He hit out.
His fist possessed a cunning he did not anticipate. It was a beautiful, expert’s blow which rippled from his left shoulder with the entire weight of his body behind it.
Hutch, who was still reeling under the nervous shock, was taken completely unawares. He went down like a tree, the silly expression of astonishment still on his face.
Campion did not look at him. He was not aware of him. From that instant he moved automatically. He stepped into the Buick, trod on the accelerator which was also the starter, and leant back.
The car bounced in the air and he took the drive at sixty. At the gates he turned to the left as if he knew exactly what he was doing and drove with uncanny precision and great speed through the town, under the lowering Nag, over the small millbridge and on through twisting country roads, all without hesitation or any conscious thought. His mind was a peaceful blank. Never afterwards had he any recollection of the journey. He travelled as migrating birds seem to travel, with blind knowledge. The brain behind the curtain was in charge and the conscious man might well have been in an hypnotic trance. From first to last he was peculiarly dexterous.
He entered the big industrial town of Coachingford by the Roman road and negotiated the by-pass circus without difficulty. One or two policemen saluted the car, with its small priority notice in the corner of the windscreen. He drove without hesitation through a knot of tiny streets, paused correctly for the lights, and took the complicated turnings with precision.
At an open garage in a dizzy square he slowed, drove the car into a shelter, and climbed out. He did not feel his feet on the pavement and did not wait for his check. Moving with the unhesitating singleness of purpose which renders a man so natural that he is next best to invisible, he crossed the road, turned down an alley, came out of it into a busy but impoverished street, and pressed on until he paused before a small and dirty shop which possessed a row of empty display boards outside and a dreary collection of cigarettes and dusty sweets in the window. He glanced up and down the road and then went inside.
The cool darkness of the shop, with its characteristic smell of printer’s ink and tobacco, brought him suddenly out of his state of somnambulism. He stopped dead and stood staring about him with startled eyes. He had no idea where he was, nor how or why he had come. A grey face peered at him from behind the back of the counter and the two men remained looking at one another in mutual doubt.
The shopkeeper, who was old and thin and ineffectual, seemed quite as bewildered to see his visitor as Campion was to see him.
After the first shock of returning intelligence Campion grew afraid. He was a man not used to fear in any form and its deep cold fingers gripped his stomach paralysingly.
The shopkeeper cleared his throat nervously and came edging round the counter.
‘You’ll want the boss,’ he said. ‘Come inside.’
Campion moved forward unsteadily and the other man raised a greasy flap in the counter. The back of the shop was very small and dark and the two panels of frosted glass in the door which the old man indicated looked like some bright avenue of escape. Campion all but charged them, hurling himself into the room within, while the shopkeeper drew the door shut silently behind him. It was in many ways a dreadful little room, papered with sections of grey fruit and still furnished with all the misguided decorations of the eighties. Practically the entire floor space was taken up by a large table, covered first with a red cloth and then with several sheets of newspaper.
Sitting at this table, collarless and in shirt-sleeves, was a very remarkable person. He had a white melancholy face hung beneath a glistening bald skull, and his eyes, which were narrow and expressionless, were dull as coal-dust. At the moment he was engaged in cleaning and oiling a heavy service revolver which looked as if it had been well loved for many years. He raised his eyes as the door burst open, but did not move his head or speak. Campion said nothing. He leant back against the panels of the door. His ears were drumming and the beating of his heart seemed to keep time to the intolerable throbbing in his head.
The man at the table breathed heavily through his short nose.
‘So you’ve come back, ’ave yer?’ he said.
XI
CAMPION DID NOT speak. The walls of the tiny room were converging on him. The air was too warm and too heavy to force open his lungs. The face of the man at the table swelled terrifying, widening and widening like the white of an egg in a pan. Soon it must fill the whole universe and suffocate him beneath its flabby weight.
Campion’s lips moved in a final despairing cry of protest, but no sound came.
