The House Opposite

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  ‘You will pardon me,’ remarked Mr Clitheroe, ‘if I object to being classified as a waiter!’

  ‘It is not a good simile,’ admitted the Indian. ‘The waiter, you see, can get another job.’

  ‘Meaning, exactly?’

  ‘That you would not get another job, Mr Clitheroe.’

  ‘Oh-o! Wouldn’t I?’ retorted the old man, with spirit. ‘You forget that, in a sense, I am a director too, and that I know how our particular business is run!’

  ‘If you think that would help you, you prove that your knowledge is not complete,’ answered Mahdi, and his eyes were now full upon Mr Clitheroe. ‘It is because you possess such knowledge as you do possess that you would not get another job. Not, at least, on this earth.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Clitheroe. ‘A threat!’

  ‘Call it, rather, a fact.’

  ‘Very well. I will. A fact that may have the quality of a boomerang, Mr Mahdi, eh? You can’t frighten me. Besides,’ he added, suddenly blazing with challenge, ‘where is your proof that I am not running my department satisfactorily?’

  ‘If you had crossed the road before I came here, you would have found it at No. 29,’ answered Mahdi. ‘You stare? Yes, of course, you stare. That proves, I think, your ignorance.’

  ‘Of what am I ignorant?’

  ‘Of a tramp who has taken up his residence at No. 29, which is immediately opposite No. 26, and who might have stayed there if I had not just made it clear to him that his presence is not wanted. Let me anticipate a question you would like to ask, but refrain from asking, since it might display further ignorance on your part. Why should your department worry about a tramp in the house across the road? I will tell you. Because there are windows in all houses, Mr Clitheroe, and people can see through windows. Something may happen here soon which should not be seen through a window. Something has already happened here that should not have been seen. Shortly before I came, a cart delivered something here. Suppose our tramp saw that?’

  Mr Clitheroe looked anxious, though he strove to cover his anxiety in a blaze of indignation.

  ‘Mahdi, you are an old woman!’ he cried. ‘Have you yourself been upset, eh? What is there in a cart delivering a package? Don’t be damned ridiculous!’

  ‘No fact by itself would have any significance,’ responded the Indian calmly; ‘but every fact is significant because there is nothing single in creation. Even the two greatest earthly facts, birth and death, would not exist without each other, or have any meaning. A cart delivering a package, if nothing came before and nothing after, would mean nothing. But if you see the cart delivering the package after, say, a pretty girl has left the house crying, there begins to be a sum. One—two. Then, later, you may see—an Indian? One, two, three. Then later, you may hear a muffled cry. One, two, three, four. So the total grows. If it gets high, it forces itself upon your attention. A cart delivering a package. Nothing. A pretty girl leaving a house crying? Nothing. An Indian? Nothing. A cry? What, even of that? It may have been a cat. But all four? Your numbness to life is disturbed. You become interested, curious. And what of five and six, and seven? We do not stop at four here, Mr Clitheroe. You may commit a murder in daylight, in a crowd, if every incident attaching to the murder is an everyday incident, even to the death itself. Something ordinary and expected by the numb mind of man. No one will detect you. No one will murder you in revenge. But it is impossible to plan a murder along a string of perfectly normal and unnoticeable incidents. So we must work out our sum, and the numbers must not be seen. Your department failed because a case possessing the measurements of a coffin was delivered to your house without being made to look like a wash-stand or a grand piano. And because it was delivered too early in the evening. Are there to be any more failures?’

  ‘Heavens above!’ burst out Mr Clitheroe. ‘And would a constable think nothing of a grand piano delivered at midnight?’

  Mahdi smiled, and admitted the point.

  ‘By taking me literally, you score,’ he confessed ‘My intention was not to create new construction, but to criticise that already in existence. I point out the flaws, and leave it to the department to remedy them, and to guard against the repetition.’

  ‘Is there any means by which I can guard against a repetition of your visits?’ demanded Mr Clitheroe, exasperated.

  ‘Yes—one,’ answered Mahdi, and his smooth voice hardened noticeably. ‘You can make the visits unnecessary. You would not have received the first of them if it had not been necessary. When you contribute to the fund again, Mr Clitheroe, my visits will cease.’

  ‘Bah! You’ve had thousands from me!’

  ‘But not lately.’

