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Detective Ben
J. Jefferson Farjeon


Ben the tramp, the awkward Cockney with no home and no surname, turns detective again – and runs straight into trouble.Ben encounters a dead man on a London bridge and is promptly rescued from the same fate by a posh lady in a limousine. But like most posh ladies of Ben’s acquaintance, this one isn’t what she seems. Seeking escape from a gang of international conspirators, Ben is whisked off to the mountains of Scotland to thwart the schemes of a poisonous organisation and finds himself in very unfamiliar territory.With its startling prelude, Detective Ben is a glorious adventure, told with the unsurpassed mixture of humour and creepy thrills that made J. Jefferson Farjeon famous and Ben the tramp one of the best-loved characters of the Golden Age.









J. JEFFERSON FARJEON

Detective Ben

















Copyright (#uf15cc85b-7b42-5866-a77c-d57425d655fa)


COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain for Crime Club by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1936

Copyright © Estate of J. Jefferson Farjeon 1936

Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover background images © shutterstock.com (http://shutterstock.com)

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008156008

Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008156015

Version: 2016-06-14


Table of Contents

Cover (#u99b05d1f-eb08-5836-9bec-355c2346c3f0)

Title Page (#u30d86c7f-45f0-50e4-a2df-03525217dd6a)

Copyright (#ue6bc63a7-5b34-51ca-b411-27500b73a888)

Chapter 1: Happenings on a Bridge (#u51418a4b-0518-56c1-90f4-8a016f81d758)

Chapter 2: The Dark Journey (#uc9691bb0-a765-5be5-80b6-d285a0b2994f)



Chapter 3: Questions Without Answers (#u0234a013-80ef-5f93-a38c-bccbe46d2794)



Chapter 4: The Man in the Next Room (#u207e8019-f3bf-5b4d-ba91-a206d5f38072)



Chapter 5: What the Morning Brought (#u88f96ea6-740b-51df-901b-2d3a49348572)



Chapter 6: Acid Test (#u4762ac0f-06b5-5f04-91a8-26f128f2c722)



Chapter 7: The Signal Arrives (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 8: Northward Through the Night (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 9: Mr Smith, of Boston (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 10: Exit Mr Smith, of Boston (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 11: At the Black Swan (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 12: MacTavish (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 13: And So to Bed (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 14: By Candlelight (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 15: Friend in Need (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 16: Ben Murders Himself (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 17: Consultation in the Mist (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 18: In the Wake of MacTavish (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 19: The Old Man (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 20: Someone at the Door (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 21: Development of a Game (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 22: The Plan (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 23: Meanwhile, Outside— (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 24: Dead Men’s Ears (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 25: Down the Mountain (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 26: Back to Muirgissie (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 27: While the Moments Ticked by (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 28: Last Lap (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 29: Sir Ben (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)



Also in This Series (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




1 (#uf15cc85b-7b42-5866-a77c-d57425d655fa)

Happenings on a Bridge (#uf15cc85b-7b42-5866-a77c-d57425d655fa)


‘I wouldn’t mate, if I was you,’ said Ben. ‘It looks narsty!’

Thus, on a bridge at night, spoke one ragged man to another. Beneath them oozed dark water wending its inscrutable way towards the sea. Above them were the stars.

‘Mindjer, I ain’t sayin’ that life’s plumpunnin’,’ continued Ben, since his observation elicited no response. ‘If yer was to arsk me wot it was orl abart, I couldn’t tell yer, that’s a fack. Yer born without so much as by yer leave, and then they chucks yer this way and that till yer fair giddy. But—well, we gotter ’ang on—that’s right, ain’t it? England expecks every man to ’ang on, Gawd knows why, but yer can’t git away from it. ’Ang on!’ He paused to peer downwards at the inky river. ‘Any’ow, if I ever does pop meself orf, I’d sooner do it with a bang than a gurgle!’

He removed his eyes from the inky river. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. A moment later he was looking at another unpleasant sight. A small object gleamed up from the pavement by the stone parapet, and stooping to pick it up he discovered that it was a pin on which was mounted a miniature skull.

‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he muttered. ‘Do yer belong to one o’ them Suissicide Clubs?’

He held the hideous little decoration out to his ragged companion. Then he found himself staring at the most unpleasant sight of all. The dejected attitude in which his companion was leaning over the parapet was not that of a man contemplating death, but of a man already dead!

Ben had seen plenty of dead men in his time. It seemed to him that as soon as a person died, Fate rang for him to come and view the body. ‘Lumme, I’ve stopped noticin’ ’em!’ he had once boasted. But the boast had been bravado. He always noticed them, and they always affected his spine. This one affected his legs, as well, and before he knew it he was twenty yards away. Run first and think afterwards. That was his Napoleonic motto.

In the distance chimed a clock. The metallic notes hung slow and heavy on the air. One—two. Then from the direction of the chiming came another sound. The sound of an approaching car.

‘If yer runs, they’ll ’ave yer for it,’ Ben told himself with a gulp. ‘Stay where yer are and look ’appy.’

The only thing he had to be happy about was the substantial shadow in which he stood.

The approaching car drew closer. It also grew larger. Watching it from his shadowy sanctuary as it sped on to the bridge, Ben was impressed by the fact that it was not an ordinary car. That, perhaps, was not surprising, since nothing at this moment was ordinary. Ben’s mood was not ordinary. The bridge was not ordinary; it had become distorted into a grotesque, unnatural travesty of itself, painted with the sinister insecurity of nightmare colours. The little pin with its miniature skull was not ordinary. The ragged figure leaning limply against the parapet twenty yards away was not ordinary …

Nor was the behaviour of the car when it reached the ragged figure.

The car stopped suddenly. Why did it remind one of hospitals? Five men leapt out, violently invading the peace that had reigned uncannily a few moments before. Two of the men were policemen. Two of the others had an official atmosphere. The fifth had no official atmosphere. He wore an ordinary lounge suit and a squash felt hat and he stood a little apart, watching and smoking, while the others proceeded swiftly and smoothly with their business.

A stretcher appeared from the interior of the car. The ragged fellow into whose deaf ear Ben had tried to pass a little human comfort—posthumous comfort that only God had heard—was lifted on to the stretcher and carried into the car. Now there only remained his memory, and already the inevitable process of wiping out had begun. Ben stared at the portion of parapet against which the fellow had been leaning. Had he ever really been there? How many people would lean against the very same spot tomorrow, ignorant of their contact with tragedy?

Now the five men were talking. Their voices made a low, lugubrious buzz. Ben thought of bees. What happened when bees died? Did one bee report it, and others come along and take it out of the hive? It was a nuisance—Ben’s mind working like that! Jumping about just when he wanted to keep it steady. Perhaps it would have kept steadier on three good meals a day … Hallo! The car was filling up again. It was turning. In another moment the car, like the ragged fellow, would only be a memory, to recede unexplained into oblivion while life moved sluggishly on.

But Ben was wrong. This car would not recede into oblivion. It would remain for ever in his memory, and the thread that held him to it now, even after it had vanished from the bridge, was the man in the squash felt hat. He had stayed behind, having been temporarily obscured by the car while the others had re-entered it, and the steady glow of his cigarette made a pin-point in the dimness.

Ben found himself watching the glow. In a queer way it held him rooted, like a snake’s magnetic eye. Would it never move, and release him? If he moved first, out of the shadow, he would be spotted without a doubt.

‘Well, I ain’t done nothink!’ his thoughts suddenly rebelled. ‘I’m goin’!’

These unpleasant seconds were getting on his nerves. But before he could act upon his decision a voice called to him quietly across the road.

‘Stay where you are, or get a bullet!’

‘That’s done it!’ reflected Ben miserably. ‘Quick—think of a story!’

His mind refused to respond, and when the man in the squash felt hat, a revolver now added to his visible equipment, had traversed the intervening twenty yards, Ben had nothing between him and the law but the naked truth. And, after all, what was wrong with the truth?

‘Who are you?’ asked the man.

‘Bloke,’ replied Ben.

‘What sort of a bloke?’

‘’Ollywood star.’

You might as well die game. Life couldn’t be an utter failure if you made your last word a joke. It was a pity, though, that the man with the revolver didn’t smile at the joke.

‘Let’s try again,’ said the man. He had patience, anyway. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Eh?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Nothink.’

‘Ever heard of the truth?’

‘Well, wotjer want me to say?’ demanded Ben. ‘Pickin’ ’ops?’

‘I’ve no doubt you’re quite good at hopping,’ remarked the man, dryly, ‘but two o’clock in the morning is rather late to be hopping about, isn’t it?’

‘It’s early fer me.’

‘Never go to bed?’

‘Yus. On’y they ain’t turned dahn the sheets yet at The Ritz.’

This time the man did smile. Ben smiled back, trying to consolidate the happier atmosphere. Funny, what a smile did! Couple of blokes meet, all glum. One of ’em smiles. Blinkin’ sun comes out!