Across the red table-cloth the fat man gazed at him with new interest. Suddenly he laid aside the gun and slipped quietly to his feet with that surprisingly smooth agility only found in old fighting men.
He came round the room and peered into the newcomer’s face.
‘Eh,’ he said at last and the word was a grunt uttered deep in his throat. ‘Come here.’
He lowered the young man on to a chair and propped his elbows on the table for him, while his own thick hands explored the scalp.
‘You’ve ’ad a cosh, ’aven’t yer? ’Ow bad are yer?’
His concern was genuine and intensely practical. He was also very gentle without being in the least soft. It was like being delivered into the hands of some gargantuan Roman matron, or perhaps a friendly female bear.
‘Answer up,’ he commanded, prodding the nape of Campion’s neck with a padded forefinger.
The injured man drew away from him wearily.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he murmured with just sufficient interest to drive home the genuineness of the enquiry.
‘God Almighty!’ The exclamation was no expletive but a direct and pious appeal to the Deity. The fat man plumped himself down on a chair and seized Campion’s shoulders. His little black eyes were circular and a fine sprinkling of sweat appeared on his heavy face.
‘Are you kiddin’? This isn’t the ruddy time to play the goat, you know.’
Campion let his head roll forward. The pain of movement was almost welcome, since it cut through the dreadful breathless sense of weight which was stifling him.
‘Do you know ’oo you are yerself?’ There was a tremor in the thick voice so near his ear.
‘Campion … It’s written in my suit.’
‘Lumme!’ There was a brief pause while the older man assimilated the salient facts. Then he took command. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Get yer collar orf and lie down. Don’t try to use yer ’ead. It’s no good to yer for a bit. You’re all right. You’re at ’ome. Don’t start thinking. You’re with yer own. Got that? With yer own. I’m goin’ to put you on the sofa and cover you up while I get a crocus.’
‘No.’ Campion recognized the word without realizing that it was more than nine-tenths of his compatriots would have done. ‘Can’t have a doctor. Can’t have any officials. They’re all after me by now.’
‘’Oo?’
‘The police.’
‘Rozzers? You’ve made a mistake. You’re punch-drunk. What ’ave you done?’
‘Slugged a copper. Two coppers. The last one was the local Super, a dear good chap, I can’t have killed him.’
‘Killed ’im? ’Oo’s talking of killing?’ Generations of inbred fear of the one crime which is never forgiven to any man, however privileged, lay in the truculent demand.
‘I am.’ It was a relief to Campion to talk freely at last. ‘Apparently I did kill the first one. Can’t remember it. Woke up in hospital.’
‘Horspital?’ The fat man’s heavy eyelids lowered a fraction. ‘There was a man scarpered from the horspital in a fireman’s outfit,’ he suggested.
‘Yes. That was me. Now I’ve slugged a Superintendent of Police. I can’t remember anything after that until I walked in here. Who are you?’
The other did not reply directly. He got up heavily and as if he had grown older.
‘You come and lie down,’ he said. ‘I want
to ’ave a look at you. I’ll get you as right as I can and then we’ll talk. We’d better,’ he added grimly.
Campion allowed himself to be led over to the dreadful imitation leather couch which took up practically all one side of the room, but the moment his head touched the clammy seat he struggled into a sitting position again.
‘No time,’ he said, unaware that the words were slurred. ‘Tomorrow’s the fifteenth. Must get on. No time for this.’
‘You’ll ’ave all the time you want and more if you don’t shut up. Lie still while I do a bit of doctoring.’
The bald man moved towards the door as he spoke.
‘I’ll just drop a word to old Happy Fanny outside to keep ’is eyes skinned in case they take sights of us. You don’t know if you was followed ’ere, do you? No, that’s right, you don’t ’ave to tell me. You don’t know anything. You lie still. I’ll see to yer.’
