Detective Ben

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  They reached the top. Ben strained his ears to hear sounds from the bottom, but he heard nothing. He paused again.

  ‘These nerves, Mr Lynch—are they affecting you, also?’

  ‘Got to git yer breath, ain’t yer?’ retorted Ben.

  ‘One flight of stairs should not make one lose it. I still have mine.’

  ‘That’s a good thing, because you’ll want it in ’arf a mo’.’

  ‘You underestimate me. The sight of death affects me as little as, I understand, it affects you. I have probably had even more experience.’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘Have you ever fought in a battle?’

  ‘Yus, but I always shut me eyes.’

  ‘The English sense of humour, I am often remarking, is a thing beyond my comprehension, but there is something about yours, Mr Lynch, that at times is almost comprehensible. Are you really and truly as—bloodthirsty as you declare?’

  ‘Wot, bloodthirsty?’ exclaimed Ben. ‘You orter see me workin’!’

  ‘I hope to, one day, but at the moment we are on our way—and not hurrying about it—to see the results of your work. I myself am quite as bloodthirsty as I doubtless seem to you. I may make less noise about it, and I do not kill for the mere pleasure of it. But when an object has to be achieved, individual life is a small matter. If I bore you, it is not my fault. I am filling in the time while you are waiting. I do not shut my eyes on the battlefield—and I have been on many more than one. Which room is it?’

  ‘Eh? Oh—that ’un.’

  ‘On the left.’

  ‘Yus.’

  ‘I shall regard the two casualties with my eyes well open. And, by the way, I shall not share in any regret that the number is two instead of one. The second might have lived to tell a tale. Now—though you suggest he may be listening—at least, he cannot talk. So why should this not be a murder and a suicide?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The boy was murdered, and his murderer then took his own life by the same means. No—a moment!’

  Ben had started to move towards the door.

  ‘’Oo’s stopping now?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am, Mr Lynch. To mention another theory. Two murders and a suicide. Mr MacTavish, to whom money was owed by this house, and who hoped to get paid, with a surplus, out of the proceeds of ten thousand pounds, came here for a settlement. He committed suicide, in terror or remorse, after he left. Or perhaps that was just an unfortunate accident in the mist. His legs might conceivably have been unsteady, for—again, why not?—he already had another murder on his conscience. That of Mr Smith of Boston. I admit MacTavish chooses a somewhat curious method of revenge here, and all his motives may not be obvious if we eliminate insanity. But those are little details the English police may like to play with, while we are—elsewhere. To quote your favourite expression—“eh?” Well, we will waste no more time. I require that interesting door on the left open in five short seconds.’

  ‘Yer carn’t mike a second shorter’n wot it is,’ answered Ben. His own preference would have been to increase the length. ‘Leastwise, not in this country.’

  He stopped outside the door, removed one hand from the chocolate-box, and began fumbling for the key.

  ‘Really, you are extremely careful,’ remarked his companion. ‘You even lock dead people in rooms!’

  ‘I’ve known ’em pop out agine afore now,’ answered Ben. ‘I once saw a chicken runnin’ abart without no ’ead.’

  ‘But these are not chickens?’

  ‘That’s right. I was jest givin’ yer a simultude or wotever they calls it.’

  ‘The key seems—what is the word?—bashful.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You are sure you have it?’

  ‘Yus. It’s got stuck ter a bit o’ torfee, and I’ve on’y got one ’and becos’ I’m ter ’ang on ter the chocklits. It’s your fault if we’re losin’ time now.’

  ‘Shall I help you?’

  ‘No. It’s comin’.’

  ‘Without, let us hope, the toffee?’

  Ben did not reply, for at this instant the key came. It came depressingly alone. Not even the fraction of an idea with it.

  He inserted it in the lock. He turned it, opened the door an inch, and paused.

  ‘Now fer it!’ he whispered.

  He shoved the door wide.

  ‘My Gawd!’ he shrieked, bounding back.

  His companion gripped his revolver firmly and took a step forward. A chocolate-box came hurtling at the back of his head. As he swayed round, a fist struck him, and the door was slammed against his face.

  ‘Now you’ve lorst your balance!’ bawled Ben deliriously through the door.

