Making a dive at him and seizing him as he looked on the point of falling, Ben managed to totter with him into the room and to deposit him on a chair. Then he took another dive back to the door, slipped the key from the outside to the inside, locked it, and returned to the chair. And then Ben nearly collapsed himself.
‘Gawd above!’ he gasped.
For was this not the man he had seen dead on the cellar floor in Norgate Road?
For several seconds they just stared at each other, each with utter lack of comprehension. It was the man who spoke first, and what he said did nothing to clear up Ben’s confusion. Indeed, it only added to it.
‘Haven’t I—seen you before?’ faltered the man.
That, surely, should have been Ben’s question!
‘Yer couldn’t of,’ answered Ben, with an absurd attempt at logic. ‘Yer was dead!’
This assertion was of no use to anybody. The man passed a hand across his forehead, and then whispered, with fear in his eyes:
‘What do you mean—dead?’
‘Well, dead’s dead, ain’t it?’ replied Ben. ‘Or—wasn’t yer?’
There was another short silence. The man suddenly glanced towards the door.
‘It’s locked—no one can git at us,’ said Ben, ‘and the old lidy’s locked in the other room. And, see, I’ve got this!’
He thrust the revolver under the man’s nose, as though he might gain comfort from smelling it.
‘Let’s try and git this a bit stright,’ went on Ben, as the man seemed incapable of keeping the conversation going. ‘Where I saw you dead was on a cellar floor in Lunnon. I saw the bloke wot’s jest gorn aht o’ this cottage there, too. ’Is nime’s Blake. Is the old lidy ’is ma?’ The man nodded. ‘I thort so. She’s got the sime sort o’ fice, but let’s git back ter you. Yer was dead when I saw yer, wotever yer are nah, so ’ow come yer saw me? Corpses don’t see nothink!’
‘That—wasn’t me, on the cellar floor,’ gulped the man. ‘How did you come to go there?’
‘It wasn’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Lummy, then where was it yer thinks yer saw me?’
The man passed his hand across his forehead again.
‘It was in a street, not far away—we—’
‘Bumped inter each other!’ exclaimed Ben, as recollection came back. Why, of course! When Ben had first seen the corpse he recalled that there had been something vaguely familiar about the face, despite the damage to it. Now at last he’d got it! Or hadn’t he? ‘Then yer wasn’t the corpse! Yer was that bloke wot bowled me over. And then yer ’oofed it quick, leavin’ me ter tork ter the pleeceman—’
‘Policeman?’ repeated the man, dully. His muddled mind could only follow slowly.
‘Yus, tha’s right. The bobby come along jest arter. And—’arf a mo’!’ Ben’s eyes narrowed as the details of that strange incident grew clearer in his mind. ‘Guv’nor, this ain’t the time ter mince matters! And don’t fergit, I got a gun!’ He waggled it, to confirm the obvious statement. ‘Are yer a crook?’
‘No,’ answered the man hoarsely.
‘Yer ain’t? Okay. But ’ow was it, then, that when you and me bumps inter each other yer drops a jemmy? It come aht o’ yer pocket! Tha’s wot got me runnin’ away meself when the bobby spotted it on the pivement, yus, and I kep’ runnin’ till I bunked rahnd to the back o’ that ’ouse in Norgate Street where I fahnd the corpse wot I thort was you! Yus, and where Blake follers me soon arter. See, the bobby thort the jemmy was mine, and you wasn’t there ter let ’im find aht it was yourn.’
‘But—it wasn’t mine!’
‘Oh, I see. Yer was jest carryin’ it abart fer fun!’ exclaimed Ben, rendered sarcastic through desperation. ‘And yer ain’t a crook. And yer ain’t the corpse. And yer ain’t Mr Wilby—’
‘I am Mr Wilby,’ said the man.
Ben walked to the window and opened it. The room was going round at such a dizzy rate that he had to put a part of himself outside to escape going round with it. The part he put out was his head. He also needed air.
There was yet another advantage in his action, for he found himself overlooking the garden and the gate, and was able to assure himself that Blake was not yet returning. What was keeping Blake away so long, and who was the person he was chasing? Well, Ben had enough to work out without trying to solve that one, so he left it; and when he had sufficiently revived he brought his head back into the room, closed the window again, and crossed to the door. Unlocking it, he stepped out into the passage and tiptoed to the door opposite. He wanted to reassure himself that it was still locked. Putting his ear to it, he listened, and after a few moments heard breathing. He also heard a sudden, emotional muttering. ‘Blast the bloody—!’ The last word was unprintable. Even in his worst moments, Ben never used it himself.
