J. JEFFERSON FARJEON
The House Opposite

Copyright

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain for Crime Club by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1932

Copyright © Estate of J. Jefferson Farjeon 1932

Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover background images © 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.

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Source ISBN: 9780008155865

Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008155858

Version: 2016-06-28

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Part I: Number Twenty-Nine

Chapter 1: The Caller

Chapter 2: Creaks

Chapter 3: Ben Accepts a Job

Chapter 4: At the Coffee Stall

Chapter 5: The Contents of a Parcel

Chapter 6: A Taste of Death

Chapter 7: The Will of a Woman

Chapter 8: Ben Finds New Quarters

Chapter 9: The Seat

Chapter 10: Back Again!

Chapter 11: What You Can Do When You Matter

Chapter 12: How Not to Kill an Indian

Chapter 13: A Queer Association

Chapter 14: Ben Sees a Murder

Chapter 15: Ben Commits a Murder

Chapter 16: Ben Takes the Plunge

Part II: Number Twenty-Six

Chapter 17: The Spider’s Parlour

Chapter 18: Cocktails in Jowle Street

Chapter 19: Mr Clitheroe’s Big Idea

Chapter 20: Wheels Within Wheels

Chapter 21: Little Hymns of Hate

Chapter 22: The Friendly Surface

Chapter 23: Midnight

Chapter 24: Across the Roof

Chapter 25: Nadine Goes In

Chapter 26: Mahdi Takes Control

Chapter 27: When Morning Came—

Chapter 28: The Performance

Chapter 29: The Terms of Silence

Chapter 30: Ben Gets In

Chapter 31: Outside the Cellar Door

Chapter 32: The Conversation in the Hall

Chapter 33: The Long Wooden Box

Chapter 34: Into the Box

Chapter 35: Out of the Box

Chapter 36: And Life Goes on

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also in This Series

About the Publisher

PART I

1
The Caller

‘GAWD!’ muttered the temporary tenant of No. 29 Jowle Street. ‘That’s done it!’

He was eating cheese. His dining-table was a soap box. His view was peeling wallpaper. And his knife, fork and spoon were eight fingers and two thumbs. Not, of course, that one needs a knife, fork and spoon for cheese. Eight fingers and a couple of thumbs are sufficient for anybody.

Despite his primitive accessories and his faded, dilapidated view, the temporary tenant of No. 29 Jowle Street had been quite content until this moment. He had lived in more empty houses than anyone else in the kingdom, and he knew a good one when he came across it. Beginning with No. 17, he had worked upwards and downwards, numerically, until his addresses had included every number under fifty. The usual method was to enter the houses slowly and to leave them quickly—and he had left the last one very quickly. But No. 29 had suggested a longer stay. Its peeling walls and rotting staircase had whispered comfortingly, ‘No one has been here for years and years, and no one will want to come here for years and years.’ This was the message of welcome one most appreciated …

But, now, this bell!

‘I ’aven’t ’eard it,’ decided the diner. ‘’Cos why? It ain’t rung, see?’

He continued with his cheese. The bell rang again. Again, the cheese halted.

‘Wot’s the good of ’is ringin’ like that when nothink ’appens?’ grumbled the diner. ‘If ’e’d got any sense ’e’d go away and know there was nobody ’ere.’

The bell rang a third time. The diner concluded that Fate was not going to let him have it all his own way. When people rang thrice, you had to decide between the alternatives of letting them in or ’opping it.

You could ’op it, in this case, through an open window at the back. It would be quite easy. On the other hand, it was a nice house and a nasty night. Sometimes boldness pays.

The bell rang a fourth time. ‘Gawd, ain’t ’e a sticker?’ thought the diner, and decided on the policy of boldness.

He had selected for his meal the front room on the second floor. He always liked to be high up, because it made you seem a long way off. Moreover, this was the only room in the house that was furnished. None of the other rooms had any soap boxes at all. Still, there was one disadvantage of being on the second floor. You had to go down two flights of creaking stairs to get to the ground floor, which you didn’t exactly hanker after in the evening. And then, murders generally happened on second floors.

The temporary tenant of No. 29 Jowle Street faced the discomfort of the creaking stairs, however, because he felt he couldn’t stand hearing the bell ring a fifth time, and he felt convinced that, unless he hurried his stumps, it would. He hurried his stumps rather loudly. No harm in being a bit impressive like, was there? He even cleared his throat a little truculently. The world takes you at your own valuation, so you must see it’s more than tuppence.

Reaching the front door, he paused, and at the risk of his impressiveness called:

‘’Oo’s there?’

The bell rang a fifth time. He fumbled hastily with the latch, and threw the door open.

He had vaguely expected an ogre or a fellow with a knife. Instead he found a pleasant-featured young man standing on the doorstep. For an instant they regarded each other fixedly. Then the pleasant-featured young man remarked:

‘Say, you’re a little streak of lightning, aren’t you?’

‘You bin ringin’?’ blinked the little streak of lightning.

‘Only five times,’ answered the caller. ‘Is that the necessary minimum in your country?’

The little streak of lightning didn’t know what a necessary minimum was, but he was interested in the reference to his country. It suggested that it wasn’t the caller’s country. So did the caller’s bronzed complexion. Still, this wasn’t a moment for geography.

‘Wotcher want?’ asked the cockney. ‘No one lives ’ere.’

‘Don’t you live here?’ countered the visitor.

‘Oh! Me?’

‘Yes; you. Who are you?’

‘Caretaker.’

‘I see. You’re taking care of the house.’

‘Yus.’

‘Well, why don’t you do it better?’

‘Wot’s that?’

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yus.’

‘Then why did you say “Wot’s that?”’

‘’Oo?’

The visitor took a breath, and tried again.

‘Our conversational methods seem at some variance,’ he said; ‘but perhaps if we try to like each other a little more we may meet somewhere. When I asked why you didn’t take care of the house better I was referring to its condition. It doesn’t look as though anybody ever took care of it at all.’

‘It ain’t exactly Winsor Castle,’ admitted the tenant.

‘And then, you were the devil of a time answering the bell, weren’t you?’

‘P’r’aps it didn’t ring proper?’

‘I’m sure it rang proper!’

‘Well, and now I’m ’ere proper, so wotcher worryin’ abart?’

‘To tell the truth, old son, I’m worrying about you,’ answered the visitor. ‘Rather queer, that, isn’t it?’

‘If yer like.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I tole yer.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Caretaker.’

‘Oh, yes! So you did! But what’s your name?’

‘Wotcher wanter know for?’

‘Trot it out!’

‘Ben—if that ’elps.’

‘It helps immensely. Well, Ben—’

‘’Ere, gettin’ fermilyer, ain’t yer?’ demanded the cockney. ‘’Oo’s give you permishun ter call me by me fust name?’

‘You haven’t told me your last,’ the visitor reminded him. ‘What is it?’

‘Moosolini.’

‘Thank you. But I think I prefer Ben, if you don’t mind. How long have you been the caretaker here?’

‘Eh?’

‘Who engaged you—?’

‘’Ow long ’ave I gotter stand ’ere answerin’ questions?’ retorted Ben. ‘I’m goin’ ter ask you one, fer a change. ’Oo are you? That’s fair, ain’t it?’

‘Who am I?’ murmured the visitor, and suddenly paused.

‘’E don’t want me ter know,’ reflected Ben. ‘Fishy, the pair of us!’

The next moment he realised that there was another reason for the pause. A door had slammed across the street. The visitor had turned.

The door that had slammed was the front door of the house opposite. The number on it was ‘26’. For an instant Ben stared vaguely at the number, as the movement of a figure in front of it rendered it visible after a second of obscurity. A girl’s figure; she appeared to be leaving hurriedly. But Ben found himself less interested in the girl on the doorstep of No. 26 than in the man on the doorstep of No. 29, for the man suddenly left the doorstep and made for the pavement.

‘Wot’s that for?’ wondered Ben. ‘Wot’s ’e arter?’

He appeared to be after the girl. The girl was hastening towards a corner, and the young man looked as though he were going to hasten after her.

‘Lummy, ’e don’t waste no time!’ thought Ben.

But if the young man’s intention had been to follow the girl he abruptly changed it when she had turned the corner and disappeared. Instead of following her, he veered round towards the house she had just left. No. 26 Jowle Street. Ben watched him from No. 29.

‘Well, ’e’s fergot me, any’ow,’ reflected Ben. ‘If ’e wants me ’e’ll ’ave ter ring agin!’

He closed the door quickly and quietly. A bang might have brought the young man back. He waited a few seconds, just to make sure that the young man wasn’t coming back again, and then began to ascend the stairs to resume his interrupted meal.

It has been said that Ben had lived in many empty houses. He had. But he had lived in them for reasons of economy rather than of affection, and it depressed him that he had not really and truly grown to love them. Perhaps this was because he had had a bad start. His first empty house, ‘No. 17’, had given him enough nightmares for life. But it must be admitted, and you had better know it at once, that Ben was not one of the world’s heroes, and if there was one thing he couldn’t stand it was creaks. ‘Give me the fair shivers, so they does,’ he confessed to his soul. (Ben had a soul—you had better know that, too, lest in what follows you may be tempted to be hard on him.) Yes, even in his able-bodied days he had hated the creaking of ships. Even when he had been surrounded by fellow-seamen. But all alone, in empty houses …

‘In the langwidge o’ them psicho-wotchercallems,’ decided Ben, ‘I got a creak compress.’

The creaks seemed rather worse going up the stairs than they had seemed coming down them. Somehow or other, the visit of that young man, his rather odd behaviour, and the sudden termination of the interview, had worried Ben more than he cared to admit. The shadows seemed deeper. The creaks louder. The subsequent silences uncannier.

But he reached the second floor without accident, and he found his room just as he had left it. There were no corpses about, and no one had been at his cheese. If he’d had a cup of tea, he could have soon got back to his condition of lethargic, vegetable comfort. Well, he’d have to get back just on cheese.

‘P’r’aps I better ’ave a squint outer the winder fust,’ he thought. ‘’E may be comin’ back again.’

He crossed to the window. There, immediately opposite, was No. 26, growing moist in the drizzle. Looking down, he saw his late visitor on the doorstep. This rather surprised him. He’d been on the doorstep some while. By now, surely, he ought to be either in or out?

Ben stared. The front door was open—no, half-open—well, same thing—and a bit of an argument seemed to be going on. Couldn’t see the fellow inside the house, but the fellow outside appeared to be very determined. He was taking something from his pocket. He was handing it to the fellow inside. A bit of a pause now. Who was going to win?

Then, all at once, Ben’s eyes were attracted by a movement closer to him. Not in his own room—thank Gawd fer that!—but it, gave him a start, like. In the room immediately opposite. The second-floor front of No. 26. An old man had backed to the window, as though to get a better perspective of something he was gazing at. And what he was gazing at was a figure on the floor!