  He relocked the door, and the next moment was helter-skeltering down the stairs.

  25

  Down the Mountain

  With the sound of shouting and banging in his ears, Ben reached the bottom of the staircase. There he found his progress barred by Helen Warren’s revolver.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she cried.

  ‘Gawd knows!’ gasped Ben. ‘They’ve got ’im!’

  ‘Then why have you come down?’

  ‘Why don’t you go up? I ain’t got a gun!’

  He made a grab, but she drew her hand away swiftly.

  ‘There yer are!’ panted Ben. ‘It’s the gun’s wanted up there, it don’t matter ’oo uses it!’

  The banging continued. The shouting grew louder. At the moment it was incoherent, but if she heard the words …

  ‘Gimme the gun and I’ll go back! If yer don’t, I’m orf!’

  He grabbed a second time, but again she was too quick for him. As she sprang back, he suddenly swerved aside and darted towards the backdoor.

  The backdoor was ajar. He slammed it behind him. He could not say whether the slam covered a pistol shot or not, but he had a nasty impression that he had only just escaped a bullet.

  Outside he stood still for a moment. Partly to collect his wits, and partly because he was confused by the enveloping white mist. Had he been told to turn to the left or the right? He could not remember, it seemed so long ago! In a sudden panic he turned to the left, and just saved himself from leaping down a precipice. He saved himself by sitting down in the air and trying to swim backwards. His hands grabbed ground behind him, and pulled the rest of his suspended frame back through them. It was a feat that could only have been accomplished by a man who had spent most of his life wriggling out of difficulties. Wondering whether he were going to be sick, and convinced that he was, he clambered to his shaking legs, tottered round, and lurched in the opposite direction.

  He groped his way round an angle of the house. He ran, with startling abruptness, into a knot of shadowy people. He joined the knot, to find himself entangled in a portion resembling Fred. For an instant he became a separate knot all by himself, and he imagined he was about to experience a new form of death by intensive tying. The prospect was so unpleasant that all at once the knot burst, and the shadowy figures sprayed in all directions, as though a bomb had exploded beneath them. Then he discovered that he was running. He did not remember starting, but he supposed he must have started, or he wouldn’t still be doing it. Ahead of him were the faint, constantly dissolving and reappearing forms of an old man and a small boy. Was Fred behind him?

  He did not stop to inquire. He caught up the old man and the boy at the gate. Now they were all three outside the gate.

  ‘Why ain’t I bein’ sick?’ wondered Ben. ‘I can’t mike it out!’

  Ahead stretched the beginning of the long, tortuous track to Muirgissie, more than a thousand feet below. They could only see a yard or two of the track. The journey seemed a sheer impossibility. Even if they could reach MacTavish’s car before their pursuers overtook them with bullets, how would they be able to turn and drive it?

  ‘Right turn, men!’

  The order came in a sudden juvenile whisper. Obeying automatically, Ben blundered into the boy. The boy’s face was flushed, and its cont
rast to the whiteness of the mist made Ben think of robins in the snow on Christmas cards. He thought of ridiculous things at ridiculous moments. Once when he had been nearly drowning he had thought of tomato soup, and the sudden agony of the prospect of never having any more tomato soup had given him the strength that had saved him. Now the boy’s flushed face brought him out of the frenzied mental numbness through which his undirected limbs had functioned, and gave him back a little of his lost sense. He forgot his own skin, and thought of the boy’s. And also of the old man’s, which at this moment was so much whiter.

  ‘I mustn’t be sick,’ he decided. ‘That’d ’old us up!’ And while making this heroic decision he managed to murmur, ‘Wot’s the idea?’

  ‘We can get down to the loch,’ whispered the boy, ‘only we must be careful.’

  ‘Yes, yes—the boat!’ added the old man.

  Lumme! Loch! Boat! That was an idea! How far down was the boat? Better not inquire, perhaps, in case the figure made one dizzy!

  ‘Can we do it?’ Ben asked the old man.

  The old man hesitated. His fingers were nervously clutching his revolver. Somehow he had managed to retain that, and suddenly Ben wondered whether the shot he believed he had heard had come from Mr Hymat’s revolver, and not from Helen Warren’s.