‘Been here long?’ the man inquired next.

‘Depends wot yer call long,’ answered Ben cautiously. ‘Long fer a toothache, but not fer a nap.’

‘An hour?’

‘Lumme, no!’

‘Five minutes?’

Now for it! Ben took a deep breath and trusted to luck.

‘Abart that,’ he replied. ‘Or p’r’aps six.’

‘Six,’ repeated the man, thoughtfully. ‘Not longer?’ Ben shook his head. ‘But six was long enough for you to see something interesting?’

‘Yer mean—the deader?’

‘Yes. The deader?’

‘That’s right. I see ’im.’

‘Well?’

‘Well wot? I didn’t dead ’im.’

‘I know you didn’t.’

‘Go on!’

‘You couldn’t have.’

‘That’s right, sir. I didn’t of. But ’ow did you know? Every time anythink ’appens this side o’ China, it’s always Ben wot’s done it!’

‘Ben?’

‘That’s me. ’Aven’t yer never bought me on a postcard?’

The man in the squash felt hat stared at Ben rather hard. Solemnly Ben stared back. Then the man said:

‘I’ll tell you how I know you didn’t kill that fellow, Ben. I killed him myself.’

Ben opened his mouth and gaped at this self-described murderer. Lumme, he didn’t look that sort! But, of course, he had a revolver. Ben closed his mouth to swallow, then whispered hoarsely:

‘Coppers didn’t know, eh?’

‘Oh, yes, they knew,’ responded the man. ‘The chap was a wrong ’un.’

‘Well, I’m jiggered!’ murmured Ben. ‘And I thort ’e was jest a poor bloke like me!’

The man glanced at him sharply.

‘Oh—you knew something about him, then?’

‘Eh?’

‘What made you think he was just a poor bloke like you?’

‘Oh! Well—I come upon ’im, see? And findin’ ’im leanin’ there—well, orl crumpled like, I felt sorry fer ’im—you know, it bein’ late and orl that—and as I thort ’e was goin’ to commit suissicide I spoke to ’im—’

‘You spoke to him?’

‘I’m tellin’ yer. I didn’t know ’e was dead. I gener’ly seen ’em stiff. But, corse, that’s arter.’

‘Arter?’

‘Yus. Limp fust, stiff arter. “Doncher go chuckin’ yerself over,” I ses to ’im. “Stick it aht, mate,” I ses. That’s right, ain’t it? And then I looks at ’im a bit closer like—’cos ’e didn’t say nothink, see?—and, Gawd, ’e looks back at me from the nex’ Kingdom, if yer git me. It was—narsty.’

‘I’m sure it must have been,’ replied the man, with a note of sympathy. ‘And then what did you do?’

‘I arsk yer!’ answered Ben.

‘No, I’m asking you!’

‘Eh? Oh! Well, I come over ’ere.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cos ’e was over there.’

‘It sounds a good reason.’

‘You bet it was a good reason. If yer lookin’ fer a ’ero, guv’nor, it ain’t no good lookin’ at me! And arter that, the police car comes along, and now you’ve got the lot.’

‘No, there’s one more thing,’ said the man, lowering his eyes from Ben’s face.

‘Wot?’ asked Ben.

‘The thing you’ve got in your hand,’ responded the man. ‘How did you get hold of that?’

Now Ben lowered his own eyes, also.

‘Lumme, ’ave I still got it?’ he muttered. Clutched in his fingers was the ugly little skullpin. ‘Well, it ain’t my pickcher!’

‘Where did you find it?’

‘On the ground. By the dead bloke. I was jest ’andin’ it back to ’im when I fahnd out—’

He stopped short and shivered, recalling the unsavoury moment.

‘When you found out that he was past needing it?’ queried the man.

‘That’s it, guv’nor.’

‘But how did you know it was his?’

‘I didn’t know. Come ter that, I don’t know. But yer puts two and two tergether, doncher, so I jest thort it might be, seein’ as ’ow it was next to ’is boot, and thinkin’, don’t fergit, that ’e belonged to one o’ them Suissicide Clubs.’

The man nodded, and regarded the pin meditatively.

‘Yes, it was his,’ he said.

‘Then wotcher arskin’ me for?’ demanded Ben.

‘I didn’t ask you if it was his, I asked you how you knew it was his. It was in his coat. I expect it must have dropped out.’

‘Well, I don’t want it in my coat!’ declared Ben emphatically. ‘Yer can ’ave it fer a birthday present.’

But the man did not take the offering. Instead he continued to regard it for a few seconds, and then raised his eyes again to Ben’s face.

‘In your coat,’ he murmured. ‘That’s an idea!’

‘Oh! Well, I ain’t ’avin’ the idea!’ retorted Ben. ‘And if yer’ve finished with me, can I go?’

The man made no answer. He seemed to be thinking hard. Suddenly it occurred to Ben that perhaps he was entitled to ask a question.

‘Wotcher kill ’im for, guv’nor?’ he inquired.

‘It was self-defence,’ said the man.

‘Ah—’e went fer yer?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Why?’

‘Let’s say—a guilty conscience. I told you he was a wrong ’un.’

‘Yus. Well, if ’e went fer yer, they can’t ’ang yer.’

‘Thanks for the consolation. But if they’d wanted to hang me, would those bobbies have left me behind?’

‘So they wouldn’t!’

‘Getting wise?’

‘Yer mean, yer a ’tec?’

The man nodded. ‘But even detectives make mistakes sometimes—’

‘Go on!’

‘—and I showed myself a bit too soon. Don’t ask any more questions for the moment. Just stand by. I’m thinking. Maybe—you can help me.’

‘’Ow luvverly!’ murmured Ben.

A new sense of discomfort began to enter into him. He was no longer afraid of this man. He was no longer threatened by either a revolver or the gallows. But he was threatened by something else—something that lurked in the grinning little skull he was holding, and the detective’s last words, and the depressingly likeable quality of the detective’s eyes. He was the sort of man you might easily make a silly fool of yourself for. Yes, you wanted to be careful of him, or you’d promise yourself into a pack of trouble!

‘Got somethink to tell yer, guv’nor,’ said Ben.

‘What?’ asked the detective.

‘I’m a mug. I ain’t no good at ’elpin’.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Well, see, I knows meself better. The on’y thing I’m really good at’s runnin’ away.’

‘Many a useful man begins by running away.’

‘Yus, but I’ve never stopped.’

‘You’re stopping now.’

‘Eh?’

‘Prove your words. I’m not keeping you. Run away. Pop off!’

‘Lumme, ’e’s doin’ me!’ thought Ben, wretchedly. ‘I toljer ’e would.’

‘You see, I know you better than you know yourself,’ continued the detective, after a pause. ‘I’m quite sure you know how to run away—’

‘I’ll die runnin’!’

‘—but if there’s any solid reason, you stand firm. You used one of my favourite expressions just now. “Stick it out.” Well, suppose I told you that, if you stick this out, you may bring off something that will make all the folk in Scotland Yard touch their hats to you every time you pass—’

‘Go on!’

‘—and that might bring you in, say, a fifty pound note at the end?’

‘’Ere, ’old me!’ gasped Ben.

The detective laughed softly. ‘Listen—I’m going to tell you a little story,’ he said.

‘I’ll bet it’s ’orrible!’

‘But you’d like to hear it?’

‘No. Go on.’

‘The fellow you spoke to and who has just been taken away had an appointment to meet somebody on this bridge between two and half-past. He was going to be identified by his rags and that skull-pin in your hand. I don’t know who the somebody is, but I do know that if I can track him to his source—that’s my present job—I’m on to a big thing.’

‘Yus, but—’

‘Wait till I’ve finished. What I’m going to propose to you is this. The somebody hasn’t turned up yet. Will you wait on this bridge, with that ugly brute of a pin in your coat, at the spot where you spoke to the late lamented, till half-past two—’

‘Late ’oo?’

‘The chap who’s dead. Nothing may happen. In that case the fee will have to be reduced, but you’ll still be on to a fiver for the easiest job you’ve ever had. But something may happen. The somebody may turn up, and be duped by your rags and your pin. In that case—Ben—if you play your cards cleverly and “stick it out,” eh?—the somebody may cart you back to the very source I’m looking for, and you will earn your couple of ponies.’

Ben wiped his forehead.

‘I admit it won’t be pleasant. But there will be glory and cash at the end of it—and, of course, I’ll be following you and looking after you—with this—!’

He raised his revolver again and, with grim and unappreciated humour, directed it towards Ben. Ben ducked involuntarily. An instant later the detective dropped to the ground, a crumpled heap.

Ben stared, stunned. ‘Wot’s ’appened to me?’ he wondered. The thing had been too swift and silent and unbelievable to have occurred outside a suddenly distorted brain. His mind ceased to function. Then he experienced a sensation as though he were coming out of gas. Truth developed out of numbness, and for several seconds he saw nothing, and thought of nothing, but the helpless, limp form of a young man whose eager voice still echoed in his ears, and whose friendly eyes had conveyed him out of terror into human warmth … He looked up to find other eyes upon him. The eyes of a beautiful woman in a dark, close-fitting coat.

