sir."

  "Wait, wait, wait, can't you?" screamed the mate. "There's first a de, then a da, then four—no five—oh, blarst your eyes, MacQuayle, you've got me all mixed up, you 'ave!"


  Mr. Montgomery let the tube snap shut, glanced aft, saw the snakes in the wake, and advanced truculently toward the wheelman—timing his stride like a hurdler who plans to elevate his right foot smartly and at the proper instant.

  The wheelman didn't see him coming. Head back and eyes closed, he was murmuring, "There once was a de-de Melilla."

  "Right-o!" exclaimed Mr. Montgomery, staying his foot in midair. "You've almost got it, you 'ave! Think 'ard, my man—think 'ard!"

  The wheelman thought. He thought frantically, and in the process let the Inchcliffe Castle slide full seven points off her course. "There once was a—there once was a—er—Oh, I'm afraid it's got me beat, sir," he admitted feebly.

  Mr. Montgomery tossed his head in disgust, remembered the wake and launched his kick—all more or less in one motion. Then, becoming conscious of a monotonous and distracting sound, he scowled down at the well deck where three seamen were chipping paint. Their hammers rose and fell in unison in a vaguely familiar and yet unsatisfactory rhythm which they changed from time to time after prolonged and heated debate.

  "Strike me pink," muttered the mate. "Why, I do believe the 'ole bloomink ship's gone barmy!"

  And so, in truth, it seemed. At supper that evening scarcely a word was spoken or a mouthful eaten. So preoccupied were the officers with scraps of paper and stubs of pencils that none of them noticed that the meat was scorched or that the treacle was served on the potatoes instead of on the pudding.

  "Weel," Mr. Glencannon broke the silence as he pushed back his chair, "I'll spend the evening in streect concentration. What time wull we be docking tomorrow, Captain Ball?"

  "Eleven o'clock at latest. Please to notify everybody, Mr. Montgomery, to hand in their limericks by four bells sharp."

  "Ye may rest assured that by four bells I'll hand ye the winning ticket, sir," declared Mr. Glencannon, retreating to the deck before a volley of vicious snorts.

  Chuckling to himself, he went to his room, bolted the door, and hung a blanket over the porthole before he switched on the light. Then, pausing a moment to listen for footsteps outside, he took from a drawer a huge oilcloth-covered scrapbook and sat down upon the bunk.