It was warm and dark in the little room in spite of the time of day and the mean rickety french windows gave on to a weedy yard with a blank wall behind. Campion closed his eyes and was lost.
He came to himself to find artificial light burning painfully into his eyes. The fat man was on a chair, fitting a new bulb into a chandelier which hung over the table. It was a complicated arrangement of weights and pulleys decorated with distressing pink frosted glass shades.
He clambered down cautiously and, groping under the table, produced a cone-shaped contraption of black paper which he fixed round and over the lighting arrangements, so that a brilliant pool lay in the centre of the table alone while the rest of the room was in comparative darkness. Having complied with these black-out restrictions, he returned to his patient.
‘That’s right,’ he said with relief as he raised one of the pallid eyelids with a great thumb. ‘You’re not so dead as you was. I got you warm, see? Now I’m not giving you spirits because they might finish you, but I’ve got some muck ’ere you’d better drink. I’ve cooked it meself so I know what’s in it.’
He went round the table and bent over a small grate where he had got a fire going. It was all very homely and grubbily comfortable.
Campion was puzzled by it, but not alarmed. The fat man, whoever he was, was a friend. He returned presently with a steaming jug which looked ominous but which turned out to contain nothing more extraordinary than strong old-fashioned beef tea, made according to Mrs Beeton. Campion was surprised to find that instead of being repelled by it he could drink it with enjoyment, and its effect upon him was extraordinary. As its warmth spread over him he felt strength generating in him as clearly as if new blood was being pumped into his veins. It occurred to him that he had not eaten properly for a very long time. His head felt clearer too; that was a mercy. Everything which had happened recently stood out in his mind with stereoscopic vividness. The curtain was still there, though, heavy and dark as ever, with the great nagging worry lurking just behind it.
The other man took away the jug and hitched himself on the edge of the table.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘you and me ’as got to ’ave a talk. You think you’ve slugged a big cop, don’t you? A Super? How sure are you?’
‘I’m certain of it. He was just getting on to me and I saw delay ahead and no way out of it, so I let him have it and bunked. I can’t remember anything after that. But there’s no time for talk now. How long have I been asleep?’
‘What was the cop’s name?’
‘Hutch. Superintendent Hutch. A delightful bloke. He wanted my number.’
‘And you didn’t know it?’
‘Er – no.’
‘I see.’ He seemed more resigned than shocked. ‘Well, they ain’t ’ere yet, that’s one thing. Old Fanny in the shop is a good look-out. Lucky we kept this place so dark. This’ll take a bit of getting away with. Do you remember anything at all before you got your cosh?’
‘No. Nothing. That is, I remember odd things like people’s names, and I remember the one thing, of course. I remember fifteen.’
‘Fifteen?’ The little black eyes were suspicious. ‘That’s more’n I do. That’s something you never told me.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Campion turned his face to the wall. It was back again, the damnable frustration-dream motif. He felt like a man in a stone maze.
‘Don’t you excite yerself or you’ll go under again,’ His ally became the nurse once more. ‘Keep what little bit of common you ’ave got, for pity’s sake. I’ve seen some of this sort of thing in my time and I know what it’s like. You’ve got no bones broke and your eyes are reacting all right. You’ve just forgot, that’s all. There’s nothing to get the serious wind-up about in that. Now, am I right? You feel as you do sometimes, when you first wake up in the morning in a strange bed. Just for a minute you’ve got a hold of yerself all right but you don’t know where you are nor what’s gone before. You’re like a man living in that minute, aren’t yer?’
This somewhat homely description was so apt that Campion turned to stare at his questioner. The stranger’s white face was very grave and his eyes were intelligent.
He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s just what I am like.’
His questioner’s reaction was not entirely comforting.
‘I’ve known it go on for months and wear off gradual,’ he said unhappily, ‘and I’ve known it come back as quick as it went. We’d better get hold of Oates at once. You’re fit for nothing now.’
Campion explained the difficulty in that quarter and the other man’s anxiety became acute.