‘That ain’t nice,’ thought Ben.

An instant later, however, the figure got up. The old man shook his head, and pointed to another part of the floor. The figure lay down again. The old man nodded, and the figure got up again.

‘Well, I’m blowed!’ muttered the watcher.

He stared down at the front door. It was now closed. The young man had got in. At least—had he? Ben hadn’t seen him go in. He might have left, of course, and be walking now towards the corner.

Ben twisted his head and stared towards the corner. If the young man had gone to the corner he had now vanished, as the girl had vanished; and in their place, regarding No. 26 with contemplative eyes, his dark skin rising incongruously above his European collar, was an Indian.

2
Creaks

BEN returned to his cheese. He possessed, in addition, a piece of string, a box of matches, a cigarette, three candle ends, a pencil stump, and sevenpence. These alone stood between him and the drizzling evening and eternity.

He sat with his back to the window. He had seen all he wanted until he had got a bit more cheese inside him. But though he could shut sights out from his eyes, he could not shut them out from his mind. Into the pattern of the peeling wallpaper were woven a young man, an old man, a figure leaping up and down on a floor, and an Indian.

‘Well—wot abart them?’ he demanded suddenly.

Why, nothing about them! If you got guessing about all the people you saw, you’d never stop! The young man had called to look over the house, the old man and the figure on the floor had been doing a charade, and the Indian was just one of them students or cricketers. Nothing to it but that!

‘It’s not gettin’ yer meals reg’lar wot does it,’ decided Ben. ‘And this ’ere corf.’

By the time he had finished his cheese he was in a better frame of mind. After he had lit his solitary cigarette—almost a whole one, and cork-tipped—he was even able to rise from his soap box, turn round, and walk to the window again. Wonderful what a cigarette could do for you, even if it had been begun by somebody else!

The rain was falling faster now. A thin mist was curling through the gloaming. Never joyous at the best of times, Jowle Street looked at its worst just now, full of evil little glistenings as the damp night drew on. It was a forgotten road, and best forgotten. But the house opposite provided nothing especially sinister at the moment. The blind of the window of the second floor front was now drawn, presenting an expressionless face of opaque yellow. The doorstep was deserted. And there was no longer an Indian standing at the corner. The only movement visible in the street was that of a covered cart slowly jogging along through the slush.

Ben watched the cart idly. ‘Well, I’d sooner be ’oo I am than that there ’orse,’ he reflected. It was a poor, bony creature, a dismal relic of a noble race. Funny how some horses stirred and stimulated you, while the very sight of others almost made you lose your belief in the beneficence of Creation! ‘Wot does ’orses do when they gits old?’ wondered Ben. ‘Sit dahn, like us?’

But a moment later he ceased to dwell on the hard lot of horses. The cart had stopped outside No. 26.

Well, why shouldn’t it stop outside No. 26? Every day, millions of carts stopped outside millions of houses! Almost indignantly, Ben attempted to deride his interest. The interest held him, though. He could not tear himself away. He’d have to watch until he saw the cart move on again.

A man descended from the driver’s seat. He moved towards the house, but almost immediately the front door opened, and a servant came out. At least, Ben deduced he must be a servant. A few words passed between the servant and the driver. Then they both went to the back of the cart, and were busy for a while drawing something out. The hood of the cart hid the something from Ben’s view until the two men were actually carrying it towards the door. Then Ben saw it. It was a long object, covered with sacking.

About six feet long. About three feet wide. About three feet high.

Ben turned away. He didn’t like it. And as he turned away, the front door bell rang again.

‘’Ere, wot’s orl this abart?’ he demanded of the uncommunicative walls. ‘Wot’s ’appenin’?’

As once before, he was faced with the alternative of the front door and the back window. This time he was even more tempted to choose the back window. He might have done so had not a sudden thought deterred him, a thought that abruptly changed the bell from a sinister to a welcome sound.

‘’Corse—it’s on’y that young chap come back agin,’ he cogitated, ‘and ’e was bahnd ter come back some time or other, wasn’t ’e? Blimy, if I don’t ask ’im in and tell ’im orl abart it!’

Life is largely a matter of comparison. When first the young man had called he had been a nuisance. Now, contrasted with an old man’s back, a contortionist, an Indian, and a long, six-foot object, he became a thing of beauty! And even without the advantage of these comparisons, Ben recalled that his face had been pleasant enough, and his voice amiable.

‘Yes, that’s wot I’ll do!’ muttered Ben, on his way to the passage. ‘I’ll ’ave ’im in, and arsk ’im wot ’e thinks.’

He slithered down the stairs. As he neared the bottom, the bell rang again. ‘Orl right, orl right!’ he called. ‘I’m comin’, ain’t I?’

He opened the door. The Indian stood on the doorstep.

At some time or other your heart has probably missed a beat. Ben’s heart missed five. Meanwhile, the Indian regarded him without speaking, as though to give him time to recover. Then the Indian said, in surprisingly good English:

‘You live here?’

He spoke slowly and quietly, but with a strangely dominating accent. But for the dominating accent, Ben might have been a little longer in finding his voice.

‘Yus,’ he gulped.

‘It is your house?’ continued the Indian.

‘No,’ answered Ben.

He had tried to say another ‘yus’ but with the Indian’s eyes piercing him he was unable to.

‘You are, then, a tenant?’

This time Ben managed a ‘yus.’

‘And to whom do you pay your rent?’ inquired the Indian.

The inflexion was slightly acid. Ben fought hard.

‘That’s my bizziness, ain’t it?’ he retorted.

‘If you pay rent, it is your business,’ agreed the Indian, with the faintest possible smile. ‘But—if you do not?’

‘Wotcher mean?’

‘Then it would be—the police’s business?’

Police, eh? Ben decided he was bungling it.

‘Look ’ere!’ he exclaimed. ‘When I said I was a tenant, like you arst, I didn’t know as ’ow you knew orl the words, see? Wot I meant was that I live ’ere, see?’

‘But you pay no rent?’

‘Corse I don’t. Don’t they ’ave no caretakers in your country? If you’ve come ter look over the ’ouse, say so, and I’ll fetch a candle, but if you ain’t, then I can’t do nothing for you.’

The Indian considered the statement thoughtfully. Then he inquired:

‘And who engages you, may I ask, to take care of this beautiful house?’

‘No, yer mayn’t arsk!’

‘Pray oblige me. To whom do I write, to make an offer?’

Ben was bunkered.

‘So we complete the circle,’ said the Indian impassively. ‘You live here, but you do not pay rent, and you fulfil no office. And it becomes, as I said, a matter of interest to the police. Do we understand each other, or must I speak more plainly?’

‘P’r’aps I could do a bit o’ pline speakin’!’ muttered Ben.

‘Yes?’

‘Yus! P’r’aps I could arst yer ’oo yer are, and wot bizziness it is o’ yours, any’ow? People comin’ ’ere and torkin’ ter me as if I was dirt—’

‘People?’ interposed the Indian, his thin eyebrows suddenly rising. ‘Someone else, then, has been here—to inquire?’

‘Nobody’s bin ’ere,’ lied Ben. He did not know why he lied. Perhaps it was instinct, or perhaps he disliked telling the truth to one who was so bent on drawing it from him. ‘Nobody’s bin ’ere. I was speakin’—gen’ral, like.’ The Indian shrugged his shoulders, plainly unconvinced. ‘And now I’ll speak speshul, like. This ain’t my ’ouse—but is it your’n?’

‘It is not mine,’ answered the Indian.

‘Orl right, then! It’s goin’ ter be a nasty night, and I ain’t takin’ no horders from foreigners! See?’

Whatever the Indian felt, his face did not show it. He merely regarded Ben a little more intensely, while Ben struggled to maintain his Dutch courage.

The Indian did not speak for several seconds. Removing his eyes from Ben at last, he gazed at the hall and the staircase; then he brought his eyes back to Ben again.

‘It is going to be a very nasty night,’ he said, in an almost expressionless voice. ‘And you, my friend, will get out of it as quickly as you can. I speak for your good.’

‘Fer my good, eh?’ queried Ben, ‘Meanin’ yer love me, cocky?’

Now something did enter the Indian’s expression. A sudden flash, like the glint of a knife. But it was gone in an instant.

‘You are nothing,’ said the Indian.

‘And so are you, with knobs on!’ barked Ben, and slammed the door.

He had made a brave show, if not a wise one, but as soon as the door was closed he was seized with a fit of trembling. He backed to the stairs, and sat down on the bottom step. He wondered if the Indian was still standing outside, or whether he was walking away? He wondered whether he would really go for the police, and, if so, why? He wondered whether he had really shut him out? Indians were slippery customers, climbing up ropes that weren’t there and what not, and perhaps this one knew a trick or two, and could duck into a house when the door was slammed on him! He might be in the shadows, now. He might have sprung by Ben, and have got on to the stairs. He might be behind Ben, at this moment, bending over him with a knife poised to prick his neck!

‘Gawd!’ gasped Ben, and leapt to his feet.

Nobody was on the staircase. Only shadows. It occurred to Ben that he had better go up himself, before his knees gave out. He went up, shakily. ‘’Ow I ’ate Injuns!’ he muttered. When he got back to his room, he sat down on the soap box, and thought.

Of course, he had only been putting up a bluff. The wise thing to do would be to leave at once. Yes, even though the weather was getting worse and worse, and darkness was settling on the streets, choking out all their kindliness. Even though the wind was rising, still you didn’t know whether it was the wind or a dog, and the creaking ran up and down your spine.

‘Wot I can’t mike out,’ blinked Ben, ‘is wot I come up orl these stairs agin for at all!’

Perhaps it was for his cap! Yes, one might as well keep one’s cap. He took it from under him. He had used it as a cushion. Then, dissatisfied with himself, and life, and the whole of God’s plan, he crept from the room and out into the passage.

‘If on’y it wasn’t fer that there creakin’!’ he muttered.

Creak! Creak! The house seemed to have become populated with creaks! Perhaps he was making them himself? He paused, on the top stair. The creaks went on. Creak! Creak! Below him. And, once, a sort of slither. Like someone coming in through a window … A window! A back window! A back window that had been left open!

Ben had been standing on the top stair. Now he found himself sitting on it. His knees had given out.

There was no mistake about it! Someone had got in through the back window! Those creaks were not the mere complaint of a dying house. They were not just the moaning of bricks or the cracking up of decayed wood. Life was causing those creaks—life forming contact with death—movement outraging the static! In the more simple language that shames metaphor, someone was coming up.

‘’Ere—wotcher doin’?’ gasped Ben to himself.

He caught hold of the rotting banister and heaved himself up. The banister just held. Then he sped back into his room, and waited.