He tiptoed back to the other room, relocked the door, and continued with his interrupted conversation with the man who was calling himself Mr Wilby.
‘Nah, listen,’ he said. ‘Yer Mr Wilby, yer tell me. Orl right. Let’s ’ave it, and mike it as snappy as yer can, ’cos I don’t hexpeck we’ll ’ave orl day fer it, and Blake may be back at any momint. I’m goin’ ter the winder, and I’ll let yer know if I see ’im. Wot I wanter know is ’ow you’re Mr Wilby, and if yer are then ’oo’s the corpse, and ’oo killed ’im?’
But this time the man preceded his answers by asking a question himself.
‘What I must know first,’ he returned, showing a grain more spirit, ‘is how you come into this?’
‘Well, that’s fair enuff,’ agreed Ben. ‘See, arter findin’ the corpse, and workin’ aht with Blake ’oo it seemed ter be by wot was in the pockets, I didn’t like the way Blake was actin’, so I goes orf on me own and tells Mrs Wilby yer was dead, and she engaiged me ter ’elp ’er find aht ’oo killed yer. Is that enuff ter go on with?’
‘Yes,’ answered the man slowly. ‘Yes … I see.’
‘Well, I’m still ’opin ter,’ retorted Ben. ‘Was it Blake killed the corpse?’
‘No,’ replied the man. ‘I killed him.’
22
The Truth at Last
A wave of indignation surged through Ben’s astonishment at this latest outrageous information.
‘I come up ’ere,’ he complained emotionally, ’ter find aht ’oo murdered yer, and nah yer tellin’ me yer done it yerself! I expeck the next thing yer’ll tell me will be that I was the corpse!’
Roused by Ben’s outburst to emotion himself, the man who claimed to be Mr Wilby responded tartly:
‘Kindly choose your words more carefully!’
‘Wozzat?’
‘The word I used was killed—not murdered. And please control yourself. If I lose my own control there is no knowing what may happen—I shall certainly be in no condition to tell you what you want to know! You could never realise all I have been through, but you might at least make some guess at it from my present state! A nightmare—no, worse than nightmare, for you wake from nightmare! I have been ill-treated, threatened, starved—even drugged! And yet you expect—’
‘Tike it easy, sir, I bin through a bit meself,’ interposed Ben, now speaking soothingly, ‘but corse it carn’t be more’n a flea to a helefunt alongside o’ yourn, I knows that. Drugged yer, did they? Tha’s bad! But doncher worry, sir, there’ll be no more o’ that.’ Ben prayed that he was speaking the truth. ‘Jest fergit wot I sed, wotever it was, and nah let’s ’ear orl abart it. I’ll be watchin’ at the winder, but I can ’ear through me back.’ He went to the window as he spoke. ‘And yer might begin, sir, if yer would, by sayin’ ’oo the corpse really was?’
Now more composed himself, Mr Wilby replied:
‘He was my brother.’
‘Go on! Was ’e? Lummy, but that’d expline ’ow yer was so alike, wouldn’t it?’
‘We were so alike that as boys—we were twins—we used to play jokes on our friends by pretending to be each other, but I soon stopped this when I found that Da
niel was beginning to use my identity to get himself out of scrapes and I received thrashings for what he’d done! And Dan was always getting into scrapes—small ones at first, big ones later. Indeed, they got so big that they mounted to pick-pocketing, thieving, even forgery and housebreaking. But I won’t talk about it. After he’d been had up twice my father packed him off to Australia and forbade any mention of his name. We were ashamed of him, ashamed!… Mrs Wilby never knew of his existence.’
He paused, and Ben asked, with his eyes trained on the garden and the gate:
‘Yer mean, yer didn’t say nothink abart ’im when yer married ’er like?’
‘I saw no need to,’ replied Mr Wilby; ‘but I wish to God now that I had. She belonged to a good and wealthy family—a better one, I’m afraid, than my own—and I found it difficult enough to be accepted without mentioning a crooked brother who—I then thought—would never turn up again. I was a clerk in a Midland bank before I came to London, but my wife believed in me, and if it hadn’t been for her I doubt whether I should have risen even as far as I have.’ He paused again, and, unseen by Ben, looked astonished at himself. ‘Really—I don’t know why—I didn’t mean to tell you all this.’