‘We’re in the cart,’ he said. ‘In the cart good and proper.’ Campion groaned. ‘Who are we, anyway?’ he demanded. ‘Who are you?’
The fat man did not reply for a minute. There was a. curious half-smile which had nothing to do with amusement on his face. It was some little time before Campion recognized it for what it was. This odd stranger was deeply and sentimentally hurt.
‘My name is Lugg,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve been a perishing servant of yours for seventeen years.’ There was an awkward pause and then he rose and stretched himself. ‘That’s all right,’ he said magnificently, ‘you’re not to blame. I’d ’ave told you at once only I was hoping it’d come back to you. ’Ullo, ’ullo, what’s that?’
The lights flickered and a deep full-throated rumbling echoed through the house. Both men started.
‘Thunder,’ Lugg pronounced as a whirlwind of heavy drops pattered against the glass behind the thick curtains. ‘It got me wondering. It always does nowadays. Oh well, let it snow if it feels like it. We’ve got more than we can carry anyway, so what does it matter what else piles up?’
‘How late is it? I can’t waste time.’ Campion was struggling to his feet as he spoke. ‘Tomorrow’s the fifteenth. Must get on. God knows how.’
‘You stay where you are.’ Lugg had picked up his revolver and was playing with it carelessly. ‘Your head seems to ’ave gone so we’ll ’ave to use mine for a ruddy change. Now look ’ere, we’re in a very nasty position. I’m an accessory after the fact, don’t forget that, so I’m going to tell you all you saw fit to let me know about the lark you’re on before you lost your senses. You’re going to listen, and we’re both going to hope it’s going to bring something back to you because if it don’t we’re both up the creek.’
He was right, of course. Campion had the wits left to realize it even while every instinct warned him frantically against delay. The thing he had to avert was enormous and catastrophic.
‘Avert.’ Once again it was a single word which arrested him. That was right. There was something he had to avert. Something tremendous.
Meanwhile Lugg was talking and his thick voice sounded comforting and sensible against the rumbling of the storm outside.
‘I’ve only been by your side day and night for seventeen years and you couldn’t trust me with the whole packet. Said you was under oath,’ he was observing. ‘If you hadda done, we shouldn’t be in this mess, but I’m not reproaching you. That’s not my way. Never ’as been. I’ve
been here for five days and this is it, I should suppose. My instructions from you in London was that I should keep myself under cover ’ere and take all messages. Old Happy in the shop was to do all the front of the ’ouse stuff and I wasn’t to show my face until I was told. Happy is quite okay, by the way. I picked this place of ’is myself. I used to know ’im years ago when ’e was one of the old Forty Angels gang up at Hoxton. ’E’s straight as a die to ’is own sort. ’E’s keeping the look-out now. There’s been no one particular about since you came. You must have given them the slip completely, punch-drunk or not. Now listen. Since I’ve been ’ere you’ve only showed up twice. The first time was the day before yesterday. You came in with a portmanteau and that time you were wearing your ordinary clothes. You changed here into some duds that even my old dad wouldn’t ’ave worn and went off with a little fish-basket under yer arm, looking as if you’d been on the tramp from one sick ward to the next for the last live years. Don’t you remember?’
‘No, I don’t. I’m sorry, it’s gone completely.’
‘Never mind. Never mind, Don’t strain it or you’ll never get it. Just listen. I may say something that’ll bring the ’ole thing back.’ Lugg was very earnest and the suppressed anxiety in his matt black eyes belied his words. ‘The second time I saw you you came sneaking in by these french doors ’ere, about three yesterday morning. I was sleeping where you’re sitting now and I got up and fetched you a bit of food. I asked ’ow things were going, but you didn’t open out at all. You seemed worried and distant-like, as though you was puzzled by the way things was running.’
‘Was I – was I all right then?’ Campion stirred as he spoke. This was one of the most unnerving experiences of all.
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