He waited with his eyes on the door. The door was half-open, and he did not close it because, had he done so, he could only have followed the creaks in his imagination, and they could have ascended to the door without his knowing it. Now, at least, he could listen to them, in the hope that they would come no closer …

They came closer. Now they were on the lower stairs. Now a slight change in their character indicated the passage on the first floor. Hallo! They had stopped! What did that mean? Hallo; they hadn’t stopped! Where were they? Something was wrong somewhere …

Something sounded immediately below him. First floor front! That’s where they were! Gone in! To look for him!

Should he make a dash for it? If he was nippy he might get down the stairs, and then make a bunk for the back window below! Yes, if he was nippy …

He jerked himself towards the half-open door. Then he stopped. He was too late. The creaks had started again. They were now on the last staircase. Creak! Creak!

‘I know!’ thought Ben. ‘I’ll ’it ’im!’

He stood, galvanised. The creaks reached the landing. They reached the door. The door began to open …

3
Ben Accepts a Job

SHOCKS have an inconsiderate habit of getting you both ways. If you expect a parson and receive a cannibal, or if you expect an Indian and receive a beautiful girl, the world spins round, just the same. What you really need is a nice quiet life, with breakfast, dinner and tea, and ordinary things in between.

The beautiful girl who provided Ben with his present shock, and made him go all weak like, seemed quite as surprised to see Ben as he was to see her. There was, at least, equality of emotion, and that was something. Moreover, as he stared at her with mouth wide open (Ben never did his mouth by halves) and an exhibition of teeth that could not hold their own beside those she herself displayed, he began to discover certain other compensations in the situation. Item, her eyes. They really were rather a knock-out. The kind of eyes that made you feel sort of … Item, her hair. You couldn’t see much of it because of the natty little helmet hat she was wearing, but what you could see was good. Item, her nose. Now there was a nose fit for anybody! Item, her mouth, and the teeth that put Ben’s incomplete army in the shade … Yes, as he stared at her and she, framed in the doorway, stared back, he realised that the world could spin quite agreeably.

Still, one couldn’t stand staring all one’s life! What was she doing here? But it was the girl who recovered first and opened the attack.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

Ben spent half his life telling inquisitive people who he was, and he had a large assortage of answers. He had confessed to being everybody under the sun, from Lloyd George to Tom Thumb. But he did not think in the present circumstances he could improve on the answer he had given to his two other callers, so he murmured: ‘Caretaker, miss.’ And hoped for the best.

‘What—are you the caretaker of this house?’ exclaimed the girl, with unflattering incredulity.

‘That’s right,’ blinked Ben. ‘No. 29 Jowle Street.’

He would prove he knew the number, anyway.

‘I see—it’s to let,’ said the girl slowly.

‘Yus,’ nodded Ben solemnly. ‘But you better not tike it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Carn’t yer see? Comin’ ter bits. Look at that there plarster!’

He pointed to the ceiling. The girl smiled. Yes, her teeth were winners, and no mistake! Like rows of little gravestones. Noo ones, o’ corse …

‘If you’re really the caretaker here,’ she observed, ‘you’re not doing your duty very well. You oughtn’t to run the place down.’

‘It don’t need me to,’ retorted Ben. ‘It does it itself.’

‘I—I suppose you really are the caretaker?’

Ben looked uncomfortable. He hated having to repeat things.

‘Why not?’ he hedged. ‘Come ter that, miss, one might arsk ’oo you was, comin’ in like this?’

‘One might,’ she agreed, without hesitation.

‘Yus—and torkin’ o’ that—’ow did yer come in?’ inquired Ben suddenly.

‘I came in through an open window at the back,’ she responded. ‘Like you.’

‘Like me?’

‘Yes.’

Ben capitulated.

‘Oh, orl right,’ he grunted. ‘But it’s fifty-fifty, so we ain’t got nothin’ on each hother.’

‘No,’ smiled the girl. ‘We both came in to get out of the rain!’

‘Oh rainin’, is it?’ murmured Ben. ‘Well, that’s an idea.’

Yes, it was an idea for him. But was it an idea for her? He regarded her dubiously, and an uneasy suspicion came into his mind that she wasn’t playing fair. She had caught him up in a fib—made him admit it—and it looked as though she were fibbing herself!

Still, p’r’aps it didn’t matter. It really wasn’t Ben’s affair, and there is something human about a fib, so long as it doesn’t hurt you. What mattered was that she was here and he was here, and the sooner they both cleared out, the better.

‘Well, tike my advice, miss,’ said Ben, returning to first principles, ‘and git aht agin, like I’m goin’ ter.’

‘But the rain—’ she began.

Unceremoniously, he waved her down.

‘Yus, I knows orl abart that, miss,’ he interposed; ‘but I knows somethin’ helse, as well.’

‘What?’

‘Why, that fer orl the rine, yer more likely ter catch something’ in ’ere than aht there.’

Now the girl frowned.

‘I wish you wouldn’t be so mysterious,’ she exclaimed. ‘Won’t you tell me what you mean exactly?’

‘Well,’ answered Ben, after a pause, ‘I don’t wanter frighten yer, see, but this ’ouse ain’t ’ealthy.’

‘What makes you say that?’ Her voice was interested.

‘Creaks and things.’ He was evading the issue. He really didn’t want to frighten her. He knew what fright was. ‘You know. On the stairs. Cupboards and that. You know.’

He wasn’t doing it very well.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ replied the girl, her interest waning. ‘Creaks don’t worry me.’ Ben looked incredulous. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Still, if you do, you’d better go. I won’t keep you.’

What? Him go, and her stay? All the manhood in him—and he had a spoonful—rebelled against the suggestion. What would he feel like tomorrow morning when he read in the headlines:

EMPTY HOUSE MYSTERY

BEAUTIFUL GIRL FOUND WITH

THROAT CUT

AND HOARYENTAL KNIFE

IN CHEST

The words were bad enough as they stood up in his imagination. He knew that, if he had to face them in reality, cheese would never taste the same again.

‘Orl right, miss, if yer will ’ave it,’ he muttered. ‘It ain’t the creaks wot’s sendin’ me away. It’s a blinkin’ Injun.’

Now her interest flared up again, and Ben stared at her in amazement.

‘Wot? Do you ’ate Injuns, too?’ he asked sympathetically. ‘Fair gits on my nerves, they does. And this ’un’s the worst I hever come acrost, with ’is slimy manners, and sayin’ good evenin’ to yer in the sort o’ perlite voice wot really means, “I’d like ter stick a knife in yer gizzard,” if yer git me.’

‘But—do you really mean,’ she demanded, ‘that an Indian has been here?’

‘Yus.’

‘In this house?’

‘Ain’t I tellin’ yer? ’E comes ’ere, like as if ’e owned the blinkin’ plice—the plice, that is—and tells me ter ’op it or somethin ’ll ’appen to yer. ’Oo do yer think yer are? I ses. Oh, I give ’im a bit o’ back chat. But—well, there y’are,’ he ended up rather lamely. ‘’E kep’ on as if ’e meant it. So yer see, miss, if it ain’t safe fer me ter stop, it ain’t no more fer you.’

But the girl made no sign of moving. Instead she looked into the bare room, beyond the packing case, to the window. And her eyes remained on the window.

‘Have you any idea why he wanted you to go?’ she asked.

‘No, miss.’

‘Or—where he is now?’

Ben looked a little uneasy.

‘I thort fust as ’ow ’e was still ’ere,’ he answered; ‘but I reckon now ’e’s gorn right enuff.’

‘And you can’t say where?’ she repeated.

‘Well, if ’e’s gorn ter the ’ouse oppersit, where yer lookin’ at, miss, ’e’s a mug.’

She turned away from the window quickly, and her eyes were now on Ben again.

‘Why should he have gone to the house opposite?’ she demanded. ‘And, if he has, why is he—a mug?’

‘Look ’ere, miss,’ said Ben seriously, ‘orl this ain’t got nothin’ ter do with me and you, ’as it? I dunno where old Rangysinjy’s gorn, orl I know is I ’ope it’s a long way, and the reason I sed ’e’d be a mug ter go in the ’ouse oppersit is ’cos the ’ouse oppersit ain’t much better’n this ’un, ter my thinkin’, not with people pertendin’ ter be dead—lyin’ dahn, I seen ’em, and coffins bein’ derlivered there in carts like stop-me-and-buy-one. And now, fer Gawd’s sake, let’s be goin’, ’cos lummy I’ve ’ad enuff of it, that’s a fack.’

He stopped to breathe. It was rather a long speech. The girl looked at him intently.

‘I’m grateful to you for all your information,’ she said; ‘but if you want to go, I’m still not keeping you.’

‘Yus, you are,’ retorted Ben.

‘How?’

‘By not gettin’ a move on. I ain’t’ goin’ afore you do.’

‘Why not?’

Ben’s expression grew hurt.

‘Well, p’r’aps I ain’t much ter look at,’ he murmured, ‘but Napoleon wasn’t seven foot!’

The remark, as well as the manner of it, made an impression. She regarded him more intently still.

‘I believe I’ve been underrating you all this while, Napoleon,’ she said, ‘and I believe you underrate yourself.’

‘’Oo?’ he blinked.

He wasn’t quite sure of ‘underrate’, but he felt there was a compliment somewhere, and it confused him.

‘I don’t believe you’re half as scared as you say you are,’ she went on, simplifying it.

Ben considered the point. He tried to agree, but couldn’t.

‘There’s times, miss,’ he responded, with an outburst of frankness, ‘when jellies ain’t in it.’ He misread her smile, and tried to save himself a little. ‘Lorst me nerve, miss, in the war—thinkin’ I was goin’ ter be called up.’

‘Just the same, I’m going to stick to my opinion, Napoleon,’ she insisted, ‘and, what’s more, I’m going to test it. You say you won’t go if I stay. Will you stay if I go?’

Ben’s eyes became big.

‘Wot’s that?’ he jerked.

‘As my caretaker,’ she added. ‘Wages in advance.’

Ben’s eyes became bigger as she opened her bag and laid a pound note on the packing case.

‘Wot—is this your ’ouse?’ he gasped.

‘If you accept the offer, perhaps you could keep an eye on my view for me?’ she suggested.

She returned to the window as she spoke. For a few seconds Ben gaped at her, and he had not found his voice before she suddenly darted back from the window again.

‘I must go!’ she exclaimed. Her voice was tense, and she was at the door in a flash. But at the door she paused for an instant, and her eyes grew worried. ‘Don’t accept my offer, Napoleon,’ she said. ‘It was thoughtless of me—I shouldn’t have made it.’

Then she vanished. He heard her flying down the stairs. The rustle of her clothes grew more and more distant. A moment’s utter silence. The slamming of a door. Utter silence again.

‘Don’t tike ’er hoffer, eh?’ murmured Ben.

He removed his eyes from the doorway to the soap box, on which lay the pound note. Then he removed his eyes from the soap box back to the doorway.

‘Nobody couldn’t tike this job from me,’ he observed solemnly, ‘not with a red-’ot poker!’

His words echoed out into the passage. And the passage seized them, turned them into hollow sounds, and sent them mockingly down the stairs.