  ‘Doesn’t one get any breathing space?’

  ‘Do you pay your servants if they stop work?’

  Something snapped inside Mr Clitheroe.

  ‘Servants?’ he cried, jumping up. ‘How much longer am I to submit to that term?’

  ‘As long as you remain one,’ replied Mahdi. ‘And as long as my own service lasts.’

  Mr Clitheroe found his eye resting on the untouched cocktail. The second ‘Jowle Street side-car’ that had not been drunk. He motioned towards it.

  ‘Well, have a drink,’ he said. ‘We won’t quarrel. I’ll mix myself another.’

  The Indian inclined his head, and moved to the glass. Picking it up, he raised it.

  ‘To the fund,’ he said.

  And, turning the glass upside down, poured the contents on to the carpet.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ exclaimed Mr Clitheroe, flushing.

  ‘A habit of caution, to which I have many times owed my life,’ answered Mahdi. ‘I drink my own wine and I smoke my own cigarettes. You will excuse me.’ He laid the empty glass down again. ‘And now, to finish our business. Repeat your plans to me.’

  ‘I’m damned if I will,’ snapped Mr Clitheroe, still game.

  Mahdi glanced at the clock.

  ‘In four minutes I must go,’ he said. ‘Perhaps, when I go, you will no longer have any plans? Well, it saves much trouble. And a few years, to an old man—what are they?’

  He slipped a knife from his coat, and toyed with it.

  ‘Two can play at that game,’ said Mr Clitheroe.

  ‘So?’ smiled Mahdi.

  The knife sailed swiftly through the air, missed Mr Clitheroe’s ear by half an inch, and embedded itself in the wall behind him.

  ‘I have another,’ said Mahdi.

  Mr Clitheroe took a deep breath. He tried one more argument.

  ‘Have you heard the fable of the golden goose?’ he inquired.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ smiled Mahdi, ‘but it does not apply. The golden, goose, I remember, was still obediently laying its eggs when its owner killed it. Besides’—the smile expanded—‘you are not golden. Come, Mr Clitheroe. You forget facts. Let me tell you not a fable but a truth. Ten days ago a certain person whom you do not know and have no concern with was visited at Avignon. Four badges had been issued to him, and it was found that only three remained. One had been lost. There is a river at Avignon. The Rhone. It is pretty from the Blue Train as you go by the Riviera. The person I am telling you of did not find it so pretty. He was found in it next morning.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ commented Mr Clitheroe.

  ‘And that was mere carelessness,’ added Mahdi, his smile vanishing. ‘That was not insurrection. Well, Mr Clitheroe, time passes, and there is much to do. Am I to hear your plans?’

  Mr Clitheroe turned and walked to the wall. He pulled out the knife embedded in it. Then he walked back to Mahdi, and handed him the knife.

  ‘I am a man of neat habits, Mr Mahdi,’ he said, ‘and you have ruined my wall and my carpet. In anxiety for my ceiling I will tell you my plans. But one of these days, perhaps, I shall plan to give you a drink of the Rhone, and you will find a river less easy than a cocktail to pour upon a carpet…Now, listen!’

  Five minutes later Mr Clitheroe stopped speaking. The Indian had not spoken at all,
and he did not speak now as he turned towards the door.

  ‘Well, isn’t it good?’ exclaimed Mr Clitheroe indignantly.

  ‘It will be good when you have carried it out,’ replied Mahdi. ‘See that you do.’ He paused before adding, ‘But why not use the cupboard under the stairs? Must you be told of everything?’

  Then Mahdi slipped quietly out of No. 26 Jowle Street. And a girl, watching from No. 29, slipped out after him.

  CHAPTER XXI

  LITTLE HYMNS OF HATE

  MR CLITHEROE listened till he heard the front door close. Then he mixed himself a stiff drink. Then he pressed a bell.

  ‘Wharton,’ he said, when that individual presented himself in response to the bell, ‘you are a fool!’

  ‘Which means that you have just been called a fool,’ replied Wharton, ‘and that, at the first opportunity, I shall call Flitt a fool, and that, at his first opportunity, he will kick the cat.’

  ‘Exactly,’ nodded Mr Clitheroe. His drink had done him good. ‘You have my full permission to pass the epithet on to Flitt. How was Mahdi allowed to slip in here without my being informed of the fact?’