She was standing beside a closed car. Had the car slipped up from the ground? He had not heard its approach. It had come as silently as the bullet. Or perhaps emotion had throbbed too insistently in his ears …

‘Quick!’ ordered the beautiful woman. ‘There’s not a moment!’

The door of the car was open. Ben looked at it; then at her; and then once more at the motionless heap on the ground.

‘Dead?’ said Ben thickly.

‘Quite,’ answered the woman. Her voice was low and rich, but as pitiless as cold steel.

‘Are you coming?’

Ben raised his face from death to life. Even in this dimness the woman’s eyes were dazzling. Ben’s heart turned black.

He nodded.

‘That’s right, miss,’ he murmured. ‘I’m comin’.’




2 (#uf15cc85b-7b42-5866-a77c-d57425d655fa)

The Dark Journey (#uf15cc85b-7b42-5866-a77c-d57425d655fa)


The blackness in Ben’s heart was reflected in the car. The blinds were drawn, and as the car shot forward he found himself travelling in a darkness that seemed to creep right up to him and touch him.

By his side was the beautiful woman. Even in this enveloping darkness that affected both sight and soul he remained conscious of her beauty, just as he had been conscious of it while staring at death. It brushed his ragged sleeve as the car swung abruptly round a corner. It whispered to him through the fragrance of scent. It electrified the black atmosphere. Ben was not impervious to beauty, and he could stare with incoherent appreciation at a sunset, or watch little children dancing to a piano-organ, or pause, futilely desirous, at the photograph of a naughty chorus girl wrapped round a pound of cheese. But he hardened himself against the beauty he was now encountering, for it presided in enemy territory.

Ahead of him, driving, was another figure. A big, smudgy figure in a large overcoat. There was no beauty in this dim outline. It was sinister and forbidding, and reminded Ben of Carnera. He found himself wondering how long, if it came to a fight, he would be able to stand up against that massive frame. He worked it out at five seconds less six.

But the big figure in the large overcoat had another kind of tussle on at the moment. Emerging suddenly from his dazed thoughts, Ben became conscious of it when the car took another violent curve that brought the woman’s shoulder hard against his own. He heard a shout. The car swerved. He heard a shot. The car accelerated dizzily. Another corner. Straight again. Another corner. Straight again. Plop! Ting! Two little holes. One in the small window in the back of the car, one in the windscreen. A straight line between the two holes separated, and cleared by three inches, two heads.

‘All right, Fred?’ inquired the owner of one of the heads, coolly; while the owner of the other head thought, less coolly, ‘Lumme!’

The big figure in the large overcoat nodded. The car flew on.

‘And you?’ asked the woman, turning to Ben.

It was the first time she had addressed Ben since they had entered the car. ‘Now wot I’ve gotter do,’ reflected Ben, ‘is to pertend it ain’t nothink, like ’er!’ Aloud he responded, with elaborate carelessness:

‘Corse! ’Oo minds a little thing like that?’

She smiled. He could not see the smile, but he felt it. It came to you, like her scent.

‘Item, courage,’ were her next words. ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve got that, for you’ll need it.’

‘’Ooray,’ thought Ben.

‘But, after all,’ she went on, ‘one expects courage from those who have been awarded the D.S.O.’

‘’Oo’s that?’ jerked Ben.

‘Distinguished Skull Order.’ She touched his gruesome pin with a slender finger. ‘You must tell me one day what you got it for. I expect you’ve a nice little selection of bedtime stories. But have you ever been shot at twice in five minutes before? You have to thank our driver for saving you the first time.’

‘Eh? When was the fust time?’ blinked Ben.

He couldn’t remember it, and the notion that he was under any obligation to the driver was not one that went to his heart. When had the ugly brute saved him?

‘Don’t play poker-face with me!’ retorted the woman. ‘You know as well as I do!… Oh, but of course—I see what you mean. The detective didn’t actually shoot at you—he was merely going to. Well, Fred was a fool to interfere. If you’d got in a mess, it was your affair to get out of it. However he lost his head, so I hope you’ll prove worth the risk he took by not losing yours!’

Ben’s mind swung back to the instant just before the detective had fallen. The detective had raised his revolver. The driver of the approaching car—this hulking brute a couple of feet ahead—had seen and misinterpreted the action. He had fired. The detective had dropped. And, for this, Ben had to thank him!

‘One day I’ll thank ’im in a way ’e won’t fergit!’ decided Ben.

Meanwhile, he must keep cool, and organise the few wits he possessed. He would have to display a few of those wits, to justify membership of the Distinguished Skull Order!

‘Ah—then it wasn’t you wot fired the gun?’ he murmured. ‘It wasn’t you wot killed ’im?’

‘I never lose my head,’ answered the woman, with a contemptuous glance towards the driver’s back.

‘I didn’t ’ear no bang,’ said Ben.

‘There wasn’t any bang,’ replied the woman.

‘Oh—one o’ them things,’ nodded Ben. ‘That’s the kind wot I uses. Orl bite and no bark!’

The driver shifted impatiently in his seat.

‘Do you suppose you could bark a little less?’ he growled. ‘We aren’t out of the wood yet!’

‘Keep your nerve, Fred,’ observed the woman calmly. ‘We’re keeping ours. I rather like our new recruit’s Oxford accent.’

Lumme, she was cool! Ben had to concede her that. But so were snakes. They could stay still for an hour. And then—bing!

A minute later, while a police whistle sounded faintly in the distance, the car turned up a by-street and stopped. The woman opened the door and leapt out with the speed of a cat. Ben followed obediently. The driver remained in his seat.

‘Be with you in five minutes,’ the driver muttered.

The whistle sounded again, not quite so distantly.

‘No, you won’t, Fred,’ said the woman. ‘Five hours, at least!’

‘Oh! What’s the idea?’

‘That you use the wits God is supposed to have given you. If you can’t shake off the police, you’re no good to me.’

‘Well, haven’t I—?’

She held up a hand. The whistle sounded a third time, closer still.

‘Listen, and don’t argue! That car’s been marked, and you’re wanted for murder. Both unhealthy. I’m not recognising you till you’ve left the car in a ditch forty miles away. Have you got that?’

‘Do I leave myself in the ditch with the car?’

‘That’s a question of personal choice.’

‘Suppose I’m caught?’

‘Then I certainly won’t recognise you. But it’s not your habit to be caught.’

‘All right—suppose I’m not caught?’

‘You’ll change your appearance.’

‘And then?’

‘Then you can come home to mother, darling, and she’ll give you a—’

‘What?’

‘A nice new pinafore.’

She smiled, and suddenly the driver grinned. ‘She can twist ’im rahnd ’er finger!’ decided Ben. ‘On’y got to show ’er teeth!’

He wondered what would happen if he gave the sudden shout that was bursting for expression inside him. Would the woman still remain cool and collected? More important, would the chauffeur lose his head a second time and add another capital crime to his sheet?

But it was not fear of these things, though undoubtedly he feared them, that urged Ben to restrain his violent impulse. It was the memory of the detective lying on the bridge. Ben was carrying on for the detective. He was in his official shoes—a detective, now, himself! And he meant to remain one until he had done all his predecessor had set out to do—and a little bit more!

The woman raised her head sharply. A car had turned abruptly into the next street at racing speed.

‘You’ll lose your pinafore,’ said the woman.

‘Will I!’ retorted the chauffeur.

In a flash he had vanished.

‘The cleverest driver and the biggest fool in the kingdom,’ murmured the woman.

Ben felt her magnetic fingers on his sleeve. A queer collaboration, those perfect nails upon his threadbare cloth! Guided by the fingers, he moved into the darkness of a doorway. He was used to doorways. He had sheltered in them, pondered in them, shivered in them, dried in them, eaten cheese in them, slept in them, but he had never learned to love them. There was always a haunting ignorance of what lay on the other side. This doorway, for instance. From what was it separating him? People sleeping? People listening? Rats? Emptiness? Dust?…

The racing car came whizzing round the corner. Thoughts of the doorway melted into a confusing consciousness of speed and scent in conflict. The speed of the car and the scent of the woman. Movement chasing immobility. Immobility out-witting movement. The scent had never seemed more insistent that at this moment. Inside the car it had seemed natural. Out in a chilly street there was something unreal about it. Like sandwiches after the party’s over …

Swish! The police-car whizzed by. The metallic hum rose to a shriek, decreased, and faded out into a memory.

‘And that’s that,’ said the woman.

‘You fer the brines,’ muttered Ben, deeming it the time for a little flattery.

‘What about your brains?’ she asked.

Ben used them, and touched the little skull that adorned his lapel.