4
At the Coffee Stall

BEN did not move for five minutes after the front door slammed and the dream had passed out of it, leaving only the nightmare behind. He wanted to try and work things out, and you could only do that when you kept quite still.

This girl, now, to begin with. What about her? She was a stunner, all right. Do for a queen anywhere, or p’r’aps more a princess like. The kind of girl he’d have liked his little kid to have growed up into, if she’d growed up at all … Just the same, there was something rum about her. First saying she’d come in to get out of the rain. And, afterwards, it being her house, all the time.

‘Yus, but if it’s ’er ’ouse, wot she wanter come in through the winder for?’ wondered Ben. ‘Don’t they ’ave latch-keys?’

There you were, you see! There was something rum about her! You always got a latch-key with a house. Suppose it wasn’t her house?

‘Well, if it ain’t ’er ’ouse, it don’t mike no dif’rence,’ Ben retorted to himself. ‘I’ll bet she ain’t a wrong ’un, although I’ve knowed wrong uns afore wot couldn’t ’elp it. Any’ow, there’s ’er pahnd, and ’ere am I, and I’ve took on the job!’

So that was that. Next?

Next, the Indian. What about him? It was quite impossible to formulate any definite theory about him, either, but two points emerged uncomfortably from thought. First, would he come back to find out if Ben had left? Second, was he still here, waiting for Ben to go?

‘Lummy!’ murmured Ben, and decided to try and forget this for a moment or two. You see, when you started thinking about the Indian he got hold of your mind like an octopus and wouldn’t let you think of anything else.

And there were other things to think about. That first chap who had called. What about him? And the funny going’s on at No. 29. What about them? And …

Ben’s eyes began to roam towards the window, and paused at the wooden case with the note still lying on it.

Yes—and the pound. What about that?

And now a wonderful idea dawned in Ben’s mind, as the outcome of all these cogitations. If he was going to dig himself in here for the night, he would have to go out and buy a few things. It might even be a good idea to try and find a Lockhart’s and stoke up. Why not use this occasion to fool the Indian, making him believe that Ben’s temporary departure was a permanent one?

‘Blimy, there’s a clever idea!’ thought Ben, rendered solemn by his own ingenuity. ‘She called me Napoleon—I reckon she was right!’

He worked it all out carefully, just as Napoleon would have done. Say the Indian was away, but returned? He’d find the house empty, and would be satisfied. Say he wasn’t away, but heard Ben leave? Same thing, wasn’t it? Especially if Ben talked a bit to himself, to add a little local colour like?

Yes, that was the plan! Now to put it into operation! He stepped to the packing case, and secured the pound.

‘Gawd—a pahnd!’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘A ’ole blinkin’ pahnd!’

It was the first time he had fully realised it. Turn that into cheese, and it’d take some carrying!

Yes, but suppose the girl returned, and found him gone? Him and the pound? What’d she think? Ben did not want to risk her bad opinion.

To avoid the risk he fished a scrap of paper from his pocket. It was a nice bit, the best bit he’d got. Only two thumb-marks. Still; she was worth it. From another pocket he fished out a pencil stump. This wasn’t quite so impressive. They give you rotten pencils at the post office. Then, after thinking for a full minute of the best way to convey the idea on paper that he was coming back, he gave the lead a lick and wrote:

‘COMIN BACK.’

He laid the paper on the wooden case, where the pound note had been. If she returned she’d be sure to find it …

‘Yus, but if the Injun returns, ’e’ll find it, too!’ thought Ben, with a shock.

A bad mark for Napoleon, that! He sweated, to realise how nearly he had cooked his own goose. What a mug he was!

But the next instant he was smiling again. He needn’t waste the paper. He’d use it to cheat the Indian further. He added a word to the message, and now it read:

‘AINT COMIN BACK.’

He chuckled as he read the amended version, and continued to chuckle all the way out to the passage. Then the chuckling stopped abruptly.

‘Yus, but s’pose, arter all, the Injun don’t return, and the gal does?’

He turned and re-entered the room. He tore the paper to little bits, and threw them on the floor. Then he picked all the little bits up, and threw them out of the window. He realised that, after all, he wasn’t quite cut out for a general.

Nevertheless, he did not scrap his entire plan of campaign, and when he reached the passage again and began to descend the stairs he remembered to pretend to be frightened, so that the Indian, if he were watching through any of the cracks, would believe he was being scared out of the house. He did not find the pretence in the least difficult. His first ‘Ah’ of simulated fear was so realistic that it sent him sliding down half a flight. It would have been a full flight but for a turn.

‘Gawd!’ muttered Ben, almost tearfully. ‘I wish I ’ad ’old of the feller wot invented hechoes!’

He rose, and decided that his future demonstrations would be more quiet like. He began to mutter.

‘Well, arter orl, wot’s the good o’ stayin’?’ he asked. ‘It’s a rotten ’ouse, any’ow, and if the Injun wants it, ’e can ’ave it. I’ve ’ad enuff of it. I’m goin’ away, and I ain’t never comin’ back, never, not so long as I live!’

That ought to do it. Still, just to make perfectly certain, he added:

‘I reckon yer wouldn’t git me back ’ere not if King George ’iself was ter come up ter me and ter say, “Ben, won’t yer?”’

There! If the Indian didn’t believe him after that, he must be a fool!

Satisfied with his effort, Ben reached the front door and opened it cautiously. It was not quite dark yet, but a vague drizzle still filled the air and merged into the indeterminate mist. Not at all pleasant outside. But then it wasn’t at all pleasant inside, either. Life is largely a matter of comparisons, and the outside of No. 29 Jowle Street didn’t have to exert itself seriously to secure the advantage.

Before leaving the doubtful sanctuary of No. 29, Ben looked across the road at No. 26. If anybody had popped out of No. 26 at that moment, he might have popped back into No. 29. No. 26 was already beginning to get upon his nerves and to exert an hypnotic influence over him. His mind was constantly drawn there. He hoped that his body would never be. But, happily, no one popped out at this particular moment, and, closing the door behind him, Ben slipped out into the road.

And now, for a few moments, he became a very different creature from the hesitating Ben we have known. He moved like lightning, having a remarkable ability in that direction when necessity arose. The necessity just now was simply the necessity of getting out of Jowle Street before Jowle Street saw him, as it were. That, and a sudden longing for the company of a cup of tea.

Already Jowle Street lay three streets away. You couldn’t get back there by one move of the chess-board, not even if you were a knight. Ben breathed a little more freely. What about not going back at all? Yes, why go back? With a pound in his pocket to spend, and …

Ah, but was the pound his to spend if he didn’t go back? There was the catch!

Three more corners; round two of them; and now a light streaked across the road. It came from the window of a shop outside which stood a stout man mechanically exhorting passers-by to purchase bacon before closing-time. ‘Where bacon goes, cheese follers’ was one of Ben’s guides to existence. Ruth and Naomi were not more inseparable. He veered across to the stout man, and demanded cheddar.

The stout man cut him a slab, and held it out to him.

‘Where’s the piper?’ demanded Ben.

‘You don’t want any paper,’ answered the stout man, with a grin.

‘’Ow am I goin’ ter write my letters ternight?’ retorted Ben. ‘Churchill’s waitin’ ter ’ear from me.’

The stout man laughed. He wasn’t really unkind. He did the cheese up in a beautiful parcel, while Ben counted out his change, to make sure he hadn’t received too many coins.

Along another street was a coffee stall. Ben made a bee-line for this when he spotted it, and life eased out.

‘Cup o’ tea,’ he ordered. ‘Big ’un!’

Then he nearly jumped out of his skin. The Indian was standing next to him.

‘Good evening,’ said the Indian.

Ben gulped. He wasn’t quite ready for the courtesies.

But the Indian betrayed no annoyance over his lack of them. He continued amiably:

‘You are out for a walk?’

Ben recovered himself, and answered:

‘No. I’m surf-ridin’.’

The Indian smiled. So did the coffee stall keeper. The coffee stall keeper’s smile was ever so much the nicer.

‘Here’s your tea, mate,’ grinned the latter. ‘Want anything to eat with it?’

‘Yus, ’am sandwich,’ replied Ben, ‘and don’t fergit the ’am.’

He drank the tea in one go, and shoved the cup across the counter for replenishment. The Indian watched him, still smiling. The coffee stall keeper took the cup, and turned away for a moment. Then the Indian bent forward suddenly, bringing his face within six inches of Ben’s. It became magnified, like a close-up. The smile seemed to expand all round him.

‘You are sensible,’ said a voice in the middle of the enormous smile. ‘See that you stay so!’

The coffee stall keeper turned back with the cup.

‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he exclaimed. ‘Where’s he gone?’

The Indian had vanished.

Ben rubbed his forehead. He felt as though the Indian’s eyes were still upon him, and he wanted to get rid of them. He’d been through some nasty moments in his life; sometimes, indeed, he doubted whether there were any really nasty moments he hadn’t been through; but the moment when the Indian had suddenly advanced his face and become a close-up was one of the very nastiest he could remember …

‘Rum chaps, them Indians,’ remarked the coffee stall keeper, breathing on a spoon and polishing it, ‘but I like ’em.’

‘I loves ’em,’ replied Ben.

‘Aunt of mine used to board ’em,’ went on the coffee stall keeper, ‘and she used to say nicer people she never met. But, of course, you get all kinds.’ He leaned forward, and dropped his voice confidentially. ‘Between you and me, mate,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t much care to sleep in a room next to that one!’

‘That’s right,’ murmured Ben.

‘If he was peckish, like as not he’d slice out your liver and have it for breakfast!’

He burst into guffaws at the joke. Ben did not join in. The coffee stall keeper looked disappointed, and tried something else.

‘Fancy them findin’ that old man in Bermondsey ’angin’ upside down!’

‘’Ere, you’re a little ray o’ sunlight, ain’t yer?’ barked Ben.

He finished his second cup quickly, paid his account, and turned away.

Which direction should he take? Left—towards Jowle Street? Or right—towards peace? Suddenly he fished a coin from his pocket.

‘’Eads, it’s Jowle Street,’ he muttered, ‘and tails it ain’t!’

He tossed. The coin came down tails.

‘It ain’t,’ he murmured.

And turned towards Jowle Street.

5
The Contents of a Parcel

HAVE you ever paused to realise the different mental attitudes of those who, superficially, appear to be engaged on business identical with your own? In a street, for instance, as you pass from one point to another?

To you a journey between two lamp-posts may be a forgotten incident, making no record in your mind. To the woman you overtake so carelessly it may be an eternity, though once her feet travelled as lightly and as fast as yours. To the young man who unconsciously keeps pace with you on the other side of the road it is a journey of breathless wonder, while each step brings him nearer to the whole meaning of existence waiting for him round the corner. To the elderly man, impelled to equal speed ten yards behind, it is a tragedy, with a doctor’s house at the end of it.