  ‘He has a latch key,’ Wharton pointed out.

  ‘And you have all had my instructions to listen for his latch key!’ retorted the old man.

  ‘Mr Clitheroe,’ said Wharton, ‘do you think you’d have gained anything if you’d had a few seconds warning? I have found that Mahdi is always pleasantest when he hasn’t been thwarted. He is safest when he has his own way. He loves giving people surprises. Surprises—provided he is not surprised—are food and drink to him. The only way to deal with Mahdi is to feed his vanity, and to feed his vanity, and to feed his vanity, until—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Until you’ve got him where you want him.’

  ‘Ah! And where’s that?’

  ‘Just a matter of aim,’ answered Wharton. ‘Through the heart or the lungs or the stomach.’

  Mr Clitheroe smiled.

  ‘I note a certain similarity of thought, Wharton,’ he observed.

  ‘The fool is complimented,’ Wharton smiled back.

  ‘Yes, but he won’t be complimented any more if he continues to talk of dangerous subjects. Where’s Miss Drayton?’

  ‘I got her to relieve me on the third floor before I came down.’

  ‘Good. And the patient?’

  ‘Still enjoying his forty thousand winks.’

  ‘Where’s Flitt?’

  ‘By the front door, with a guilty conscience. And the cat is by Flitt. I think that completes us.’

  ‘The cat always is by Flitt! What they can see in each other beats me. I can only imagine that Flitt has feline blood in him.’

  ‘I’ve always regarded him as belonging more to the rodent species.’

  ‘That would make his association with a cat more astonishing still. Well, see that Flitt keeps by the front door, and that Miss Drayton keeps on the third floor. You and I are going out.’

  ‘Charmed,’ murmured Wharton.

  ‘Yon needn’t be. We’re not going up a lane together holding hands. I’m going one way, and you’re going another.’

  ‘Which is your way?’

  ‘My way lies in the direction of the revolver that soundeth not,’ answered Mr Clitheroe.

  ‘And that hurteth not,’ added Wharton. ‘Don’t forget that. It’s most important to me!’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make Baines demonstrate on himself before he hands it over. If he lives after committing suicide, you’ll live after I’ve winged you. The world is full of horrible things, Wharton, but no one need fear a blank cartridge.’

  ‘Thanks. And which is my way?’

  ‘Across the road.’

  Wharton looked surprised.

  ‘What for?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ll have two jobs there,’ replied Mr Clitheroe. ‘The first is to make sure that the house is empty.’

  ‘But we know it’s empty.’

  ‘Damn it, we don’t! We only think it’s empty. Some confounded tramp got in, Wharton, and Mahdi’s been making a pretty song about it. And he was quite right,’ he added grudgingly. ‘That’s the confounded part of it!’

  Wharton whistled softly.

  ‘Well, I’ll soon clear the tramp out,’ he muttered. ‘We certainly don’t want a chap like that around.’

  ‘Mahdi’s cleared him out,’ said Mr Clitheroe. ‘Or imagines he has. But, for once, we’ll check Mahdi’s work, eh, as he’s so fond of checking ours. If the ragamuffin’s still hanging about we’ll get the blame for it, don’t you worry!’

  Wharton nodded.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘And what’s the other job.’

  ‘The cupboard under the stairs.’

  ‘What—going to use it?’ exclaimed Wharton.

  ‘This habit of raising your voice at emotional moments is growing on you, Wharton,’ snapped the old man. ‘For heaven’s sake, keep your voice down! I’m not sure that I’m going to use it, but I may. Mahdi seems to think it’s a better idea than our temporary coffin—’

  ‘Look here!’ interrupted Wharton. ‘What’s the game! If you imagine you’re going to stick me down that hole—’

  ‘Will you be quiet and listen, you lunatic?’ demanded Mr Clitheroe angrily. ‘Of course, you won’t be stuck down that hole. The coffin was to have been your little temporary home, but now we’re switching over to our patient upstairs, the cupboard across the way may be more effective for him. We won’t need him afterwards, will we?’

  ‘Switching over?’ repeated Wharton. ‘I suppose it doesn’t occur to you that I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about?’

  ‘This is what I’m talking about,’ said Mr Clitheroe. ‘Now listen, and don’t interrupt.’