  Fresh sounds from the house ended their hesitation. The track to Muirgissie held no hope for them. A precipitous climb—might!

  ‘Step where I step,’ came the boy’s next order, ‘and you’ll be all right. I know the way. Very slow march!’

  It had to be a very slow march or a disastrously quick one, and in spite of the urgency for speed the order for slow motion was necessary. But the slowness of the motion as they began the descent—the boy leading, the old man next, and Ben last—was agonising while those sounds from the house grew closer and closer. ‘If my ’ead ain’t below the edge afore they’re through the gite,’ reflected Ben, ‘it’ll be popped orf!’ The trouble was that it was no good stooping, for when you stooped the ground rose up and hit the part you stooped with, making you sit down and slide. ‘Yus, and when Father slides, we orl slide!’

  Something clicked above him. The gate? The boy heard it, too, and stopped. Now the sounds seemed immediately overhead.

  Ben found himself staring at a large loose stone. In another moment his boot would have kicked it, and it would have descended into the bottomless white pit with a clatter. Even without the impetus of Ben’s boot it looked disturbingly insecure. It would go if you breathed upon it. Therefore you didn’t breathe.

  Now low voices drifted towards them, as though spoken from the other side of a curtain. The speakers had stopped, like those they were seeking. Out of the incoherent murmuring came two clear words: ‘Down there!’ Ben swallowed and missed.

  The old man was galvanised into action by the words. He turned, raising his revolver. Ben shot out his hand and seized the weapon from him. The action shifted the large stone, and it vanished into the void.

  Once more they stood stock still. The picture had leapt into momentary action and was now static again, though something unseen was not static. A stone hurtling through space. The words, ‘Down there!’ had as yet brought no response, but the response would come when the stone made its next contact with solid matter. Meanwhile, Ben and the old man stared at each other, afraid to shift their eyeballs.

  In the agonising seconds that followed the leaping of the stone, and while three heads peered down trying to pierce the white blanket, Ben’s grotesquely-fashioned mind recalled the story of the traveller who dropped a boot heavily on the bedroom floor and laid the other boot down gently; the man beneath him, awakened by the first boot, spent the rest of the night expecting the second boot to descend. How long was this stone going to take to descend? Moments such as these always seem like minutes, but surely that illusion could not account for the length of the present waiting? Now for the clatter … no? Well, now!… No, again? Well, surely, now …?

  They never heard the stone touch bottom. The ominous silence through a thousand feet of space removed one terror to arouse another. Ben’s boot was only a few inches from where the stone had been.

  The voices murmured vaguely again. The sounds of steps proceeded, grew fainter, ceased. The menace above them passed on.

  But there was no question of returning to the grim house where tragedy had only been averted by a hair’s breadth, and where four long candles gave their flickering light to an ominous emptiness. For all the fugitives knew, the house was not empty. Someone might have been left behind. Or, failing that, all three hunters might return when they failed to make their captures along the road. Muirgissie had to be reached and contact established with solid law-abiding people, and the road was so unsafe that even this perilous descent was safer.

  ‘All clear,’ muttered Ben, ignoring meteorology.

  The old man carried the signal forward, and the journey continued.

  Had the descent been actually as steep as it seemed in the mist, or had the boy been less certain of the easiest paths, it is probable that the final tragedy would have been played on this mountainside. The boy’s direction was unerring, however, for climbing was second-nature to him and he had descended to the lake by their present route a hundred times. Happily, too, they soon slipped out of the bottom of a thick white cloud, and came upon thinner patches. Now they could see ten yards ahead, not five, and moved in a larger white-walled globe of space.

  ‘Do yer know wot I think, yer Majesty,’ said Ben suddenly. They had reached the little plateau, and it was no longer necessary to proceed in single file, though they still had to walk warily. ‘I think we’re goin’ ter win this ’ere little gime!’

  Konrad smiled faintly. Apart from his directions, he had not said a word during the whole journey.

