He was now in his element. There were emoluments to be picked up here—percentages, perquisites, and profits of all kinds. He made a little arrangement with the Club laundry-woman to take in his own washing as well, gratis. Under the threat of placing the Club custom elsewhere he concluded a number of treaties, each containing a secret clause which referred to fifteen per cent profit for himself, with the grocer who supplied provisions; and with other tradespeople dealing in stationery, soap, crockery (broken crockery was a heavy item in the accounts) and such—like Club necessaries. Next, he took the landlord in hand. He would clear out, by God, and take more respectable premises if the rent were not reduced by twenty per cent! Scandalous! Downright robbery! The landlord being a reasonable sort of man, it was agreed that the old rate should stand in the contract, while the balance of twenty per cent found its way into Mr. Parker's pockets, and not, as theretofore, into his own. The same with the servants. From the boy who cleaned the rooms, and whom he changed as often as ever possible, he exacted a monetary deposit as a guarantee of good conduct—a deposit which was never returned, whatever his behaviour had been. Then—the subscriptions. For of course the accounts were never audited; nobody bothered about such things on Nepenthe, with all that south wind hanging about. If they had been he would have squared the auditor up to any sum—a hundred francs, almost; it was worth while. Pickings, he called them. The place, the system suited him down to the ground. He had lived all his life on pickings. He was a retail welsher; he lacked the nerve for sweeping enterprises.
On his accession, the Club was in such a state of demoralization, had become such a public scandal, that Mr. Parker, in his capacity of moralist, would have been the first person to dissolve that assembly of topers and rakes. As financier, he meant to live by it. But how was the place to be purified?
Parker's poison solved that problem, besides yielding a fine slice of additional revenue. The hardest drinkers, the inveterate rowdies, refused to believe that it was anything but the ordinary whisky to which they had been accustomed from childhood; or believing, refused out of sheer boastfulness, or force of habit, to reduce their doses. While the moderate realized the truth and acted accordingly, these others insisted upon regarding it as genuine Scotch—with inevitable and dire results. They succumbed. During the first year of Freddy Parker's reign, eight of these stubborn sinners were carried to their graves. And year by year, the same causes being in action, the process of betterment went on. Extremists dropped off, moderates survived. The Club was purged of its grosser elements, the moral tone of the establishment was raised, through the operation of Parker's poison. It was Napoleon's way with the Paris Parliament, he once explained to his lady, who wondered vaguely how long the hero himself would have outlived the effects of that mixture which she brewed, with her own fair hands, in the dim vaults of the Residency.
Even now it was a pretty tough place. New crooks, like the dubious Mr. Hopkins, new fire-eaters, new cranks, new sots, were always dropping in from different corners of the globe to spread their infection among the more recent crowd of curio-hunters, gentlemen of commerce, nautical wrecks, decayed missionaries, painters, authors and other vagrant riff-raff who frequented the premises. There were rows going on all the time—insignificant rows, mostly about newspapers and gambling debts. Mr. Samuel got his eye blacked over a harmless game of ecarte; Mr. White, one of the steadiest members, threatened to withdraw his subscription on account of the black-beetles; a Swedish sea-captain smashed nine panes of glass—just by way of a friendly demonstration, he said—because the great Upsala journal, the UTAN STAFVEL, was missing from its shelf; a muscular Japanese made himself distinctly offensive about the NICHI-NICHI-SHIN-BUM being out of date, and was going to twist everybody's head off, if it occurred again; the excellent Vice-President, Mr. Richards, tumbled noisily downstairs, nobody knew how or why—all on a single afternoon. The sirocco happened to be particularly trying that day.
On the whole, there was no denying the fact that the Club flourished under the statesman-like autocracy of Mr. Parker. That was partly because, unlike previous presidents, he was generally on the spot. Some great man once made a remark about the need of "the Master's Eye." He believed in that remark. If you run a place, run it yourself. He was ever-present, absorbing at other people's expense his own poison, to the effects of which he seemed to be immune; and borrowing money, on the sly, from the richer and more forgetful members. His uproarious joviality, his echoing ha! ha! became a feature of the place; it deceived the simple, and amused the complex. He was ready to talk about anything with anybody who shoved along; he had a fund of naughty tropical stories for the so-called bawdy section, and could be as sympathetic and pious as you please with a contrite youngster suffering from last night's debauch.
"A hair of the dog," he would suggest with a genial wink, pushing the bottle temptingly nearer.
The regulations had also been improved under his auspices. The entrance fee was imperceptibly raised, while the conditions of entry were relaxed. It was his lady's idea originally. She made it clear that the more numerous the members the greater the quantity of whisky consumed—the greater, therefore, their profits; quite apart from the possibility of additional subscriptions being paid. He agreed. Then, in a sudden glow of commercial enthusiasm, he proceeded to hint that ladies should also be admitted. Regretfully she put her foot down. Anywhere else the proposal would have been welcome. It was out of the question on Nepenthe.
"You're forgetting that Wilberforce woman," she said. "She would have to be carried home every night. It couldn't be done, Freddy. We might as well shut up the shop at once. People would get talking about the place—you know how they talk, as it is."
Miss Wilberforce was a pathetic local figure, a lady by birth, with a ready tongue, wiry limbs, and an insatiable craving for alcohol. She would unavoidably have damaged the reputation of the place, to say nothing of its furniture. She had gone from bad to worse lately.
"Perhaps you're right, Lola. It isn't worth while for those few subscriptions. After all, I'm an Englishman. But how about all those Russians?" he added.