The next moment he was gone, and Ben listened to his footsteps as they grew fainter and fainter along the dark passage.
14
By Candlelight
Sleep, though needed, was impossible. In the flickering candlelight, Ben sat and thought.
His brain was groping in a region of thick black clouds, and the thickness and the blackness increased the farther he advanced into them. Would he ever be able to grope his way out again, if he wanted to? And did he want to? He could not find a definite answer to either question.
At first the issue had been a fairly simple one. He had seen a detective killed, and he had decided to carry on for him. All he had to do was to go back to a woman’s flat and discover a secret. He would tell the secret to Scotland Yard, and the woman, with her accomplices, would be arrested.
But the woman had not revealed her secret. At the bidding of some new personality (designated, for convenience, as the Jack of Clubs), she had sent Ben on a second journey to a mysterious cottage in Lincolnshire, where he had passed into the temporary keeping of Mr Smith, of Boston. In his turn, Mr Smith had passed him on to Scotland, where he was now residing at a mysterious hotel in charge of Mr MacTavish of Muirgissie.
A traveller of importance wherever he called, he was a traveller without knowledge. He received none, and was as far from solving the puzzle as he had been at the beginning.
Was the Black Swan to be journey’s end, or would the journey continue beyond it—up into the mountains that reared their invisible heads far out in the blackness beyond his window? Would the final instructions come from the dour Scotsman, or would MacTavish pass him on once more to somebody else? ‘Blimy if I ain’t like a paiper packet,’ thought Ben, ‘bein’ ’anded abart, and the larst person wot ’as it opens it and gits the surprise!’
But the unsolved mystery was not the sole cause of Ben’s increasing complexity. Two new personalities had entered into the maze to worry him since he had stood on the bridge—at the entrance to the maze—with the detective.
One was the innkeeper’s niece, Jean. What was a nice, bright young girl like her doing in this gloomy hole, having her gaiety ground out by the thumb of a scamp? For it was as obvious that MacTavish was a scamp as it was that Jean was a nice bright girl. ‘She orter be dancin’,’ decided Ben, recalling their conversation, ‘instead o’ bein’ sent ter bed at nursery-time arter workin’ without no skivvy. Yus, and I’d like ter sit and watch ’er!’ The knight in him stirred towards his grubby surface, desiring with the splendid illogicality of knights to effect a rescue. He wanted to carry Jean into a world of sunlight—forgetting that he, like Jean herself, was more accustomed to the shadows.
The other person who worried him—more strangely, but at the moment more persistently—was Mr Smith, of Boston.
In life Ben had not cared for Mr Smith. In death, he thought of him with a queer compassion. If he had been a link in a chain of doubtful quality—and, obviously, he had been—he had not apparently represented a major link. For some reward he would never now be able to enjoy, he had undertaken to convey Ben from one point to another, knowing as little as he could, and closing his eyes tightly lest he should learn more.
‘P’r’aps ’e was poor and kep’ ’is old mother,’ thought Ben, excusing him lavishly, ‘and p’r’aps ’e wanted the money fer medercine … Funny ’ow much more yer like a bloke arter ’e’s dead!’
An appalling idea hit him in the stomach. It hit him so hard that it brought him to his feet and nearly sent the candle over. He’d taken Mr Smith for dead. Suppose—he wasn’t?
But as Ben recalled the gruesome vision he had watched being blotted out by the night, he felt certain that Mr Smith, of Boston had breathed his last, and that it was not he who had driven by the hotel and peered into the parlour. The person who had done that was the person who knew, even more certainly than Ben himself, that Mr Smith was dead.
Where was that person now? Ben turned to the dark view outside his bedroom window, and the question slid in like a cold draught. Or like a chilly hand the fingers of which were trying to draw him out. Other questions glided in through the undecipherable darkness. Why had MacTavish thought it might be a woman? Why had he been so anxious that it was not a woman? What woman?… Had it been a woman?… What had gone wrong the first time?… What first time?… Where was Mr Smith now?