Ben, on his way back to Jowle Street, was separated by similar gulfs from those he moved among, walking through a disturbing world of his own. It was not the world of the little whistling errand-boy he passed. It was a darker, grimmer place. A sort of tunnel, the sinister walls of which were closing in on him and pressing him forward. At the end of the tunnel were Indians with cynically smiling eyes, and a nasty old man gesticulating at a window—funny how that nasty old man stuck in Ben’s mind!—and a chap hanging upside down. And towards all these things, despite the kindness of a tossed coin, Ben was moving. Why?

Yes—why? Ben stopped suddenly, and asked the question. There were loads of other ways, stretching to other points. Behind him, and on each side. Any one of them would be preferable to the particular way he was taking; any one of them would lead, if unpretentiously, to a peaceful night. For an instant he was out of the tunnel, and the walls ceased to press. ‘I did come down tails, you know!’ urged the coin in his pocket. ‘Play fair!’

But he went on, with the question unanswered. You see, the answer was beyond the capacity of a bloke like Ben to fathom.

‘Blinkin’ Fate’ was as near as he could get to it. He was quite unconscious that he himself had anything to do with the matter, and that, despite the coin’s protest, the desire to play fair was very dominant in his cowardly little heart.

The drizzle had ceased, but the mist still wreathed through the murky thoroughfares, and the Indian wreathed through the mist. Of course, the Indian was just imagination. Ben admitted that. He hadn’t quite got rid, even yet, of the nasty feeling on his forehead that the Indian had stamped there during that tense second while the coffee stall keeper’s back was turned. Yes, that was it—stamped there. Like his photograph, like.

‘Lummy, wish I could peel it orf!’ muttered Ben …

Hallo, though! Was it all imagination? Ben suddenly ducked up a side street. Two large arms caught him.

‘Now, then, my lad! What’s up?’

It was a policeman’s voice. You can always tell a policeman’s voice. Solid and slow, and all right if you’re all right.

‘Beg yer pardon,’ apologised Ben. ‘Didn’t see yer.’

‘Of course, you didn’t,’ replied the policeman. ‘You had your eyes shut.’

‘Go on!’ retorted Ben.

‘Anybody after you?’

‘’Oo?’

‘That’s what I’m asking.’

‘Yus. No. ’Ere, let go me arm. It’s mine, ain’t it?’

‘Yes, your arm’s yours,’ admitted the policeman, though he still retained it; ‘but can you say the same about that parcel you’re carrying?’

‘Eh?’

‘That parcel?’

‘Wot abart it?’

‘Is it yours?’

‘Corse it’s mine!’

‘You didn’t take it from anybody?’

‘Yus.’

‘Who?’

‘Cheesemonger.’

The policeman frowned.

‘That’s a pretty smart parcel, isn’t it,’ he remarked, suspiciously, ‘for a bit of cheese?’

‘Corse it is,’ answered Ben. ‘’E knoo ’oo ’e was servin’. Smell it!’

He thrust the parcel abruptly under the policeman’s nose. The policeman, unprepared for this sudden onslaught of cheddar, dropped Ben’s arm. Escape was now easy, and effected.

Ben did not know, as he darted away, whether the policeman made any attempt to follow him. He hoped the test had proved his innocence, and would willingly have waited until the cheese had done its work; but the policeman was merely his second consideration, at the moment, for out of the corner of his eye he had spied somebody far more significant—somebody from whom it was infinitely more important to escape. There was no mistake about it this time. Ben had seen the Indian. Whether the Indian had also seen him he was less able to say.

Well, if the Indian had seen him, he mustn’t see him any more! That was the one obvious thought in Ben’s mind as he now began a definite policy of evasion. He turned away from Jowle Street. Then he angled towards it, then turned away again. Following a zigzag course, a course of which no crow could have conception, he utilised every corner and every alley and every by-street. Once he even ducked down a subway, coming up at the other end like a diver. He got hopelessly lost, but that didn’t matter so long as he also lost his pursuer. And at length he decided that he had lost him, and he paused under a lamp-post to breathe.

‘Gotter git back now,’ he communed with himself. ‘Wunner where I am?’

The lamp went up as he wondered. The sudden light illuminated some letters on the wall opposite the lamp-post. The letters spelt:

‘JOWLE STREET.’

Only the letters weren’t quite as distinct as you read them here. Years of dirt and depression had tried to wipe them out.

‘Wot—can’t I never get away from it?’ blinked Ben.

It did seem, this time, as though Fate had taken a hand!

He peered cautiously along the road. He was at the ‘No. 1’ end of it. He’d only used the other end up till now, the end where there wasn’t a lamp-post. That was why he hadn’t recognised it. From the spot where he stood, No. 29 was on the left, and No. 26 was on the right. There was nobody about. He could nip along to No. 29, slip round to the back, and be in at the window in a couple of shakes. But, on the point of putting this simple plan into execution, he paused. No. 26 beckoned to him with almost equal insistence.

He stared at it. Like the Indian, it bore all the uncanniness of the unknown and its very mystery was hypnotic. He knew about No. 29. Well, about bits of it. But he didn’t know anything about No. 26—he didn’t know what it was like inside, or who lived there, or what happened when you got in. Would the person who opened the door ask you your name or seize you by the throat? Of course, it didn’t matter. Ben had nothing to do with No. 26, really … But it was funny how that house seemed to face him everywhere. His thoughts as well as his eyes.

He decided to have one close view of it, just to make sure there were no bloodstains or anything, and then to ‘go home’. Crossing the road to the even number side, he slithered along till the numbers climbed to 26. Then, at a blackened railing, he stopped. One—two—three—four—five stone steps. Same as his side. Mounting to a flat space before the front door. Same as his side. And then the front door itself. Again, same as his … Not, not quite the same as his side, this time. This door was a bit more solid like. And then the slit for the letters was higher up. A good deal higher up. Funny place for the slit, that. Shouldn’t think the postman’d much care for it. He’d have to lift his arm more than shoulder high. Almost on a level with his eyes … his eyes … eyes …

‘Criky!’ muttered Ben, and backed suddenly.

He backed into something. Something that had come along quietly behind him. The collision was violent, and his parcel fell to the ground. Only by grabbing at the railing was Ben able to prevent himself from following the parcel. Then he swerved round, to see what the new trouble was.

He found it was the nasty old man.

The old man looked at him angrily. He, also, had dropped a parcel. He seemed very annoyed about it.

‘Hey! What are you up to?’ he cried.

Ben lurched down and regained his parcel, and the old man lurched down at the same time and regained his.

‘Well, why don’t you answer, my man?’ rasped the indignant one. ‘What were you doing on that doorstep?’

‘Lookin’ at the number,’ replied Ben. It seemed a good idea. But the old man did not think it was such a good idea.

‘What for?’ he demanded.

‘Ter see wot it was,’ explained Ben.

‘Yes, but what did you want to see what it was for?’

‘So’s I’d know it.’

The old man glared. Ben glared back. After all, there was no law against looking at house numbers, was there?

‘Well, now you know it,’ said the old man, ‘what are you going to do about it?’

‘Go away from it,’ answered Ben, ‘and never come back.’

The answer found favour. The old man actually smiled.

‘Now, that’s excellent news,’ he remarked ironically. ‘Our stormy little meeting ends happily for both of us, after all!’ He turned, and mounted the steps. But, as he took out his latch-key, he turned again. ‘By the way,’ he inquired, ‘what number did you want?’

‘’Undred an’ eight,’ returned Ben.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have some difficulty,’ sighed the old man, as he inserted his key. ‘They only go up to forty-two.’

He disappeared. So did Ben. But ten minutes later Ben reappeared in Jowle Street like a human rocket, fired horizontally, with a trajectory that ended abruptly through the window of No. 29. The conclusion was so violent that there were quite a few stars.

He waited a few moments to recover from the stars. He had known several thousands of stars in his time, so it didn’t take long. Just shut your eyes, stand still, and they go. Then he crept round to the front hall, and called, ‘Oi!’ That was another good dodge he’d learned. If anybody answered your ‘Oi’ you replied, ‘Nah, then, wot are you doin’ ’ere?’ If nobody answered you, then you yourself were safe from the question. Ben was no arch-sinner, but in the lesser omissions he could claim his share of proficiency.

Nobody answered his ‘Oi.’ Good! He ascended the first flight.

‘Oi!’ he called again.

Again nobody answered him. Again, good! He ascended the second flight.

‘Oi!’

This was the most important ‘Oi’. He was now outside his home quarters on the second floor front. But fortune continued to favour him—conscious, perhaps, of its coming desertion—and he shoved open the door with a contented mind. As contented a mind, at least, as is possible to anyone in a house that creaks.

The room was empty. Just as he had left it. There was the closed window. There was the packing-case. There, even, were some familiar crumbs, including a bit of rind he remembered excommunicating to the corner. Each little sign that the room had not been entered during his absence gave him a reassuring sense of possession and of home.

Well, now it was time to start making a few more crumbs! He was sorry he had only got the cheese to make them with, because he had intended to buy a packet of biscuits and a bit of cake at the coffee stall; but the Indian, and then the stall keeper’s conversation, had upset his plans, and he had come away with his shopping only half done. Never mind. The cheese was something. He mightn’t even have had that.

‘Aht comes me little parcel!’ he murmured, fishing for it in a capacious pocket that was mainly hole.

Little parcel? Not so blinkin’ little, neither! Had he bought all that cheese? As he opened the parcel he hoped the contents would not lie as heavy on his chest as they lay in the paper …

‘Lord luvvaduck!’ gasped Ben.

The cheese had turned into a revolver.

6
A Taste of Death

‘WELL, I’m blowed!’ muttered Ben, in amazement. He had seen a rabbit turn into a Union Jack, but he had never seen a piece of cheese turn into a pistol. ‘Now wot ’appens?’

The next instant it occurred to him what would happen. The owner of the pistol would want his possession back. He was probably staring angrily at Ben’s cheese at this very moment!

‘Yus, ’e’ll want it back, but ’ow’s ’e goin’ ter git it back?’ reflected Ben.

Why, by coming across after it, of course.

‘Yus, but ’e don’t know I’m ’ere?’

Didn’t he?

Well, Ben would soon find that out. If the old man knew that Ben was here—if he had seen him in that meteoric flight through Jowle Street, or if he had divined it by means of some sixth sense—then he would very soon pop across the road. Why, he might be on his way across now! Gawd! Wot a night!

Slipping the weapon into his pocket—it was a very small one and went in easily—he crept to the window, keeping his head and body well below the level of the ledge. When he reached the window he discovered that one cannot see out of a window at such a meagre elevation. Grudgingly he increased the elevation till he was able to see more than sky and chimneys, and when he had increased it sufficiently to procure a view of the door of No. 26, he put himself swiftly into reverse and dropped down flat. For at that moment the old man had come flying out of the door, and his mood had not appeared pleasant.

