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 some one 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?
CHAPTER VII
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
gall’s if it’s ’is—if, mindjer. Orl right. If it isn’t the gall’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!’
The House Opposite Page 5