‘Corse, I can’t stand much more o’ this!’ pondered Ben. ‘I gotter find out—’
Someone knocked softly on the door behind him. He swung round quickly.
‘’Oo’s that?’ he whispered.
Then, annoyed with himself for having whispered—he had a right to his voice, hadn’t he?—he asked loudly:
‘’Oo’s that?’
His voice now seemed to boom.
There was no reply. The knock had not been repeated. He opened the door and stared out into the empty darkness. No, the darkness was not quite empty a little way along the passage. Something was flitting away.
‘Am I frightened?’ he asked himself, as he ran out after it. ‘Yus!’
So, apparently, was the ghost he was chasing. When he caught hold of it (for he could race any ghost, coming or going), it tottered, and nearly fell back into his arms. It was Jean, in her dressing-gown.
‘Wozzer matter?’ whispered Ben.
He did not correct the whisper this time. It was too appropriate to the occasion.
‘Nothing,’ the girl whispered back.
‘Was it you wot knocked?’
‘Ay.’
She released herself from his grip and turned to face him. He could just see her outline. He noticed that her hair was no longer neat and trim.
‘Well—I answered yer,’ said Ben.
‘I haird you,’ she replied.
‘Oh! Then why didn’t yer answer back?’
‘I—I juist wanted to ken you were in your room.’
‘Well, I were.’
‘Ay.’
‘Wot mide yer think I mightn’t be?’
She hesitated, then hedged.
‘If you hadna been, I couldna hae locked up.’
‘I see. And nah yer goin’ ter, miss? In yer nightdress?’
She did not reply, and he knew the reason. She was not going to lock up. Either she or her uncle had already done so.
‘We canna stand talkin’ here?’ she whispered suddenly, darting a glance along the passage.
Again Ben knew the reason. They were not supposed to be talking at all. Her uncle had warned Ben, and had probably given instructions to Jean, also. But why shouldn’t they talk if they wanted to? Perhaps there were things that ought to be talked about!
‘Would yer step inter my room fer a minit?’ asked Ben. ‘It’s orl right, I ain’t gorn ter bed yet.’
The superfluous information was intended for the invisible Mrs Grundy. Mrs Grundy might have retorted that Jean had obviously gorn to bed, and had got up again, but the Guardian of Proprieties was not really interested in scarecrows like Ben, who could not produce the compliment of her suspicion.
Once more Jean hedged.
‘Why have you no’ gone to bed?’ she inquired.
‘That’s wot I wanter tell yer,’ answered Ben, hoping to clinch her curiosity.
He began to move back to his room. She followed him. A few seconds later they were in the bedroom, looking at each other by candlelight.
‘Nah, then,’ said Ben, closing the door, ‘wot was the real reason yer knocked?’
‘I told you,’ she replied.
‘Ter find aht if I was in, yus, but you ain’t told me why you wanted ter find aht.’
‘I told you that, too.’
‘Oh! Well, miss—not meanin’ ter be rude like—would yer try agine?’
‘That sounds very rude!’
‘On’y becorse yer carn’t judge me by the sound. See, I ain’t got the ’ang o’ perlite words.’
A look of despair shot into her face.
‘It’s nae use, I canna mak you out!’
she exclaimed, almost angrily. ‘Ilka time I’m thinkin’ ane way, you’re up sayin’ something that mak’s me think the other!’ She suddenly seized his shoulders. Her fingers were strong, but trembling. ‘Who are you? Wha hae you come from, and wha’ are you doin’ here in Muirgissie?’
She stared at him hard, as though trying to pierce his eyes to the mind behind. Then, as suddenly as she had taken hold of him, she whipped her hands away again and turned her head towards the door. Ben was no artist, and his physical reactions (saving the unpleasant ones) had become dulled through lack of use, but even at that tense moment when he began to grow as interested in the window as she was in the door, he was conscious of the line of her turned neck making a graceful, candle-lit contour against the gloomy background of the wall. It affected him queerly, reviving with almost painful force his incoherent desire to be of some assistance to her.
‘Got an idea,’ he muttered, trying to think of one.
She turned swiftly.