‘Tha’s all right, sir,’ Ben reassured him. ‘When yer worked up yer spits orl sorts’ o’ things aht, doncher, and when people tells me things, I on’y remembers wot I’m s’posed ter.’
Mr Wilby turned in his chair, and regarded the silhouette of the back of Ben’s head against the window.
‘I believe I’m beginning to understand,’ he said, ‘how my wife came to engage you for this business.’
‘Then yer unnerstands more’n I do,’ returned Ben.
‘It’s because you’re a good fellow.’
‘Go on, orl yer seein’ is party manners. Let’s git back ter yer brother. Corse, ’e did turn up agine?’
‘Yes—a few months ago.’
‘Did yer know ’e was comin’?’
‘I thought—he might. It was like this. One day I had a letter from him. I don’t know how he found my address. He wanted money from me, and said there’d be trouble if I didn’t send it to him. Mrs Wilby saw the envelope with its Australian stamp, but I put her off—perhaps that was the moment I should have confided in her—and of course she didn’t press the matter. Not that time.’
It was odd listening to Mr Wilby’s story, for on the previous afternoon Ben had heard it from Mrs Wilby’s angle, and he recalled all she had told him about the letter, and that Mr Wilby had said it was only an advertisement.
‘Did yer answer it?’ he asked.
‘No, I burnt it,’ replied Mr Wilby. ‘I tried to believe that nothing more would happen, and that it was just Dan’s bluff. But the thing got on my mind, and I soon found myself watching for the postman.’ (Mrs Wilby had used those very words.) ‘For a while nothing more did happen, and I began to get less jumpy, but then one day I got another letter from Dan, and this time it was from Southampton. Oh, I expect I behaved like a fool! I’m not cut out for this sort of game! An envelope bearing the Southampton post-mark would have meant nothing to my wife—why should it?—but of course I recognised the writing and it gave me such a shock that I seized the letter and—and tried to hide it. Mad! Though I now know it would have made no difference in the end. My wife grew suspicious—naturally. She asked questions, and I gave her stupid answers, saying it was just a business letter. To my relief she suddenly dropped the matter, but you can imagine the relief didn’t last, and now I began listening for the telephone bell as well as watching for the postman. Every time the bell rang I hurried to get to the ’phone first.’ (Mrs Wilby had used those words, too.) ‘And one morning, the call I was dreading came.’
‘’Arf a mo’!’ said Ben.
Mr Wilby waited, wiping his forehead with his sleeve as he did so. How unreal all this is, he thought! Is this I, a bank manager, sitting here in a bedroom in Cumberland, telling intimate details about myself and my wife to a stranger? But the odd thing was he did not feel that he was telling anybody at all. He was just thinking aloud, talking to a wall … saying things that had been bottled up inside him for weeks and weeks and weeks …
‘I thort I saw some’un, but it weren’t,’ said Ben. ‘Okay, sir. I expeck that there ’phone call was from yer brother?’
‘Eh? Yes—that’s right. It was Dan, and if he’d ’phoned two minutes later he’d have missed me, for I was off to the bank. I shut him up quick and arranged to meet him at three in the afternoon, and rang off before my wife came down. By a lucky chance she was upstairs, so heard nothing.’
(‘Didn’t she!’ thought Ben. ‘She ’eard more’n you knew!’ But he offered no comment.)