‘Would I be wearin’ this ’ere skelington if I ’adn’t none?’ he replied.

‘I don’t expect you would.’

‘Betcher life I wouldn’t!’

‘What have you done to earn it?’

What had he done? Lumme! What was he supposed to have done? In the absence of any knowledge regarding his back history, he decided to generalise.

‘Yer know that bloke wot you called Fred, miss?’ he said.

‘I’ve heard of him,’ agreed the woman.

‘I expeck ’e’s done a bit?’

‘You’ve had some evidence of that.’

‘Eh? Yus! Well, if yer was to tike orl ’e’s done and if yer was to put it alongside o’ wot I’ve done, yer’d lose it!’

‘Really?’ smiled the woman.

‘That’s a fack,’ answered Ben.

‘Then you don’t mind killing people?’

‘Eh?’

‘I said, you don’t mind murder?’

‘It’s me fav’rit ’obby.’

‘Then come inside, and I may show you how to indulge in your hobby,’ said the woman. And, producing a Yale key, she inserted it in the door.




3 (#ulink_ce073a5c-e31e-5fe1-a676-bd3013f22adb)

Questions without Answers (#ulink_ce073a5c-e31e-5fe1-a676-bd3013f22adb)


As the key slipped into the lock and turned, Ben rebelled against his own heroism. What was he doing all this for? What would he gain out of it? Why did he not swing round and run, while he still had a chance? Once he was within this house—and the door was already swinging inwards, widening its mouth to receive him—there would be little chance of escape. Apparently he was going in to kill somebody; or, failing that, to be killed himself! Neither alternative brought any comfort to his soul.

Yes, that was what he would do! Turn and run for it. A couple of leaps, then a quick sprawl flat for the bullet—there was bound to be a bullet—then a pancake slide, then up and repeat, and then bing round the corner! One, two, three—go!

But he did not go. The power of a live woman or of a dead man held him there, and when the live woman touched his shoulder and the dead man watched to see how he would respond, he walked ahead of her into the yawning black gap, and heard the door close behind him with a soft click.

He had wondered what lay on the other side of the door. Well, now here he was—and no wiser! Blackness lay all around him; a blackness more terrifying, though he could not have explained why, than the blackness inside the car. The space inside the car had been confined. The space here was suffocating.

He heard the woman groping. He decided that conversation would give the best appearance of a courage that was not there.

‘Feelin’ fer the light?’ he asked.

‘We don’t need a light,’ replied the woman.

‘Oh, don’t we?’ murmured Ben. ‘Then ’ow do we see?’

‘We’ll see in a minute,’ she answered.

Now she was pressing something. A faint metallic drone responded. It seemed to come from heaven—if heaven still existed. Gradually it descended from the distant elevation, growing more distinct each second. A dim radiance appeared, gleaming through metal slats. ‘Corse, it’s a lift,’ thought Ben.

The lift reached their level and stopped. The drone ceased. A perfect hand reached over Ben’s shoulder—the woman was keeping studiously behind him—and pushed the gate aside.

‘What are you waiting for?’ she asked.

‘’Oo’s waitin’?’ retorted Ben.

He stepped in. The woman followed him and closed the gate. She pressed a button. The lift began to ascend, obeying a little finger that had power over the animate as well as the inanimate.

‘Which department are we goin’ to?’ inquired Ben. ‘Gimes and toys?’

‘You’re rather amusing,’ answered the woman.

‘Yus, reg’ler Charlie Chaplin. I mike the Chimber of ’Orrors larf.’

‘Do you make your victims laugh?’

‘That’s right. Tell ’em a limerick and kill ’em.’

The journey in the lift seemed endless, and the endlessness was accentuated by the fact that there were no glimpses of intermediate floors. The lift travelled up a long, unbroken shaft, giving Ben the sense that they would eventually emerge out of a large chimney.

‘’Ow much longer?’ he asked.

As he put the question the lift stopped. He stared at a blank wall beyond the metal gate.

‘Lumme, we’ve stuck!’ he muttered.

‘No, we haven’t,’ said the woman. ‘Turn round.’

He turned, and realised for the first time that there was another gate on the other side. It slid open as he stared at it, and so did a polished door. Now he stared into a luxurious little hall, with a soft purple carpet and heavily shaded lights. The rich comfort of the hall gave it a thoroughly unmurderous appearance … No, he wasn’t so sure. There was something sinister in the very softness of the carpet, something brooding in the stillness … Don’t be silly! Of course the place was still! You didn’t expect to see chairs and tables jumping about, did you?

‘Aren’t you going to move?’ asked the woman.

‘That’s right,’ answered Ben, jerking forward. ‘I was jest admirin’ of it, like.’

She followed him out, closed the gate, and slid the polished wooden door across. There was now no sign of the lift, for the door resembled the panelled wall on either side. They stood and faced each other in another world.

‘Do you approve?’ she inquired, with cynical amusement in her eyes.

‘’Ome from ’ome,’ replied Ben.

‘That’s satisfactory, since it may be your home for some little while. You know, of course, that you’ll be staying here till your next journey?’

‘Eh?’

‘Is your hearing bad?’

‘No. It’s a ’abit. So there’s goin’ to be another journey, is there?’

‘You didn’t suppose you were engaged for a short joy-ride in a car, did you?’

She spoke a little impatiently, but Ben guessed it would be a mistake to appear cowed.

‘If that was a joy-ride,’ he observed, ‘give me a chunk o’ misery. When do I start on this other journey?’

‘When I tell you.’

‘When’ll that be?’

‘Tomorrow—the next day—next week—next year. You’ll know when it happens.’

‘Wot—yer means I’ve gotter sleep ’ere?’

‘Of course! I gather already that apparent denseness is a part of your particular method, and I don’t say it’s a bad idea. I was told you were an unusual man. But you can shed your denseness with me, if you don’t mind, and save a lot of time. Now I’ll show you your room—and remember this instruction. You are to go into no other.’

‘Yus, but I ain’t brought my perjamers,’ remarked Ben.

She led him across the purple carpet to a passage. The passage was also carpeted, and their feet made no sound as they went along it. They passed two doors, one on each side. Ben strained his ears, but heard nothing behind the doors. No one came out of them.

Were he and the woman alone in the place? The evidence pointed to it.

He risked a leading question.

‘Orl the fambily asleep?’ he asked.

The question produced no reply. She was depressingly uncommunicative. They reached the end of the passage. Its termination was another door. She pointed to it.

‘Go in there,’ she ordered, ‘and don’t come out till you’re called.’

‘Do I put me boots out?’ he inquired.

‘Listen!’ she answered. ‘You’ve begun well, and I think you will do. There may be times when I will even enjoy your humour. But bear this in mind. You haven’t been engaged to play in a comedy.’

Whereupon she opened the door, pushed him in, and then closed the door. An instant later he heard the key turn.

‘Orl right!’ muttered Ben, while he listened for her retreating footsteps and heard none; the soft carpet gave away no secrets. ‘If it ain’t going to be no comedy fer me, it ain’t goin’ to be one fer you, neither!’

He rebelled against her abrupt departure. She had not even stopped to switch on the light. He stretched out his hand for the switch, touched something cold, and jumped away. He jumped into something soft, and jumped back. The cold thing was merely the doorknob, and the soft thing was only the side of a bed, but in the dark all things are horrible when you are not feeling at your best. It took him five seconds to recover.

He stretched out his hand again, more cautiously this time, for he was not certain of his exact position and he did not want to establish abrupt contact with any other objects. His position being quite exact, he touched the doorknob a second time, proved its identity, and worked his fingers north-westwards. It was good navigation. The fingers came to port at another cold thing. The electric light switch.

‘Got yer!’ murmured Ben.

He worked the switch. His only reward was the sound of the click. No light came on.

‘Narsty,’ he decided.

Leaving the door, he carefully retraced his way to the bed he had leapt against. He wanted to sit down. His knees weren’t feeling very good. But just as he was about to sit down—he was actually in process of descending—it occurred to him that somebody might be in the bed. This caused a rapid change of direction, and he sat down on the floor.

Well, for the moment, he would stay on the floor. When you’re on the floor you have had your bump, and you can’t bump any lower. Besides, by remaining where he was he would avoid the necessity of feeling the bed and perhaps finding something. Thus he took his rest on the carpet, and from this humble level set himself to think. His thinking shaped itself into a series of unanswerable questions.

‘Fust. ’Oo’s this ’ere woman?’

He stared into the darkness ahead of him, and the darkness remained uninformative.

‘Second. ’Oo am I?’

He could make more progress here, though not sufficient. He was the dead bloke he had spoken to on the bridge. And the woman had engaged him for some job. But if she had never seen him before, and had to identify him by a skull-pin, where had she engaged him from? A Murderers’ Registry Office?

‘Nex’. Wot is the job?’