‘Wot abart sittin’ dahn?’
‘Was that the idea?’ she asked, as he shoved a chair towards her. But she sat down, and watched him curiously while he moved slowly towards the window. Just before he reached it she spoke again, this time rather sharply.
‘Be careful!’
He stopped at once. Whether the chair had been the idea or not, he was now getting another.
‘You ’eard somethink aht there?’ he asked.
She nodded. So, now, did he.
‘Was that wot got yer up?’
She nodded again.
‘Was that why yer come ’ere, ter me?’
‘Weel—I wanted to be sure it wasna you.’
‘I see. Well, it ain’t, so wot abart lettin’ yer uncle know?’
After a little pause she said, ‘He isna in his room.’
‘Oh! Yer know that?’
‘Ay.’
‘Bin there, eh? And then come along ter me. Well, miss, as I’m in and ’e ain’t, it’s proberly ’im, ain’t it?’
She was silent, and he gained an impression that for some reason she did not think the person outside was her uncle.
‘Look ’ere, s’pose I ’adn’t bin ’ere, wot would you ’ave done?’ he asked. ‘And why did yer run away like that when yer fahnd I was ’ere?’
‘And why should I be answerin’ all your questions when you’ll no be answerin’ mine?’ she retorted suddenly.
‘That’s right,’ agreed Ben, nodding. ‘Yer want fifty-fifty. Well, ’oo wouldn’t? I ain’t blamin’ yer.’
All at once he completed his journey to the window and peered out. A gleam of light vanished abruptly. A large black bush waved violently, and then became still.
He left the window, and returned to the girl. She was on her feet again.
‘Yus, there’s some ’un aht there,’ he said. ‘Like me ter go aht and see if it’s yer uncle?’
‘But—suppose it isna?’ she answered.
‘Then p’r’aps it wouldn’t be so nice,’ he admitted.
‘But you’d go?’
‘If yer wanted it, miss.’
‘You’d do it—for me?’
‘Corse I would!’
‘Why?’
‘Well, miss—yer dunno why, do yer? Wot I mean is, yer jest do or yer don’t, ain’t it?’
‘You’re the queerest mon I ever met, Mr Wilkins,’ she said, with puzzled earnestness. ‘If it wasna for—’ She broke off, and shook her head. ‘You’ll gang oot yon for me, and maybe be gi’en a broken head, but you willna answer my questions—so wha’ must I be thinkin’?’
‘Lumme, if I ain’t careful she’ll beat me!’ thought Ben. Aloud he answered, ‘The reason I ain’t answerin’ yer questions is ’cos I carn’t, there, that’s stright, ain’t it?’
‘Is it?’
‘Orl right. ’Ere’s somethink strighter. I carn’t answer yer questions ’cos I carn’t, but I’ll answer one yer ain’t arsked. It’s abart you, and this is wot it is. None o’ the questions wot I carn’t answer would ’urt you if I could answer ’em, or if they would, they ain’t goin’ ter, there, ’ow abart that?’
She stepped closer to him, and her hand touched the lapel of his coat. She withdrew it with a little cry.
‘Wozzat?’ he asked.
He lifted the lapel, to find out what had caused the trouble, and as he did so the little skull-pin grinned up at them.
She stared at it for a few moments in horror. Then, as a door slammed somewhere below, she turned and fled.
15
Friend in Need
Moments come when there are so many things to do that you adopt the alternative of doing nothing. Such a moment now came to Ben.
He could have followed Jean, overtaken her again, and attempted to explain the skull-pin. He could have descended to the spot below from which the door had slammed. He could have returned to the window and gazed at the large dark bush, watching for the revelation of its secret. Or, following an earlier impulse which had dawned before Jean had knocked on his door, and from which the knocking had diverted him, he could slip out of the inn (assuming that were still possible) and revisit the spot where he had last seen Mr Smith of Boston. That spot was constantly in his mind. The car, he knew, was no longer there. But was Mr Smith’s body there—lying by the lane for anyone to see, or hidden in a ditch? Or wasn’t it there?