‘We met at a hotel,’ went on Mr Wilby, ‘and I received the biggest surprise of my life. I’d expected fireworks, but instead Dan was friendly—almost sentimental! He said I’d misunderstood him, and that although he was hard up he worked his way over because he wanted to see me again and get in touch with old days. I remember him saying, “Well, George, and now I have seen you, and that’s that, and I’d go back again and never worry you again if I had the dough for the fare, with just a little bit over for a fresh start. Would you go as far as that, or are you strapped?” God, he was a clever rascal—and I was the mug. He got out of me my exact financial position, learned that my wife was the one with the money, learned all he could about us, in fact—and got just exactly what he wanted—what he wanted that time. I’d come ready, and I gave him a hundred. I considered it worth it. And when he took the money he said, with a laugh—I remember this, too, every word, because I thought of it so often afterwards—he said, “You know, George, even after all these years, you and I are still just as we were. I, the naughty one, broke, and you the simple, good one, in a nice soft job—and still alike as two peas, if I shaved off my beard and moustache. I believe—I’ve been studying you, George, while we’ve been talking—I believe that with a make-up box and a little ingenuity, I could pass myself off as you again, as I used to in the old days—remember?” I laughed back. I felt drunk with relief. And that evening I explained my happiness to my wife by saying that my shares had boomed, and took her to a theatre. The two days that followed were almost the happiest of my life. They say the greatest happiness is relief from pain. Well, mental agony is just as bad as physical, and I was getting my release from that. Then, on the following Sunday—Dan ’phoned again. Mrs Wilby was in the room. He said, “Bring fifty pounds to me tomorrow night at 15, Norgate Street, or you’re for it. I’ll wreck your life, and that’s a promise. Nine pm.” I slammed down the receiver and told my wife it was a wrong number. She didn’t believe me … She’s never believed me since.’
They were wrenched back from the past to the present by a shrill shout. It came from the room in which the old woman was locked. Ben left the window and ran out into the passage, which echoed with the din the woman was making. She was banging as well as shrieking.
‘Shut that row!’ bawled Ben.
‘Open the door, let me out!’ the woman bawled back. ‘How much longer am I to be kept in here?’
‘Nah, listen!’ roared Ben. ‘If I open the door it’ll be ter shoot yer with yer own gun, so the on’y way ter sive yer skin is ter keep quiet, see?’
‘You won’t have any skin when my son returns!’
‘That’s where yer wrong, Ma! Yer son ’as returned, and I got ’im locked and bahnd in another room, waitin’ fer a pleeceman!’
The lie went home. The woman gasped and was silent, and Ben returned to Mr Wilby, to resume his vigil at the window.’
‘Okay,’ he reported. ‘She was jest a bit excited like, but p’r’aps yer’d better git a move on. I s’pose yer went ter Norgate Street?’
‘I did,’ answered Mr Wilby.
‘And was yer brother there?’
‘He was—though when I saw him I seemed to be looking at my own self. He’d done what he suggested. And I guessed at once what his game was. The old game, on a much larger sc
ale. “I want all the money you’ve got on you,” he said, “bar your fare home, or I’ll be seen about with a tart, and your wife will think it’s you!”’
‘Lummy!’ exclaimed Ben, as light dawned. ‘Yer don’t mean—?’
‘Mean what?’
‘Go on, sir!’
‘You’ve got on to it, then? Yes, that was Dan’s game. He had got into touch with some cheap girl, and whenever I refused to fork out he went about with her—to night clubs, to public occasions—was even photographed with her—and always in some uncanny way he timed the occasions when I wasn’t at home and could not prove an alibi. How he got his information of my movements I don’t know—’
‘I berlieve I can tell yer that!’ interrupted Ben. ‘It was through Blake. I’ll bet ’e ’elped watch yer and find aht things, it’d be jest ’is line. See, it was Blake got ’im the gal, too!’
‘Blake,’ repeated Mr Wilby, thoughtfully. ‘I wonder? I haven’t been able to place where he came in.’
‘Of all the dirty tricks! So it was never you at all, eh? Yus, but when it got as ’ot as orl that, why didn’t yer come clean with the ’ole thing ter Mrs Wilby?’
‘Because I left it too late,’ replied Mr Wilby miserably. ‘Because I behaved like a weak fool at the start, when there was little to lose. I’d have had to admit to a lie—I’d said I had no living relative—and somehow the thought of Dan and his crookedness always scared me. And then things got to a point where I lost everything! My wife only taxed me directly once or twice, and she listened to my denials without saying a word. I could not prove my words—I—I was completely discredited with her. To have expected her to believe the real truth by then would have been too fantastic. Another man might have found some way out—I couldn’t.’
Ben nodded solemnly.
‘I reckon it’d bin a bit fer ’er ter swaller,’ he agreed. ‘But killin’ yer brother, even if ’e deserved it—’
‘Wait, wait! My God, he deserved it, but I’ve still to tell you about that! You don’t suppose I killed him deliberately?’
Ben on the Job Page 19