In the most life-like guise of a pancake he could assume, Ben cogitated.

‘’E won’t come ’ere, ’e’ll go up the road,’ ran his thoughts, ‘but if ’e does come ’ere ’e won’t git in, ’cos if ’e rings it won’t ’elp ’im and ’e don’t know there’s a winder hopen at the back, and there ain’t no hother way—well, is there?’

The slamming of the front door answered him.

‘Golly! ’e’s in!’ gasped Ben. ‘’Ow the blazes—?’

But this was no time for theorising. The old man was certainly in, and just as certainly he was coming up!

‘’Ere—stop thinkin’,’ Ben rounded on himself, ‘and do somethin’!’

What?

Well, you could stay where you were and hope—that was one thing. Or you could rush out with a roar, pretending you were a madman or a murderer—that was another. Or you could dart quickly up to the third floor—that was another—only you’d have to do that at once because the stairs at the top of the first flight were already creaking, which meant that in another moment the stairs at the bottom of the second flight would start, and when anyone got round the bend of the second flight they’d spot you. Or you could say to yourself, ‘Wot ’ave I done, any’ow? ’Oo’s ’e, any’ow? Boo!’ And wait, calm like.

Ben chose the last idea. He chose it largely because he was too late to choose most of the others, but even if the choice had been forced upon him by circumstances he came to the conclusion that it really was the best one. For, after all, what was he afraid of? The old man, if he possessed the right to warn him away, had not done so yet, and when it came to a direct battle of wits Ben’s weren’t so bad. Anyway, your brain worked better in the open than in a cupboard.

‘Seven more, and ’e’ll be ’ere,’ Ben counted the steps. ‘If ’e don’t tread clear of No. Five ’e’ll git a jump!… There she goes … Good, ’e’s swearin’ … Three more … One … Now ’e’s up—’

The door was shoved open. A figure stood in the doorway.

It was the old man all right.

‘So! You are here!’ he cried, glaring.

‘Well, I’m blowed!’ answered Ben.

‘What are you doing?’

‘No ’arm.’

‘I’ll judge that, my man! Answer me! What are you doing?’

For the first time Ben had authority for saying that he was the caretaker, and for the first time he had no inclination to make the statement. He didn’t mind lying himself, but he wasn’t so ready to involve other people. If the old man had got in with a latch-key the house presumably belonged to him; and if the house belonged to him, then it couldn’t belong to the girl; and if it didn’t belong to the girl, then he couldn’t really be her caretaker, could he? Well, there you were!…

‘Are you going to answer me, or aren’t you?’ demanded the old man.

‘Lummy, don’t you ’urry one?’ retorted Ben. ‘I’ll tell you why I’m ’ere, guv’nor. I come in ’ere ter eat a bit o’ cheese, and fahnd it rather ’ard.’

Now the old man looked at him sharply.

‘Try speaking a little more clearly?’ he suggested.

‘’Ow’s this fer clear?’ returned Ben, and brought the revolver from his pocket.

To Ben’s disappointment the old man did not jump. Instead he darted forward with amazing nimbleness and snatched the weapon from Ben’s hand.

‘You rascal!’ he barked.

‘Go on,’ responded Ben indignantly. ‘You got my cheese. And, come ter that,’ he added, ‘I want it!’

‘Bah!’

‘Where is it?’

‘Do you think I can worry about your bit of cheese, you fool? Clear out this minute, or I’ll have the police after you.’

‘Yus, but—’

‘Do you hear? Or must I speak more plainly, too?’

Ben’s indignation increased. Fair’s fair! He had given the old man his pistol, and he wanted his cheese … But, all at once, his indignation began to yield to another emotion. What was the old man doing with the pistol?

‘Nah, then!’ muttered Ben. ‘We don’t want none o’ that!’

‘Don’t we?’ answered the old man, and raised the little weapon.

‘I know it ain’t loaded!’ blustered Ben, now terrified.

‘You know a lot,’ replied the old man.

And fired.

Ben died promptly. He fell down, he was buried, and he went to heaven. That he did insist on. As a matter of fact, there was a bit of an argument about the heaven, and just as he was explaining to a sort of Noah with wings that he had always kept his mother, and that one couldn’t help one’s face, the Noah with wings dropped him from a cloud and sent him hurtling back in an empty room he’d known years and years ago, and where he had once stood before an old man with a pistol … where he had once stood … before an old man with a pistol …

‘And the next time,’ said the old man with the pistol, ‘I will hit you!’

Ben ran. There are moments when there is nothing else to do—when violent movement becomes the sole object of existence, as also the sole guarantee of its continuance. He had died once. He didn’t want a second death so soon after the first. The memory was too horrible.

The old man was standing between Ben and the doorway. A mad position if the old man wanted Ben to get out through the doorway; and not even the revolver was going to make Ben choose the only other egress, the window! That would merely provide an alternative route to the winged Noah. But then the old man was mad, Ben was now convinced of it. So he closed his eyes and dashed past the madman with a roar and shot beyond him into the passage. By the time the old man turned, Ben was half-way down the flight.

The stairs assisted him down the second half. No escalator could have assisted him better. They seemed to join in the race and run with him. They rolled him across the few feet of passage at the bottom and deposited him on the next flight, and the next flight caught him and carried him on as though it were a relay race. Having won it, the stairs threw him away unceremoniously at the bottom. Then he paused, and startling, violent reaction set in.

His terror did not disappear. That had come to stay, and it may be stated here that, throughout all its risings and fallings during the succeeding hours, it never wholly went. It formed a solid, cold background to all he endured, advancing, receding, advancing. But into the terror other emotions entered, forming queer mixtures that produced astonishing actions, and one of these other emotions entered now. It was red anger. Anger, against the old man, anger against the world, anger against the Universe! Why had he, Ben, been marked for this sort of thing? What had he done? He hadn’t asked to be born! As a matter of fact, if anybody had consulted him he would have answered very definitely, ‘I don’t think!’ And he had been good to his old mother. For five years he had sent her three shillings a week, and once he’d sent her ten shillings when someone had told him he’d won a competition. If it had been true he’d have sent her another ten shillings and some cough mixture. And that little kid of his had seemed to like him a bit that night before she died … Wasn’t he no good at all but to be frightened and chased, and shouted at?

‘I’ll beat ’im—I’ll show ’im!’ muttered Ben. ‘I’ll ’oodwink ’im!’

And, opening the front door swiftly, he closed it with a loud bang. But when it banged, Ben was still on the inside.

There! That’d do it! The old man would be down in a few seconds—Ben could hear him now—and when he got to the hall he would conclude that Ben had gone. But Ben wouldn’t be gone. No, he would be waiting in a cupboard at the back of the hall. A nice, roomy cupboard, which Ben had marked for an emergency. You could lie in it or stand up in it. The first thing you did in a house, if you had Ben’s experience, was cupboards.

Here came the old man. Ben didn’t wait. He dived for the cupboard, doubling back past the foot of the staircase and along the narrowing passage that ran alongside to the back quarters. He seized the knob of the cupboard just as the old man’s footsteps sounded immediately above him. The cupboard was under the stairs. Chuckling, the old man, was he? Well, two could play at that game! In a moment Ben would be chuckling … What was the matter with the knob?… Yes, Ben would have, the laugh … Got stuck or something. Come on! Turn, won’t you …

The cupboard was locked.

‘Crumbs!’ gasped Ben.

He plunged into the kitchen. He had not time to close the door behind him because, when he swung round to do so, having failed to perform the operation with his leg, the old man was already in the passage and might be looking his way. If he saw the door move, of course he’d smell a rat. So all Ben could do was to duck aside, ensuring that he at least was not within the old man’s possible vision, and to wait between an open door and an open window for what might happen.

The old man was beyond the open door. Was anything beyond the open window? The thought induced complete rigidity.

Well, if you couldn’t move, you couldn’t. You just stood like a statcher. And, while you stood, and the moments went by, other thoughts came to you, to assist in the general merry-making. How had that cupboard come to be locked? It hadn’t been locked when Ben had first entered the house. Who had locked it? What was inside? And had what was inside locked it?

‘Yer know,’ thought Ben, ‘this is gettin’ ’orrible.’ A moment later, he heard the front door slam.

‘Thank Gawd!’ he murmured.

But he wasn’t going to take any undue risks, even yet. Two might play at that door-slamming game!

He was out of the way, anyhow! Quickly Ben slithered towards the passage, but in a flash he was back in the kitchen again. The old man was still standing in the hall, his silver-locked head slightly on one side, listening. Great minds sometimes think alike.

Another two minutes of agony went by. Apparently, the old man did not move from the door. He just stood and waited, listening, with his revolver ready in his hand. Then the door banged a second time …

You can’t stand in a kitchen for ever. Presently Ben tiptoed to the doorway again. This time, the hall was empty. And—the cupboard?

7
The Will of a Woman

BACK in his sanctuary on the second floor, Ben reviewed the situation. He did not review it as a detective would have reviewed it, building point upon point and forming question upon question; he reviewed it unscientifically and emotionally, the various problems revolving in the ample space of his mind like planets in a deranged solar system. But out of the chaos we, better fed and better equipped, may select material for constructive conjecture by seizing on the more important of the questions in transit, and letting the others go. As, for example:

‘’Oo locked that cupboard unner the stairs? Yus, and when did ’e do it’? Yus, and wot’s in it? Or ’oo? Lummy!…

‘That old feller! Is ’e mad? Lummy!…

‘If the ’ouse is ’is—if mindjer—orl right! But it ain’t the Injun’s, too, can it? ’E tole me ter go, too! Sime as the old ’un did. Are they workin’ tergether? Lummy!…

‘If ’e thinks I’ve gorn—well, corse ’e must, wouldn’t ’e, will ’e come back presen’ly and do wot ’e thinks I gorn for? Lummy!…

‘Now this ’ere ’ouse can’t be the gal’s if it’s ’is—if, mindjer. Orl right. If it isn’t the gal’s, wot she pay me ter stay ’ere for? Was it so’s I’d be ’ere when ’e comes back ter do wot ’e’s goin’ ter do? Gawd!…

‘And ’ere’s a funny thing. ’E fires at me bang in the fice and misses me. Bang in the fice. And misses me!…

‘Yes, and wot abart my cheese?’

To Ben’s credit, he did not harp on the cheese. That thought merely came to him now and again in momentary pangs. He harped most on the bullet. He couldn’t make that out at all. Think he didn’t know when a revolver was pointing bang in his face?

‘Well, if ’e didn’t ’it me,’ muttered Ben suddenly, still requiring documentary proof that he was alive, ‘let’s see where the bullet did ’it.’

He turned and gazed at the wall. He saw no evidence of a bullet mark. He walked to the spot where he had been when the old man had fired, and then he located the spot where the old man had been when he had fired, and then he drew an imaginary line between the two spots. He even traced the line with his finger along the floor, continuing it to the wall and up the wallpaper as far as the height of his face. Nowhere near his finger when it paused at the correct elevation was there any sign of a bullet’s impact. There was no sign of it in the whole of the room.