  ‘Corse, we ain’t quite won yet,’ Ben went on. ‘We got ter git ter the bottom, ain’t we, and then there’s that boat. But—well, you’re a proper King—see, the Enemy played the gime a bit rougher like than wot they was told, but it didn’t worry you—and so I thort I’d let yer know I’m proud to serve under yer. And, don’t fergit, I’ve served under Wellington and Nelson and Charles the Fust.’

  ‘Thank you, Royal spy,’ answered Konrad.

  The words were brave enough, but the voice was not very steady.

  ‘Not a bit,’ replied Ben. ‘I b’leeve in a spot o’ torkin’ arter a spot of excitement—it’s good fer yer. Me, sime as you. If we go thinkin’ too much, lumme, p’r’aps we’d fergit it is a gime?’

  The boy turned his head, and repeated, as though he were saying a lesson:

  ‘It is a game.’

  ‘That’s right. And we’re orl playin’ it tergether. Come ter that, I sometimes think the ’ole of life’s a gime—well, if yer know wot I mean. I’ve ’ad some funny ’uns! Ship-wrecks, trine accidents, cannerbal islands—fack—’aunted ’ouses, dozens o’ them—but ’ere I am, ain’t I? Jest ’ang on, and yer’ll always come through some’ow.’

  He tripped as he spoke and fell on his nose.

  ‘See, orl a part of it,’ he said, picking himself up.

  ‘I hope I shall understand you one day, Mr Wilkins,’ remarked Mr Hymat.

  ‘It don’t often ’appen,’ replied Ben, ‘though, mind yer, it’s bin done.’

  ‘I understand you,’ said the boy.

  ‘Go on!’ exclaimed Ben.

  ‘Yes. And—’ He grew a little red, his spirit rebelling against any outward sign of emotion. ‘And you must have a big reward.’

  ‘Not money, yer Majesty,’ answered Ben. ‘See, we ain’t playin’ the gime fer that. Jest glory. But I’ll tell yer wot I wouldn’t mind—bein’ mide a knight or somethink—’

  They had reached the end of the plateau, and were falling into single file again for their next descent when the boy suddenly stepped back.

  ‘Wot’s up?’ asked Ben sharply.

  He slipped forward and took Konrad’s place. A strange sight greeted his eyes. Far below, th
rough the thinning white vapour, was the lake. It glowed with the unexpected illumination of escaping sunlight, looking almost unnatural in its perfect clarity. But it was not the lake that arrested Ben’s attention, and that had caused the boy to retreat.

  It was MacTavish.

  26

  Back to Muirgissie

  MacTavish lay on his face, a few feet down the slope. He was perfectly still, with one arm stretched out, the other crunched under him. In a slip and a tumble Ben had reached his side.

  ‘Is he—dead?’ came Mr Hymat’s whisper, as he and the boy crept more cautiously over the edge.

  Ben’s hand was groping for information. It rested over MacTavish’s heart.

  ‘No, ’e ain’t dead,’ he answered, ‘but I’m afraid it ain’t a gime no longer.’

  ‘It never was,’ said the boy.

  ‘Corse it wasn’t,’ agreed Ben, ‘on’y we kep’ it up as long as we could.’

  He turned back to MacTavish, and completed his examination. He was no doctor, but he had seen men in every kind of condition, and he had instinct for the signs. MacTavish’s signs were pretty bad.

  ‘How did he—how did he fall all this distance?’ muttered Mr Hymat.

  ‘’E didn’t,’ replied Ben. ‘’E fell the fust bit—we know ’oo mide ’im—and ’e crawled the larst. This is where ’e give out.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Yer can see with ’arf a wink.’

  ‘Can we—leave him here?’

  ‘Wot! When ’e ain’t dead?’

  ‘We must take him with us,’ decided Konrad, ‘and we must find a doctor.’

  Ben looked at him approvingly. Queer little fellow, this. Reg’ler kid.

  ‘That’s the stuff, yer Majesty,’ he smiled. ‘Yer carn’t leave no cashelties on the battlefield—’speshully,’ he added, now glancing at the old man, ‘when they’ve worked with yer.’

  ‘Yes, yes, exactly!’ frowned Mr Hymat. ‘But how are we going to get him down?’

  ‘Gawd knows,’ returned Ben. ‘Orl I knows is that we’ve gotter.’