Murdering certainly seemed to be connected with it. Had she not told him so, in effect, on the doorstep? Of course, that might have been just a bit of back-chat. She was a puzzle, she was—no knowing how to take her. And then do you engage people to kill each other at so much an hour, like sweeping a room? Go on!

Just the same, she had implied that this was not going to be a comedy, and with that Ben very earnestly agreed. Whatever her job was, he had a job of his own, and he was going to hang on to it till kingdom come. And it probably would come. But he could not complete his job till he knew hers. So what was it?

The darkness refused to tell.

‘Nex’. Wot abart this journey?’

Blank.

‘When’s it goin’ to start?’

Blank.

‘Where’s it goin’ to be to?’

Blank.

‘’Ow am I goin’ to git out o’ this ’ouse, s’posin’ I want to?’

Blank.

‘Yus, and wot’s goin’ on in this ’ouse? That’s the fust thing, ain’t it? Wot’s goin’ on?’

This time he received an answer startlingly, but though it was illuminating it merely threw light upon himself. A thin beam shot across the room, played on him for an instant, and vanished.

He leapt to his feet, to be out of its path if it reappeared. He stood stock-still in the new spot to which he had leapt. For five seconds nothing happened. Then the beam shot across the room again, picked him out as before, and vanished as before. It was following him.

‘Lumme, it’s one o’ them death rays!’ he thought, palpitating. A second thought was more comforting. ‘Then why ain’t I dead? So I ain’t!’

A sound outside the door switched his mind to a fresh unpleasantness.

‘She’s still outside!’ he reflected. ‘She’s bin there orl the time, listenin’. Crikey, ’ave I bin torkin’ in me think?’

The key turned. The door slowly opened. Once more the thin streak of light revealed Ben’s features. Its source was an electric torch, held in the hand of a tall, thin, shadowy figure.




4 (#ulink_e36893cc-e41c-52d3-9464-fa45ab0f7a9b)

The Man in the Next Room (#ulink_e36893cc-e41c-52d3-9464-fa45ab0f7a9b)


‘Good-evening, Mr Lynch,’ said a soft, effeminate voice. ‘That is, I take it you are Mr Lynch?’

Ben also took it that he was, and struggling to conceal his fright, he replied, with hoarse gruffness:

‘That’s me!’

‘It is a sweet name,’ went on the soft voice. It reminded one vaguely of dressmaking. ‘Almost too sweet to believe. So perhaps, after all, we need not believe it?’

‘Eh?’

‘I expect you have chosen it to indicate your habits?’

A thin, ghostly hand moved up to the speaker’s collarless neck, engaging it in a pale and flabby clasp.

‘The last one called himself Churchyard, but I always thought that was a grave mistake. It proved prophetic. Yes.’

‘I s’pose you know wot yer torkin’ abart?’ inquired Ben.

The visitor’s attitude was not balm to the spine, but at least he did not appear immediately menacing, and this circumstance assisted the process of recovery.

‘You,’ he answered. ‘Mr Harry Lynch. You will look charming one day in wax. Meanwhile, I am very pleased to meet you in the flesh and to welcome you to our little home. Do you like it?’

‘Well, I ain’t seen much of it,’ remarked Ben.

‘You will see more of it.’ He had been standing in the doorway, but now he suddenly entered, closing the door quietly behind him. ‘Perhaps more than you want, but that is only a guess. I spend a lot of my time guessing. Life is terribly boring, apart from its occasional highlights—yes, there are occasional highlights—and you must fill in the time with some occupation. Even staying in bed tires you, after a certain number of hours. Once I played golf. Yes, really. I got so I could hit the ball. But you can’t play golf here. So I guess. I guessed right about Mr Churchyard. Do you mind if I examine you a little more closely? You seem an unusually interesting specimen.’

Once more the electric torch—the only source of illumination—nearly blinded Ben.

‘’Ere, I’ve ’ad enough o’ that!’ exclaimed Ben.

‘Yes, I hope you will forgive me for having used my private peepholes. They are in the wall. My room is next to yours. Isn’t that nice? But it will be better—do you mind?—if you speak a little more quietly.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, it’s rather late, isn’t it? Now, then, your face. Yes, I do like it. Not classic, of course. Not aesthetic. But—as I have already implied—manna for wax. And you can see it on the front page of a newspaper, with interesting titbits under it. I do a lot of reading.’

‘Yus, well, that’s enough abart my fice,’ growled Ben. He disliked the analysis, and he was sure Mr Harry Lynch would have objected also. ‘Wot abart your fice?’

‘Oh, certainly.’ The torch swung round, and the visitor’s chin became grotesquely illuminated. Above the chin were a weak mouth, very pale cheeks, and light blue eyes. The crowning hair was yellow-gold; perfectly waved. ‘Not your fancy, eh?’

‘I saw worse once,’ replied Ben.

‘How you must have suffered,’ sighed the visitor. ‘Personally, I like my face. I spend a lot of time looking at it. My theory is that you either attend to your appearance, or you do not. No half-measures. I attend to it. My life is different from yours, but, having accepted it—and again there are no half-measures—I am quite as happy as you, or a politician, or a member of the Stock Exchange, before we all go to hell. Now tell me something else. This is important. What do you think of your hostess?’

‘Ah, well, there you are,’ answered Ben noncommittally, while trying to work out what Harry Lynch’s opinion should be.

‘Am I?’ murmured the visitor. ‘I wonder! I see you believe in caution. You may be right—especially to one who has not been introduced and who has peepholes in walls. Do you always sit on the floor, by the way? I may be a policeman. Only I am not a policeman. If I were, I should be very careful not to put the idea into your head. My name is Sutcliffe. No relation to the Yorkshire Sutcliffe. Cricket tires me. Stanley Sutcliffe. Sometimes our hostess calls me Mr Sutcliffe. Then I call her Miss Warren. Sometimes she calls me Stanley. Then I call her Helen. sometimes—in strict private—she calls me Stan. What I call her then is not for your ears. Are we better acquainted? I hope so. I am feeling rather tired, and want to get back to bed. I hope you like my dressing-gown. But what I am asking you is whether you like your hostess?’

‘She’s a good looker,’ replied Ben.

‘She is certainly a good looker. She has one look that is so good it melts me. Be careful.’

‘It ’asn’t melted me.’

‘I don’t expect you have seen it yet.’

‘It won’t melt me when I does!’

‘I wish I could still paint. I used to, you know. Futuristic. But I gave it up. I found the brushes so heavy. I’ve given up a lot of things.’ His pale blue eyes grew sad. ‘I would like to paint you. I am sure we could startle Art between us. Your face must be preserved somehow!’

‘Yus, well, we’re torkin’ of Miss Warren’s fice,’ Ben reminded him, secretly grateful for the valuable information of her name.

‘Ah—Miss Warren’s face,’ murmured Stanley Sutcliffe. ‘Yes. Miss Warren’s face.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Dangerous, Mr Lynch. Dangerous. Why, even—’ He paused, and opened his eyes. ‘But it will not melt you, eh?’

‘Nothink melts me,’ asserted Ben. ‘Not even when me victims ’oller!’

‘Mr Churchyard made the same boast,’ smiled Mr Sutcliffe sympathetically. ‘Standing in the very spot you are standing in. “She can’t make me do what I don’t agree to do,” he said. And he would agree to most. Then she came in—’ He paused again, and turning to the door, directed his torch towards it. ‘Well, well, we shall see. Of course, Mr Churchyard was not the first. In my own case, I made no boast. I just gave way at once. Much the simplest. I believe in ease. One day—if we’re allowed the time—we must discuss philosophy.’

‘P’r’aps yer could do with a bit,’ suggested Ben.

‘Perhaps I could, and perhaps I could not,’ replied Mr Sutcliffe thoughtfully. ‘And perhaps, after all, it would be a mistake to discuss it. Discussion is rather fatiguing, though, of course, one can always train. Well, now I have seen you and know what is on the other side of the wall, I shall return to my room. Good-night.’

‘’Ere, ’arf a mo’!’ exclaimed Ben, quickly. ‘If you’ve done, I’ve got a few things I’d like to ask!’

‘Be sure they are few,’ said Mr Sutcliffe, ‘and don’t count on getting answers.’

‘Well—corse, I knows a lot,’ began Ben, cautiously feeling his way. ‘I knows I’ve bin engaged fer a job—’

‘But you don’t know what the job is,’ interposed Mr Sutcliffe, helpfully. ‘No. And you won’t, till she chooses to tell you.’

‘Meanin’ you won’t!’

‘I certainly won’t.’

‘P’r’aps yer can’t?’

‘Perhaps I can’t. Perhaps is such a useful word. It means nothing.’

‘Oh, well—I can wait!’

‘Since you will have to, that is fortunate. I have no doubt, Mr Lynch, that in your own slum, or castle, or service flat, or Soho restaurant, you are the monarch of all you survey—but there is only one monarch here!’

‘Meanin’ Miss Warren?’