  Wharton listened, with a frown that increased as the new plan was unfolded. At the conclusion of Mr Clitheroe’s recital he shook his head.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he commented bluntly. ‘Not a bit.’

  ‘Unfortunately that won’t alter the case,’ answered the old man.

  ‘It’s taking a big risk.’

  ‘It’s impossible not to take a risk.’

  ‘But this is an unnecessary risk!’

  ‘On the contrary, Wharton. Hobart, alive, is a greater risk than he is dead. He has to be dealt with in either condition.’

  ‘Well, I’m not the boss here—unfortunately. What you say goes, and I’m to take it that Mahdi approves. In that case, I may as well save my breath. Only don’t forget that I’ve warned you. And don’t forget that, if there’s any trouble, I’m not in it—’

  ‘If there’s any trouble, Wharton,’ interrupted Mr Clitheroe, ‘you will be in it if necessary right up to the gallows. And now that is settled, suppose you get on with your job?’

  Then abruptly, the old man left the room. Wharton gazed after him balefully. A second or two later he left the room himself and went upstairs. As he went, he heard the front door close.

  Jessica Drayton met him on the third landing, and her greeting was ungracious.

  ‘Am I to stay here all night?’ she demanded. ‘I thought you were never coming!’

  ‘Afraid you’ll stay here a bit longer,’ he responded. ‘Headquarter orders. I’ve got to go out.’

  ‘God, we’ll have earned our bit when it comes!’ she exclaimed irritably. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Across the road.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To find a tramp, and to open up the way to hell.’

  ‘I suppose you couldn’t speak plainly?’

  ‘No, my dear. It isn’t the fashion in this house. And yet I might,’ he added, looking at her suddenly, ‘for a little reward.’

  ‘I’m not selling anything,’ she retorted; ‘and slaps are gratis. I’m not sure that I want your information, either. I don’t like this business, and the sooner I’m out of it the better.’

  ‘Same here,’ admitted Wharton. ‘After this we might get out of it together. But meanw
hile, apparently, there’s no choice. That cursed old man has got us, and that thrice cursed Indian has got him. So keep your eye on the patient, Jessica, and see he doesn’t wake up till I return. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Where’s Clitheroe? Downstairs?’

  ‘No. He’s gone out too.’

  ‘Oh! Where’s he gone to?’

  ‘To get the gun.’

  ‘Then if there’s any trouble, who have I got left to call upon?’

  ‘Flitt and his feline.’

  ‘They’ll be immensely useful! I think I could manage better without them. Still, even Flitt and the feline may serve to help the proprieties. If Mr Hobart wakes up and becomes amorous, I shall call the cat to be a witness to my chastity.’

  She turned and re-entered the bedroom in which Jack Hobart lay. Wharton looked after her, frowning vaguely. Then he went down the stairs again, and interviewed Flitt by the front door.

  ‘I’m going out, Ted,’ he said. ‘See there’s no trouble till I come back.’

  ‘Easy,’ replied Flitt witheringly. ‘It’ll wait for yer.’

  ‘If Miss Drayton calls, go up to her at once.’

  ‘I got ears.’

  ‘If the Indian returns before Mr Clitheroe does or I do, be sure to tip us the wink when we come in.’

  ‘Corse, I got no brains, ’ave I?’

  ‘None. And don’t go poking around for any more drink,’ concluded Wharton. ‘You’re bound to meet a sticky end some time or other, Flitt, but there’s no need to anticipate it.’

  He opened the front door and went into the street. Ted Flitt waited until he was sure it was quite closed, and then spat at it. Then he slid a little panel aside, and stared out.

  ‘Gone across the road, Lizzie,’ he reported to his cat. ‘What’s that for?’

  He continued to stare.

  ‘Gone inter No. 29, Lizzie,’ he reported again. ‘What’s that for?’

  Then he left the peep-hole and went into the study. It was easy to guess what that was for. He came out smelling of it.

  Inside No. 29, Wharton paused. The house was soundless, and to a less conscientious man the quietude would have saved a tedious search. Silence is no proof if you are looking for an Indian, but the average tramp is noisy; you can even hear him breathing. Still, Wharton was too worried to take any chances, and he searched the house from top to bottom. It was satisfactorily empty. Only cheese crumbs told of a recent presence.