‘Well, if that don’t beat a cat ’avin’ chicks!’ blinked Ben, in amazement. ‘’E fires at me. ’E don’t ’it me. ’E don’t ’it nuffin’!’

The only solution was that the bullet had suddenly stopped dead in the middle of space and had evaporated. ‘P’r’aps it was disappointed like at missin’ me and wouldn’t go on,’ thought Ben. But this thought was itself pulverising, so he reverted for relief to another problem—the problem of the cupboard under the stairs in the hall. It was, admittedly, a queer relief, but at least the cupboard presented a puzzle that could be solved, given a stout boot and a stouter heart. Ben possessed the former; it represented the best thing he’d ever found in a dust-bin; but he doubted whether he possessed the latter.

‘And yet it’s funny,’ he cogitated. ‘I done some brave things in my time. There was that toff ’oo was drahning that time. I was thinkin’ o’ savin’ ’im jest afore that other chap done it. And once I ’it a copper.’

Could not those days of glory be revived? He went on cogitating. And suddenly, to his profound astonishment, he discovered himself in the passage, starting to go downstairs.

He was astonished because he believed he was being courageous. Actually, he could not survive the idea of spending the night in No. 29 Jowle Street with the secret of the cupboard unsolved. It would be too likely to work into his dreams.

‘These stairs and me’s gettin’ ter know each other,’ he murmured, half-way down. He liked to talk to himself. It was company. ‘I could play a tune on ’em!’

As a matter of fact, he couldn’t help playing a tune on them, and it wasn’t exactly ‘Home Sweet Home’. It might have been more aptly described as a nocturne in creak minor. Just round the corner to the left was the cupboard door. Oh, the difference!

But Ben had made up his mind, and when he made up his mind it sometimes remained made up. Swerving round the corner to the left and refusing to stop to think, he reached the cupboard door, gasped at it, and swung back his boot.

‘Now fer it!’ he thought, closing his eyes.

The boot thought differently, however. It remained swung back, and for exactly four seconds Ben became a statue of a blind man about to kick a goal. A taxi had stopped outside.

Four seconds was too long. He realised it during the fifth. A key was now being slipped into a lock of the front door, and the front door was beginning to open. He only had time to jump away from the cupboard and jerk himself round before the visitor appeared …

Once before in this house Ben had waited for an ogre and had received a vision. Now history repeated itself, although it was a different vision. The other had been a girl. This was a woman. A woman in evening dress, with a wonderful fur cloak, that half-concealed and half revealed an even more wonderful white throat. Ben didn’t know they came so white. The whiteness of this woman’s throat was dazzling. And yet, of course, he’d seen her kind at cinemas. Breathless close-ups, that advanced towards you enormously, outdoing reality. Yes—she’d make a close-up! She was difficult enough, even at six yards! Made your head swim … if you’d been through a bit of a time, you know, and felt emotional …

‘So—you are still here,’ said the ravishing woman.

Well, her tone was friendly, anyhow. She was smiling at him. Ben smirked back sheepishly, and swallowed.

‘Do you know, I’m rather glad,’ went on the woman, closing the door behind her. The taxi did not drive away. In the middle of his confusion Ben was still alert for details. ‘Of course, it’s very foolish of you, but I was rather hoping for a little chat.’

‘Was yer, mum?’ replied Ben.

The other had been miss. This was mum. Though, mind you, she was young. Young as blazes!

‘Yes. You see, I admire bravery. I admire courage and character. And I can recognise it when I see it.’

‘Ah,’ blinked Ben, struggling against an increase of the sheepishness.

‘Now, listen,’ said the woman, opening a little evening bag and extracting a little cigarette-case. Gold. Or looked like it. ‘I’m going to sit down on that uninviting bottom stair for two minutes, and I’m going to smoke half a cigarette. And by that time I hope we shall know each other and understand each other … Do you mind?’

‘Eh? Corse not, mum,’ answered Ben, wondering what difference it would have made if he’d said he had.

But, then, he wasn’t sure that he did mind. A two minutes’ chat with a dazzling creature like this? It did not often come within a poor sailor’s experience. Just him and her, and the stairs! And the queer, tantalising scent she had on her! And the marvellous hair, as exact as a battleship. And that white throat of hers …

It may surprise you that Ben should have been affected by these things. You may consider it ridiculous, even presumptuous. But Ben, for all his dirt and his grime, his hunger and his ineffectiveness, was a bit of life, and the last thing that Life stamps out of us is the little spark of romance within us. When that is gone, we may as well go too.

About to sit on the stairs, the woman suddenly paused and held out her case.

‘Won’t you join me?’ she asked.

Ben shook his head. That might be too presumptuous! But she continued to hold her case out, and he advanced in response to her urging and took a dainty, gold-tipped cigarette with fingers unprepared for the honour. Then his spirit failed him again, and he slipped the cigarette into his pocket.

‘Presen’ly, if yer don’t mind, mum,’ he mumbled.

She shrugged her shoulders. One shoulder actually peeped out for a moment from its warm nest of fur.

‘As you like,’ she said, lighting her own cigarette. ‘But here is a match, ready?’

She bent forward with the match. The light glowed on her deliciously made-up cheeks, and her darkened lashes, and her very perfect lips. No man in her station could have refused the moment. But Ben again shook his head, hardly knowing why. Perhaps he was still struggling against presumption, even while she admitted it.

‘Even in small things, I see you are consistently dogged!’ She sighed, as the light went out, and with it, for the moment, her face. She seemed only a wonderful shadow now, with a little glow, first bright, then soft, before it. But her voice came from the stairs on which she sat, proving her substance. ‘Well, that only increases my interest in you. The cigarette—that is nothing! But this house—that is another matter. Why are you dogged about that? Why won’t you leave?’

So this was why she had called! This was what she wanted to talk to him about!… Of course, she’d already implied it …

‘It’s very foolish of you, Mr Strong Man, really it is,’ her voice continued. Had a tinge of irony dropped into the voice now? ‘It won’t do you any good to stay in this house.’

Suddenly Ben faced her, and tackled matters squarely.

‘Wot’s wrong with the ’ouse?’ he demanded.

‘Wrong with it?’ she repeated. Now the voice was perplexed. ‘Nothing is wrong with it. Why should there be?’ Ben was silent. ‘The only thing that is wrong with it, if I may say so without offending you, is your own presence in it. That, of course, is wrong. But it’s a wrong that can be so easily righted.’

‘Can it?’

‘Yes. And must be, before the little wrong becomes a big wrong. My father has a terrible temper, when he’s roused.’

Ben stared at her.

‘Yer father, mum?’ he murmured.

‘Yes, my father,’ she nodded. ‘You don’t mind my having a father, do you? It seems we all have to have one. If you would like to get the position quite clear, this house belongs to my father, who lives opposite, and when I dropped in just now, on my way to a theatre, I found him in a frightful state. It seems he’d been trying to turn you out—forgive my gauche expressions—and that you had refused to go. I suggested a policeman—you mustn’t mind, because you really are trespassing, you know—but he wouldn’t hear of it. He prefers to deal with things himself, and I’m afraid he said, “Policeman be damned!” If you don’t go at once, he’ll get into one of his really, really bad states, and there may be murder done. So, you see,’ she concluded, ‘I decided to come here myself, because I knew I could persuade you, and could make you see reason. Was I right?’

It certainly seemed reasonable enough when she put it like that. But—was it really reason—or just her scent?

‘Yes—but ’e tried ter shoot me!’ blurted Ben, struggling against both her scent and her sense, and striving feebly to make out a case for himself.

She jumped up from the stairs, and seized his arm. Now her face was very close, and almost hypnotised him. A little wisp of hair was nearly touching his cheek.

‘Tried to shoot you?’ she cried, in alarm. ‘Good heavens! He’s in that condition! Don’t you see, you must leave—you must! Now! This moment!’

Her fingers tightened convulsively on his sleeve. Unconsciously, he had strengthened her case instead of weakening it. He felt himself being impelled imperiously towards the door, while rich fur brushed against shabby cloth and Houbigant mingled with stale tobacco … Now the front door was wide. The damp street opened its misty arms … And now he was on the pavement, his mind in a whirl, being bundled into the taxi …

‘Wot’s this?’ he protested.

‘My taxi,’ whispered the woman’s voice in his ear. ‘I’ll get another, but you mustn’t wait a second! I’ve told the man to drive you away, and I’ve paid him—’

He felt her final shove. The soft fingers could be hard and capable. The next instant the taxi began to move, and he was being driven away from Jowle Street.

His brain swam. He must steady it, and think. He groped for his cigarette.

8
Ben Finds New Quarters

THERE was no doubt about it, Ben needed a few soothing whiffs to regain his normal balance. Abruptly, within the space of a single minute, his little world had been uprooted and his immediate future changed; moreover, he was struggling to throw off the effects of the bemusing beauty that had entered the little world and had uprooted it. It had entered from a world much vaster than Ben’s. It had enveloped him with almost sinister potency, and with all the cynicism of the unattainable; yet its design had been backed by ruthless logic, or else the semblance of it, and he could not put his finger on the flaw. A flaw there must be. But where was it? That was the problem Ben hoped, with the aid of his cigarette, to solve.

He little realised, as he inserted the dainty, gold-tipped thing, how definitely it was going to assist him in his search for the catch!

‘I’ll give meself a couple o’ minits,’ he thought. ‘Just a couple, that’s orl. Then I’ll do something’.’

He struck a match, and lit the cigarette. The match-light glowed on the back of the taximan. It was a broad back, and the end of an untidy moustache protruded beyond the curve of a cheek. It must be a big moustache, Ben reflected, because it was a big cheek. Funny how you liked some moustaches, and hated others!

The match went out. Now only the reflection of his cigarette glowed in the broad back of the taximan. Yes, it was soothing, all right! Just what he wanted. But only for a couple of minutes, mind! No longer …

Ben watched the little glow as he puffed. It expanded and dwindled. So did the back it shone in. Now the back was enormous. Now it was tiny. Now it was enormous again. Queer, that. You could puff a cigarette glow up and down, but could you puff a back?

‘Wunner where ’e thinks ’e’s takin’ me,’ thought Ben; ‘’cos wherever ’e thinks, ’e’s wrong.’

But the next moment he was wondering about something else. The back was doing extraordinary things. It was swaying. First one side, then the other. Left—right—left—right! ‘’E’ll fall off ’is seat in a minit,’ thought Ben. But he didn’t fall off his seat, and all at once Ben realised the reason, with a shock. The taximan wasn’t swaying. Ben was swaying!

‘’Ere—wot’s orl this?’ murmured Ben. ‘I’m comin’ over orl funny!’