‘Meaning Miss Warren.’

‘Well, I’m ’ere to do ’er instrucshuns,’ said Ben, ‘but she can’t twist ’Arry Lynch rahnd ’er little finger!’

‘She can twist Stanley Sutcliffe round her little toe,’ confessed that individual.

‘Then why ain’t you doin’ ’er job?’

Mr Sutcliffe seemed intrigued by the question. He considered it as though this were the first occasion it had occurred to him.

‘I expect I am too gentle,’ he replied, at last. ‘I only know two or three ways of killing people, and of those only one is a certainty.’

‘Oh! Well, what’s wrong with the certainty?’

‘No one knows anything about that but myself.’ He suddenly frowned. ‘And we don’t talk about it … But the real reason,’ he went on, changing the trend of the conversation, ‘is that Miss Warren has other uses for me and likes me to remain at the flat. Do you know, Mr Lynch, I haven’t been out for five months.’

‘Go on!’

‘It’s the truth. And it’s a pity. Or isn’t it? Ease. Comfort. The pleasant passing hours. Omar Khayyám.’ He held up a soft hand and moved the fingers contemplatively. ‘I wonder whether I could still hit the ball?’




5 (#ulink_6c08732b-f483-5d19-bacf-00dcafb57135)

What the Morning Brought (#ulink_6c08732b-f483-5d19-bacf-00dcafb57135)


Ben spent one of the most unpleasant nights of his experience, and the extent of the unpleasantness may be gauged from the circumstance that his nocturnal experience was vast, including coal-bunkers, luggage-vans, dustbins, water-tanks, and once a coffin.

When Mr Stanley Sutcliffe left the room, his strangely flabby atmosphere remained, hanging on the darkness like a nauseous scent. The possibility that his pale blue eye might at any moment be plastered against some invisible peephole assisted the illusion of his continued presence. Helen Warren, at least, was physically beautiful. She could give satisfaction to the senses if not to the soul. Mr Stanley Sutcliffe could not give satisfaction, in Ben’s view, to anything. Not even to a golf ball.

‘Wonner why she ’as ’im arahnd?’ he reflected. ‘Is ’e one o’ them conternental giggerliots?’

Ben had been to Paris, and at a dance-hall had watched anæmic young men perform amorous revolutions with jewelled ladies, the latter usually stout and elderly; and when he had asked what these curious male creatures were, he had been informed. He liked a bit of French, so he had memorised the word.

‘That’s wot ’e is, a giggerliot,’ he decided, ‘and she keeps ’im shut ’ere case ’e runs away. Five months—lumme, no wunner ’e looks like Monday’s cod!’ A nasty thought followed. ‘’Ope she ain’t goin’ ter keep me ’ere five months!’

The probability was happily reduced by the reflection that he would make a very bad giggerliot.

After creeping to the door and discovering that Mr Sutcliffe had relocked it, Ben turned to the bed. The time had come to test it, because he did not want to spend the whole night—or what was left of the night—on the floor. If the spy-holes were used, the procedure would not reflect much credit on Harry Lynch, while even if the spy-holes were not used, the morning light, revealing a comfortable empty bed, would produce humiliation. So he felt his way carefully towards the spot where he believed the bed was, screwed up his courage, raised his fist, and brought it down hard. If anything was on the bed, he was going to get in the first whack.

He whacked air. A second effort, however, was more successful. He whacked a pillow. It yielded with pleasant obedience to his attack, as did the rest of the bedding when the attack was continued rapidly down its complete length … Good! Just a bed. Nothing nasty in it. That was all right, then!

He took off his boots. Or, rather, somebody else’s. They had had quite half-a-dozen previous owners, and the last had discarded them into a ditch beside a dead cat. Ben had left the cat but had taken the boots. Morally one has a right to the surplus contents of a ditch, though technically they may be crown property.

He did not take off his collar because he hadn’t one. It saved time. He did not take off his coat because it was next to nature, and it was risky to sun-bathe when anybody might pop in on you. The same applied to his trousers. Going to bed, with Ben, was taking off your boots; getting up, putting them on again.

He stretched himself out on the bed. Not in it. You can’t spring so far when you take the clothes with you.

Nothing happened saving the constant expectation that something would. He listened for footsteps. He watched for the thin ray of light. The minutes slipped by in nerve-racking uneventfulness and silent blackness. Even the silence and the blackness contributed some special quality to the occasion. He had never known them so utter.

A thought began to worry him before he knew what it was. It materialised into: ‘Blimy, I never looked unner the bed!’

After a period which he estimated at, roughly, ninety-five hours, he drifted into the companion torture of dreams. The last, characteristic of the rest, from which he awoke with a start may be recorded. He was dancing with a skeleton. The skeleton was wearing jewels, and he was the skeleton’s giggerliot. Its bony arms pressed him so hard against its open ribs that they pressed him right inside, and he was struggling to get out when he opened his eyes and found Mr Stanley Sutcliffe smiling at him.

Mr Sutcliffe was still in his dressing-gown and, with the room, was fully revealed for the first time by the light of a bedside lamp.

‘Oi!’ gasped Ben.

‘So you observed before,’ answered Mr Sutcliffe. ‘You say it beautifully.’

Ben screwed up his eyes and then opened them properly while Mr Sutcliffe continued:

‘One day I must write some poems about you. Those I think I could do. Poetry is a sort of last resort when you’ve nowhere else to go. I wish I weren’t so witty. Did you sleep well?’

‘Wot ’ave you come back for?’ demanded Ben.

‘It’s time to get up,’ replied Mr Sutcliffe. ‘I mean, for you to get up.’

‘Go on!’

‘Eight o’clock, Mr Lynch.’

Ben stared. If it was eight o’clock, which seemed impossible anyhow, why wasn’t there some daylight in the room? And where had the lamp come from?

‘You don’t know what you’re doing for me,’ said Mr Sutcliffe. There was no enthusiasm in his tired voice, yet the words had a curious genuineness. ‘You fit right into my hobby. Guessing, you know. I shall guess lots of things about you—till you drift away, like all the others, and become the big, final guess. Yes. But what I’m guessing now is small fry. I just look at your interesting face, and see if I can read behind. You won’t mind if I study you a lot, will you? I’m reading Alice in Wonderland at present, but I find it rather stiff, and I shall put it aside for you. You’re much nicer. And easier. You are wondering now about the light.’

‘Gawd, talk abart talkin’!’ muttered Ben.

‘But am I right?’ insisted Mr Sutcliffe.

‘This time,’ admitted Ben, ‘but p’r’aps yer won’t be nex’!’

‘Well, we’ll wait till the nex’ comes, and meanwhile I will satisfy your curiosity this time. A lamp is useless without those glass globe things. Last night your lamp didn’t have one. This morning I have brought one, so it has.’

‘Oh! Well, wot’s wrong with drawin’ the curtains?’

‘Draw them and see.’

‘Would you like to draw ’em for me?’

‘I should dislike it intensely. I have already been on my feet for a long time for this early hour. I never walk or work unless I have to, and—you may as well know it at once—there is only one person in the world I take orders from, and even she occasionally makes me do more than I think is strictly good for me.’ He stared at the carpet contemplatively. ‘It was she who asked me to come in and wake you.’

‘Yer mean, Miss Warren?’

‘There is only one “she” here.’

‘Well, wot ’ave I bin woke for? Breakfust?’

‘But not, for you, in bed.’

‘Oh!’ It occurred to Ben that Harry Lynch was not asserting himself sufficiently, and he frowned. ‘Well, I git up when I want to, see?’

‘Really?’ murmured Mr Sutcliffe, raising his faint eyebrows. ‘Really? But that is most interesting. Only I am going to guess that you will be very, very wise, Mr Lynch, and will want to get up now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because what Miss Warren wants comes before what you or I want, and what she will want this morning at a quarter-past eight precisely is your presence. I assure you, our wishes, where separate from hers, are Also Rans.’ He sighed. ‘Also Rans. Dear old phrase. I still bet sometimes on paper. Last week I made £170. I think I must bet again today and lose it. Having so much money is rather taxing. Well, Mr Lynch, in a quarter of an hour. The second door on your left. The first is the bathroom.’

He turned to go, but paused at the door.

‘And, by the way, Mr Lynch,’ he added, ‘if that is not your natural colour, I think I should wash.’

This time he did not lock the door after leaving the room. He left the way clear to the bathroom.

But before going to the bathroom to lighten his hue, Ben went to the window and drew aside the heavy curtains. The longed-for daylight that would have mitigated the suffocating atmosphere was blocked out by ironic boards. Now Ben understood the utter darkness and silence of the place.

Were all the windows in the flat blocked up?

The bathroom window was. He scrubbed by artificial light, and the passage by which he walked from his bedroom to the bathroom was illuminated by a soft glow of electricity from the hall beyond. No wonder the atmosphere was atmospherically as well as spiritually heavy!