But instead he obeyed a sudden irresistible impulse to lie down on the bed and see what happened. And what happened was hardly less sudden than the impulse to await it. It was sleep. Nature had stepped in at last, and had decided to call it a day.
He awoke with a start. This was the way he usually awoke, due to a chronic sensation renewed each morning that he had done something wrong, although he could never remember what it was. Actually he lived with the weight of the world upon him, and his greatest sin was in having been born … Darkness had vanished. In its place was a queer white light. The light was queer because, somehow or other, it was as suffocating as the darkness had been. Looking towards the window, he saw mist.
He rose from his bed and went to the window. The view was a sea of slowly moving white. It curled and coiled as it moved, assuming strange shapes that formed an endless procession of filmy wraiths travelling through space from nowhere to nowhere. Below he could dimly see the large bush that had once been black. The blackness had gone with its secret. Ahead, somewhere beyond the new white legions, were the invisible mountains with their own secrets—unless these floating forms were themselves the mountains, dissolved and drifting.
There was a washstand in the room. The jug was full of water, a new cake of Pears’ soap was in a china dish, and a large clean towel hung over a rail. ‘I’ll bet it was ’er, not ’im, wot done orl this,’ thought Ben, as he began his ablutions. Might as well start the day clean, anyway, when you got the chance.
He wondered what the time was. As he was towelling his face a grandfather clock began wheezing information from the hall below. He stopped and counted. It wheezed up to nine, though the last one was a bit of a struggle.
‘Go on!’ muttered Ben, in surprise.
Had he slept all that time? He supposed he must have. But it seemed funny. And why hadn’t someone given him a knock?
When his meagre toilet was over he stepped out into the passage. Quiet, everything was. There ought to be sounds of cups and things, and the smell of bacon cooking. They couldn’t have had breakfast, could they? That would be a dirty trick! Perhaps they had theirs early, and permitted guests to choose their own time!
‘Arter orl,’ he reflected, as he began to move towards the stairs, ‘I s’pose I am a sort o’ guest, ain’t I? Or ain’t I?’
Everything looked horribly white. If it had been snow outside that would have been nice—Ben liked snow, it made you think of silly things like fairies—but he hated mist. That made you think of witches and Chinamen. Ben had never cottoned on to Chinamen since one had tickled him with a knife. The one really bright spot in his present adventure was that,
so far, it hadn’t included a Chinaman.
A stag’s head greeted him at the head of the stairs.
‘Merry Christmas,’ said Ben.
It was the whiteness that made him think of Christmas, but there was no other resemblance to the festive occasion.
He descended the stairs. As he reached the bottom someone darted at him. It was Jean. She seized his coat and, with surprising strength, lugged him across the hall to the parlour. The window-curtains were not yet drawn, despite the hour, and they stood breathlessly in the half-light. She still held his coat with her right hand while she raised a finger of her left almost to his lips. They were so close he could feel her breath against his face in little warm puffs. He heard her heart, too. Or was it his own?
They stood motionless for what seemed to him an eternity. Steps sounded from the back of the hall, drawing closer. She had closed the parlour door, and Ben waited for it to open again, combating new terror. ‘I wish I was one o’ them ’eroes,’ he thought, complaining to Fate of the mould in which he had been made. ‘This is fair gittin’ me!’
There were four feet. Ben specialised in footsteps, and could count the number up to eight. Two were MacTavish’s. Whose were the others?
Then the owner of the second pair spoke, his voice sounding immediately outside the door.
‘This weather’s not goin’ to help any.’
Ben did not recognise the voice, but he recognised the innkeeper’s:
‘Ay, and it’s no improvin’ any.’
‘Well, never fear,’ answered the other, ‘we’ll find him.’
The footsteps had paused.
‘Will ye step in for a wee drappie?’ asked MacTavish.
Jean’s fingers tightened on Ben’s sleeve.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ came the reply. ‘But I’ll have it later.’
The footsteps sounded again. The front door opened and closed. Two figures made two vague smudges on the window-curtain for a moment, then slid off it.
Detective Ben Page 10