He puffed fiercely, and then suddenly raised his hand and snatched the cigarette from his mouth. His hand was like lead.

‘Gawd—so that was ’er gime!’ choked Ben.

He had struck the flaw in the logic. No really nice girl carries a drugged cigarette in her case!

Suppose he had smoked the cigarette when she had first offered it to him? She had offered it, he recalled, before he had mentioned anything about the pistol shot. He would have been feeling then as he was feeling now. The hall would have swum, instead of the taxi. He would have become limp … he would have been carried out unconscious … into the taxi …

‘’Ere! Stop!’ he bawled.

That was funny! Where was his voice? He didn’t hear it! Nor, apparently, did the taximan, for he didn’t stop.

‘Police! Fire! ’Elp!’ roared Ben.

But, again, it was a roar without a sound. His imagination raged, while his lips were mute. Two white arms went round him and held him. He sank into a sea of scent. A beautiful woman with a gleaming throat stood on the shore and laughed as he went under … Now, all was peaceful and velvet …

The sense of gliding—that remained. He had not smoked the whole cigarette. The body that could no longer function glided through the velvet, conscious of movement and of occasional incidents in the movement. Sometimes, for instance, the movement became a little jerky. Sometimes a cow squeaked through it. Sometimes it changed its direction abruptly, and took loops. Sometimes the velvet became speckled with little lights, or alleviated by a momentary big one, reminding one of the sensations of passing through stations on night journeys. And, as a sort of background to it all, there was a continuous, rhythmic throbbing, soft, and very close to the ears …

Now the movement became very jerky. Now the cow squeaked loudly, two squeaks at a time. And now the movement stopped, and the Universe paused in its transit. And now a new movement started—a heavy, formless, bumping kind of movement, that irritated one and made one vaguely rebellious. The gliding hadn’t been so bad. You could sink into it, yield yourself to it, accept it. In fact, you had to. But you couldn’t sink into this new form of locomotion through space. It shook you. It made you feel slighted. It caused your heavy arms to try and move with preventive intent, and your legs, equally heavy, to attempt kicks. But it wasn’t any good. The bumping movement went on, up, along, up, along, up, along, this side, straight again, t’other side, straight again, now tipping, now swaying, now swinging, now jolting, now cursing, now grumbling—up, along, up, along—woosh—flop!

Ben’s form became horizontal and inert again. Stretched out limply, it entered into its last stage of impassivity. When it began to emerge, the dim space around it started separating into sections, and each section formed into an object. An enormous oblong dwindled in size as it improved in focus, till it became a wardrobe. A block became a chest of drawers. A smaller block became a chair. A curious golden arrow became the light of a street lamp streaking in through a window.

‘’Ere—wot’s orl this?’ muttered Ben, sitting up suddenly. But he flopped back again almost immediately, because his movement had shifted the good work of the telescope, and the focused objects were beginning to lose their definition again. Once more he became inertly horizontal, but this time with a slowly-moving brain. ‘Stop ’ere like this fer a minit,’ advised the slowly-moving brain, ‘and then try it agin more slow like.’

After the minute, Ben tried it again more slow like. It worked better. Now he was sitting up and the objects around him did not start running away. Even the object he was sitting up on stayed where it was, and proved to be a bed.

In a corner of the room he spotted something that spelt salvation. It was a jug in a basin. Keeping his eyes anchored upon it, he imagined a steadying rope joining himself to the jug. With the assistance of this rope he worked his legs over the side of the bed. When they touched the ground, the ground began to roll, but again the rope came to his aid and saved him from disaster. He waited for a few moments till the floor grew calmer, and then, glueing his eyes on the water jug, he made a sudden dive towards it. To his surprise, it was a bull’s-eye, and the cool handle of the jug felt good in his hot hand.

‘Nah fer a shower barth!’ he thought. ‘That’ll do the trick!’

He raised the jug and inverted it over his head. He was rather surprised at the ease of the operation. He must be growing stronger! But the inverted jug produced no comfort. It was empty.

‘There’s a dirty trick!’ muttered Ben.

He wanted to cry. He couldn’t stand many more disappointments. But all at once he spotted a small water bottle on the wash-stand. It was full of water—probably last month’s, but that didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that the bottle had received its last rub before the war. He seized it avidly, and cascaded the contents all over him from his hair downwards. The chilly moisture made life worth living again, and battles worth fighting. Should we ever despair, when heaven itself may be contained in a filthy carafe?

As the water trickled down him and around him his blood responded immediately and began to flow freely again. His mind worked, his scant store of courage returned. And he needed all his courage for what was before him. Turning, he eyed the door. ‘Aha!’ he cried. It was the bark of the dog that has just emerged from the sea, though not, at this moment, a good-natured dog. Its desire was to bite as well as to bark. The person to be bitten was somewhere on the other side of the door.

Ben crossed to it. Yes, he found he could do so. A bit groggy still, of course, but he no longer needed an imaginary rope. ‘Hi!’ he shouted. ‘Lemme out!’ As he shouted, he kicked the door with his boot—his present from the dust-bin.

No one came. He went on shouting and kicking. The door held firm.

‘Wotcher think yer doin’ of?’ roared Ben. ‘’Oojer think yer are? Lemme out, d’yer ’ear? Lemme out! If yer don’t, by Gawd, I’ll ’ave yer ’ouse dahn!’ Hefty kick. ‘D’yer ’ear?’ Another hefty kick. ‘Yer think I don’t mean it?’ Another hefty kick. ‘Orl right, yer bit o’ ’uman pulp with a bird’s nest on yer lip, I’ll show yer!’

Now he heard a tread upon the stairs.

‘Yer better be quick,’ bawled Ben, ‘or the door’ll come dahn on yer.’

It was a terrific kick this time. The door shook, and showed a little split.

‘Now, then—stop that!’ ordered a voice from outside.

‘Yus, likely, ain’t it?’ retorted Ben, and went on kicking.

‘Stop it. D’you ’ear?’

‘Corse I don’t ’ear? ’Ow can I? I’m lyin’ on yer blinkin’ bed drugged, ain’t I?’

‘You’ll lie there again in a minute, if you’re not careful!’ threatened the voice. ‘You’d better do as I tell you!’

‘Yus, why shouldn’t I do wot you tells me? Yer bin so nice ter me, ain’t yer? Taken me fer a nice ride and ain’t charged me nothin’. Why, I’m so fond o’ yer I’ll black yer boots fer yer—and then yer two eyes arterwards!’

It wasn’t polished repartee, but it assisted the kicking, and evidently it worried the person outside. Someone joined him, and there was whispering.

‘Yus, and ’ere’s somethin’ ter whisper abart!’ bellowed Ben suddenly. ‘Good-bye to yer ’appy ’ome!’

He staggered back to the water jug, seized it, and hurled it to the ground. It splintered with a crash. Then he seized the water bottle. There was another crash.

‘Tinkle-tinkle!’ cried Ben deliriously. There is a special form of delirium that accompanies the act of breaking things. ‘Didyer ’ear it? Now listen agin! This is goin’ ter be the soap dish. It’s ’ole.’ Smash! ‘Now it ain’t.’

Agitation grew in the passage. A chair followed the soap dish. ‘Yer’ll ’ave some nice firewood in the mornin’,’ cackled Ben; ‘but I’m afraid yer’ll ’ave ter buy a noo dressin’-table.’

The dressing table crashed over on its side. A leg splintered with a tearing sound. Ben seized another chair, and began to hammer the remains of the dressing table with it. Then he swung round …

The door was open. The taximan had entered, in a towering rage. Behind him, providing the light for his ferocious silhouette, stood a woman with a candle. Evidently Mrs Taximan.

Not another word was spoken. Deeds became the important matters, and the first deed came from Ben, with the raised chair. He hurled it across at the oncoming taximan.

It struck his adversary, but it did not stop him. He still came on. ‘That’s a pity,’ thought Ben, and lunged. There was a long clinch. Its length might have rendered Albert Hall indignant, but in a little room you cannot be really sporting. ‘Well, if ’e’s ’urtin’ me I’m ’urtin’ ’im,’ thought Ben. They swayed and pummelled and jabbed. Then they rolled over, and the woman joined in.

That wasn’t fair! Even for a little room! She had put down the candle near the door, and was kicking Ben. It is possible that she was doing so to preserve her husband’s life, for Ben was conscious that the man he was wound round was writhing desperately. Still, two against one wasn’t cricket, however you looked at it.

Something sharp touched Ben’s hand. It gave him a nasty shock, for he thought at first a knife was being used on him. Then he realised that the cause was two half-rows of teeth. The woman was biting him.

He saw red. Not for the first time that day, or the last. He heaved himself up superhumanly, and shoved the woman away from him. It was odd, but even after she had bitten him he couldn’t strike her. One day, the Noah-like old man with wings will have to remember that. He just shoved her, with the force of an enraged elephant, and she fell on to the broken dressing table. The next instant, Ben found himself erect, by the candle.

He blew it out. He staggered into the passage and slammed the door. He turned the key that had been turned on him. And, choking and gasping, he tottered down the stairs.

His one object was to gain the street before a little goblin with seventeen hundred and sixty bright eyes got hold of him, and swallowed him …

9
The Seat

FOR a brief moment we will leave Ben and take a peep into another world. The world of a good-looking young man and a more than good-looking young girl, who sat on a bottom stair and talked.

It was not the bottom stair to which the reader has already been introduced. It was so different, in fact, that it really ought to be designated by some other name. Perhaps one day in years to come, when the surrounding walls had fallen into decay and the wallpaper was peeling and the balustrade was rocky, this stair would creak its swan song and be as dismal and as neglected as the stairs of No. 29 Jowle Street. Houses, like humans, return to dust through processes not kind or gracious. But on this particular evening it was a stair of luxury and delight—soft-carpeted, soundless, and mellow with pleasant little memories.

From the bottom stair of No. 29 Jowle Street, you would at this instant have heard a window rattling in its loose frame, and a rat scuttling under a board. From this happier stair the young man and the girl heard dance music and rippling laughter. They were not very interested in either the music or the laughter, however, and they had actually sought their bottom stair in an effort to escape from them. The world we are momentarily peeping into comprised just their two selves, and they did not want to be reminded of any other personalities.

‘Oh, for a desert!’ sighed the young man.

‘Or the North Pole!’ added the girl.

‘Or the moon,’ suggested the young man. ‘But, you know, I believe people would follow us even there! Why is it, Ruth, that when two persons want to be alone, the entire population of the globe insists on pursuing them?’

‘Well, we’re alone now,’ the girl pointed out.

‘So we are!’ smiled the young man.

But before he could celebrate the fact a door opened, and more population poured towards them.

‘Look here—I’ve an idea!’ whispered the young man.

‘It sounds splendid,’ the girl whispered back.

‘It is splendid,’ said the young man. ‘Are you game?’

‘For anything!’

‘Right! Then do you remember that seat where we had our first real chat?’

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