‘If that bloke’s ’ad five months o’ this without no sun,’ thought Ben, ‘corse ’e’s barmy!’

The unusual ablutions over, he returned to his bedroom and wondered how long he had been out of it. He possessed no watch and he had heard no striking clock, and he was not good at guessing time. It was not going to be easy to hit a quarter-past eight.

‘Say I was in the bedroom at four past,’ he tried to work it out. ‘Orl right. That’s four past. Then say it took me three minutes fer each ’and and a couple fer the ’ead, and then one more when I dropped the soap. Well, that’d mike it—well, whatever it’d be, wouldn’t it, so wot is it?’

He gave it up.

But help was at hand. The door suddenly opened and Mr Sutcliffe’s head came round the crack.

‘Fourteen past,’ announced the head. ‘She likes punctuality.’

Then the head disappeared. Mr Sutcliffe was a tired young man, but he possessed a languid nippiness.

At exactly a quarter-past eight, Ben knocked at the second door on the left. Miss Warren’s voice, richly sleepy, bade him come in.

She was in bed. She wore a deep blue dressing-jacket and a deep blue boudoir cap. The boudoir cap reclined luxuriously against a soft pillow with lace edges, and she radiated an atmosphere of heavy, confident attraction. If there was any confusion, it was not on her side.

‘Don’t be bashful, Mr Lynch,’ she remarked with a faint smile, after a short silence.

‘Eh? ’Oo’s bashful?’ retorted Ben.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve evidently mistaken your expression,’ she answered. ‘Never mind, we’ll soon know each other better. Of course, we’ll have to do something about your clothes. How did you sleep?’

‘Not so bad.’

‘And you needn’t be polite, either. I like to know all my guests are thinking, though I can generally guess without being told. What are your complaints?’

‘Well,’ said Ben, ‘fer one thing, I ain’t uster sleepin’ with me door locked.’

‘And for another thing?’

‘Bein’ spied on! I bar that!’

‘Who has been spying on you, Mr Lynch?’

‘I expeck you know as well as me. The bloke in the next room. ’Ow’d you like it if some ’un sent searchlights through peepholes onter you?’

‘He will do it!’ smiled Miss Warren. ‘I’ll speak to him about it. But the locked door—well, we’ll see. And is that everything?’

‘No,’ replied Ben, refusing to be rushed. He was quite sure Harry Lynch would not have permitted it. ‘I like a bit of air.’

‘I see. The windows are worrying you, too?’

‘Tork abart suffercatin’!’

‘And how about the arrangement of this room? Do you think the bed would be better against another wall? And is the colour-scheme satisfactory? And your shaving-water—what time would you like it brought?’ She was still smiling, but a quality that made Ben wary had entered her voice. Ben’s difficulty was in finding a common denominator between what he felt and what Harry Lynch would have felt. He was struggling with the difficulty now as Helen Warren continued, ‘Now, listen to me, Mr Lynch. I am going to admit at once that I find you a most unusual person, and that, when I have found out a little more about you—and I take no chances, you know—I think you will prove the very man for the difficult job you’ve been engaged for. Because of that I am ready to put up with your—peculiarities, shall we call them?—and as I like novel sensations I am even ready to enjoy certain of them. But while you are in this flat you will not question the rules of this flat—when your own sense cannot supply any reason—and you will keep to the rules of this flat. Now, is that quite clear?’

Ben returned her steady gaze for a little while without replying. ‘She’s watchin’ me,’ he thought, ‘to see ’ow I’m tikin’ it. So ’ow ’ave I gotter tike it?’

Conscious that the moment was a crucial one, he wished some invisible person could have been standing by to advise him. That dead detective, for instance, whose job Ben was carrying on—he would have known how to deal with this dangerous, soul-searching woman! Yes, and she was searching her new recruit’s soul now, all right … Then, all at once, the new recruit remembered something.

Once, on a cannibal island, he had been taken for a god by the natives. He had maintained the convenient but uncomfortable illusion, actually using it for the betterment of the island before effecting his escape, by periodically pretending to himself that he was a god. Only by yielding to the part was he able to understand and act the part. Now he would have to yield, when in doubt, to the part of Harry Lynch, to discover how he would behave.

The mental gymnastics of slipping into the skin of a crook and potential murderer were less attractive than those of entering the more ethereal surfaces of a deity. The latter gave you a sort of a glow, like. The former gave you a sort of a shudder, like. ‘Yer can’t git away from it,’ reflected Ben. ‘I fair ’ates blood!’ But it was for the blood of a dead detective he would now be assuming that red was his favourite colour, and that thought would sustain him.

‘Don’t keep me waiting, Mr Lynch, will you?’ said the woman who was watching him.

‘I do when I wanter,’ replied Mr Lynch.

‘Really?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Perhaps I’d better remind you, then, that your predecessor wanted to.’

‘Prederwotter?’

‘I must remember your dictionary is limited. The man I engaged before you.’

‘Oh! Wot ’appened to ’im?’

‘Something I hope will not happen to you.’

‘I’ll see it don’t. I mike things ’appen to other people, and I knows ’ow to tike care they don’t ’appen to me. Yer don’t think yer’ve engaged Little Lord Fowntleroy, do yer?’

‘I confess I don’t see the resemblance.’

‘I’ve twisted more necks than I can cahnt.’ He looked at her neck. ‘There was one they couldn’t untwist. Orl right. That’s me!’

Helen Warren may have been impressed, but she was not alarmed. Slipping her hand under the lace-edged pillow, she brought out a little revolver and laid it on the silk counterpane.

‘And that’s me. So now you know, Mr Lynch, what will happen to you if you don’t keep to the rules of this flat. By the way, do you intend to?’

For an instant, while her firm slender fingers tapped the revolver—the murderous weapon made an incongruous gleam on the attractive counterpane—he almost forgot he was Harry Lynch, twister of necks, for he knew that Helen Warren was ruthless and would suffer no heart-pangs if she popped him off. But the instant passed, and a wave of personal indignation helped him to maintain the role he was playing.

‘If you think I git palpertashuns when I sees a popgun,’ he answered, ‘yer wrong!’

‘Which is not a reply to my question,’ she observed. ‘I asked whether you were going to obey the rules?’

‘Yus, I know you did.’

‘Well?’

‘P’r’aps it derpends.’

‘On what?’

‘On if there’s any more. ’Ave I ’eard them orl?’

‘No, you have not heard them all,’ she said. ‘There are a few more.’

‘Ah!’ muttered Ben. ‘Let’s ’ave ’em!’

‘You are not really a lady’s man, Mr Lynch, are you?’

‘I treat ’em right when they treat me right.’

‘How fair! I am that way with people myself. Well, one of the rules you’ve not heard yet is that nobody leaves this flat without permission.

‘Another is that, although I may permit others to be humorous, when it amuses me, the others must understand that I myself am quite serious.’

‘Oh!’

‘Another is that, if the lift-bell rings, I answer it.’

‘That’s O.K. I ain’t bin engaged fer a butler.’

‘You have been engaged, Mr Lynch, to do whatever you are told to do—which brings me to the last rule, and the reason why I have sent for you. You are receiving a pound a day retaining fee, free board and lodging till the time comes for your job, expenses during the job, and fifty pounds when you have completed the job. I don’t think you will have to wait long. In fact, you may be sent on the job at any moment. But meanwhile I have a rule against idleness, and though you will not be my butler, you will be my cook and my waiter, and you will begin your duties at once by preparing breakfast for myself and Mr Sutcliffe. We take breakfast in our rooms. The kitchen is the first door on the right beyond the lift. You can’t make a mistake, because all the other doors are locked. Can you make tea and cook eggs?’ She laughed suddenly at his expression, and slipped the revolver back under the pillow. ‘We’re not going to quarrel, Mr Lynch. You’ll find a pound note on the kitchen table, and a slightly more presentable suit than the one you are wearing over a chair. Profit by both, and bring in my breakfast in half an hour. Thank you.’

‘Well, I’m blowed!’ blinked Ben.

‘If that’s all you are, we needn’t worry,’ she replied sweetly. ‘You can boil the eggs. Four minutes.’

Her tone bore a note of definite dismissal. He turned to go. But at the door he paused. What would Harry Lynch’s attitude have been towards boiling eggs?

‘Orl right, we’ll carry on,’ he said, ‘so long as there ain’t no ’ankey-pankey, and so long as I ain’t done out of my proper job. But if you don’t like my cookin’, that’s your funeral, see?’

‘Close the door after you,’ she answered.

Outside he nearly bumped into the pale Mr Sutcliffe. Mr Sutcliffe smiled, and put his finger to his lips.

‘Yes, I was listening,’ he whispered, without shame. ‘I always do.’

‘Corse, you don’t know wot walls are for, do yer?’ frowned Ben.

‘I’ve heard,’ smiled Mr Sutcliffe. ‘They are to conceal us. To imprison us. To protect our little secrets. Terribly in the way. You did quite well, Mr Lynch. I wish you were staying longer. You can do my egg four-and-a-half minutes. Safer. And please, please cut the crusts off the toast.’

He slipped back along the corridor to his bedroom.

Trying to dispel an unpleasant idea that he had strayed into a lunatic asylum and that his job might be to polish off the worst cases when they arrived, Ben made his way across the hall to the first door on the right beyond the lift. The door led to the kitchen, the suit, and the pound note, as predicted.

Thoughtfully, he changed. In spite of the fact that the suit he changed to had holeless pockets and almost made him look respectable, he parted with his old clothes with regret. It seemed as though he were shedding the final remnants of his familiar personality.

The pound note in one of the holeless pockets soothed him a little. He felt he had earned it already, and if things got too hot and he had to escape, it would keep him for a month. Ben could live royally on eightpence a day. But he had no present intention of escaping. Imprisoning him more securely than locks and keys was the ghost of the dead detective, to which he was attached by an invisible chain.

He found the eggs in a small larder. Also tea, bread, butter, condensed milk, and other breakfast accompaniments. In a few minutes, the gas cooker was busy.

‘’Allo—wozzat?’ he muttered suddenly.

A faint, buzzing sound had come from the hall. The lift?

‘Well, it ain’t my bizziness,’ he reflected. ‘I ain’t on the door!’

He stared at the eggs reclining placidly in their hot bath, envying their placidity. He tried to think only of the eggs, but found he was thinking more of the lift. The buzzing sound came again.

‘Ain’t nobody goin’?’ he wondered, nervily.

The eggs recaptured his attention for a few moments. How long had they been in? One minute or two? The lift had confused the count. Actually it was three.

Then he forgot the eggs again. Someone was in the hall; he heard a faint, filmy rustle. He also heard the dim whirr of the lift’s ascent. Somebody was coming up?… well, why shouldn’t somebody come up?… Only he hoped it wasn’t another lunatic …

He crept to the door. The eggs continued boiling perilously. Curiosity beat him when he heard the lift stop and the gate slide aside. He opened the door a crack, turning the handle very softly, and peeped through.

At first he could see nothing but the back of a blue dressing-gown. Miss Warren was standing between Ben’s nose and the lift, obscuring his view of the person who was just stepping out of it. But after a second the blue back made a little movement that was suspiciously like a start, and the movement altered its position. Now it was no longer between him and the lift, and he could see the person who had just stepped out.

Ben closed the door swiftly, his heart thumping. The visitor was a policeman.




6 (#ulink_e7ecea9e-ba5c-53c7-87d1-99c04c4e0963)

Acid Test (#ulink_e7ecea9e-ba5c-53c7-87d1-99c04c4e0963)


The arrival of the policeman spelt the ruin of the eggs. They were now entirely forgotten in the graver problem that had suddenly presented itself.

‘Wot’s ’e come for?’ speculated Ben anxiously. ‘Yus, and ’oo ’ave I gotter be now? Lynch or meself?’

If the policeman had merely called to make inquiries he had called too soon. Apart from identifying the gang responsible for the detective’s murder (with the actual murderer himself still absent), Ben could not assist, for he had not yet discovered the secret behind the crime. If, on the other hand, the policeman had called to make an arrest, would Ben’s attempt to dissociate himself from the crime be successful? Was it not far more likely that he would be regarded as one of the gang, assuming the role of innocence to save his own skin?

‘This is goin’ ter be narsty,’ decided Ben.

It was easy to guess how the police had got on the track. The chauffeur Fred had been caught, and had given away the address.

‘’Ere, git busy!’ he instructed his numb mind as he stared at the door waiting for it to open. ‘Wot am I goin’ ted say when ’e arsks, “’Oo are you?”’

He imagined the policeman putting the question. Then he imagined himself replying, ‘Bloke called Ben, see?’ As that information did not appear enough, he had to carry the conversation a little farther.

‘Oh, and who’s Ben?’ inquired the imaginary policeman.

‘Chap wot’s tikin’ on a detective’s job,’ answered the imaginary Ben.

‘Who’s the detective?’ asked the imaginary policeman.

‘Well, I don’t know ’is nime,’ said the imaginary Ben.

‘What’s the job?’

‘I can’t say ezackly. See, I’m findin’ aht.’

‘When did the detective give you the job?’

‘Lars’ night.’

‘Where?’

‘On a bridge.’

‘The detective wasn’t murdered, was he?’

‘As a matter o’ fack, ’e was. We was jest fixin’ things up when ’e was shot, so when the people wot shot ’im come along I pertends ter be one of ’em, like wot I was goin’ to any’ow, so’s I could git to know wot they shot ’im for. I’m pertendin’ now, lumme, yer can twig that, carn’t yer?’

Ben tried hard to make his imaginary policeman twig, but he failed miserably. Instead of twigging, the policeman responded:

‘You’re pretending all right, but it won’t wash, Harry Lynch. You’ve got to come along to the station with the others.’

‘’Ere, don’t be silly!’ retorted the imaginary Ben. ‘’Ow can I be ’Arry Lynch? ’Arry Lynch was killed on the bridge afore the detective was!’

‘Oh, no, he wasn’t,’ answered the imaginary policeman. ‘The fellow called Ben was killed on the bridge before the detective was, and you killed him!’

Ben’s brain reeled. He had imagined the conversation to the dizziest limit! Suppose the dead crook was really taken for himself—suppose he had got into the skin of Harry Lynch so tightly that there was no getting out of it? Well, in that case he would have to keep in it, until he had completed the job that would make the Big Five touch their hats to him, and could reclaim his own carcass!

‘Yus, that’s wot I gotter do,’ he decided. ‘I gotter go on bein’ Lynch, and Gawd ’elp me!’

He donned a Lynch-like expression as the door suddenly opened and the policeman walked in.

The policeman was disappointingly large in the close-up, and his own expression, aided by a bristling moustache, was quite as forbidding as Harry Lynch’s. Behind him stood Helen Warren and Stanley Sutcliffe, exchanging anxious glances.

‘Now, then, let’s hear your story!’ began the policeman, without ceremony.

‘Wot, ’ave I done somethink?’ inquired Ben, affecting innocent surprise.

‘What’s your name?’

Just in the nick of time Ben saved himself from tripping over the first question. Harry Lynch would never give the police his name unless he had to. Gazing over the policeman’s massive shoulder, he raised his eyebrows and asked:

‘Wot’s ’e wanter know for? Ain’t yer told ’im?’

He watched Mr Sutcliffe pull a coloured handkerchief from his pocket as the policeman exclaimed truculently:

‘You’ll learn what I want to know for in two ticks, and never mind what they’ve told me. What’s your name?’

‘Brown,’ said Ben, noting the hue of the handkerchief.

Mr Sutcliffe blew his nose appreciatively, but Ben’s mind spun a little. He was Ben pretending to be Lynch pretending to be Brown. If Brown had to pretend to be anybody, he was lost!

‘Brown,’ repeated the policeman.

‘That’s it,’ agreed Ben. ‘Wot yer git at the seaside.’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’ demanded the policeman.

‘Yus, I feel funny,’ returned Ben, ‘bein’ hinterrupted in the middle o’ me work!’

Was he showing the right shade of emotion, the correct degree of temper? It was a problem that would have puzzled the most acute psychologist and the cleverest actor, and Ben was neither. All he banked on was that Harry Lynch must have possessed a pretty sizable temper when it was aroused, but that Harry Lynch was smart enough to keep it under control when—like Ben—he was pretending to be somebody else. ‘Yer know, wot I really want,’ reflected Ben, ‘is a nice long ’ollerday!’ Which, unfortunately, was the very last thing he was destined to get.

‘Oh, so you work, do you?’ observed the policeman, glancing around.

‘I ’aven’t bin arst fer the weekend,’ replied Ben.

‘What sort of work?’

‘Well, seein’ we’re in a kitching, I expeck it’s shoein’ ’orses.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘’Arf-a-nour.’

‘Not in the kitchen, my man! Can’t you answer a thing properly? In your job!’

‘Well, ’ow am I ter know wotcher mean if yer don’t speak pline?’ grumbled Ben, again glancing over the policeman’s shoulder for a hint of the answer that would not conflict with previous evidence.

He had a queer, uncanny sensation, as Miss Warren quickly raised two fingers, that he was being assisted by the spirit of Harry Lynch and that alone he would have shown less cleverness. It was a humiliating thought, although it was redeemed by the knowledge that he was using a dead man’s brains to thwart his living associates.

‘Take your time, won’t you?’ said the policeman.

‘Well, I gotter think, ain’t I?’ retorted Ben. ‘I’ve bin ’ere a cupple o’ years.’

‘Two years, eh?’

‘Two was a cupple when I was a boy.’

‘Since you know as much about two, let’s get on to another sort. Ever heard of two o’clock?’

‘Yus.’




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