Fear to Tread

by Michael Gilbert

  “You don’t—” Todd looked at his friend, and suppressed a desire to smile. Mr. Wetherall was peering earnestly over his broken glasses, apparently unconscious of the fact that one side of his face was red and blue from forehead to chin; that his lip was split, that both hands were heavily bandaged, and that his suit was an unspeakable travesty of its once respectable self. “You don’t,” he said, “approve of violence?”

  “I’ve always been against bullying, too. It’s a thing I’ve been very strict about in any school I’ve taught in.”

  “Quite so,” said Todd. “Well, all I’m suggesting is that just at the moment you ought to keep in the background a bit. You’re a marked man now and if there is any secret to be discovered in the Soho area it won’t be you who’ll turn it up.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I thought, just for a start, that perhaps I might hang round that pub in Soho. They can’t assault all their customers.”

  “You’re sure you won’t get into trouble,” said Mr. Wetherall earnestly.

  “That’s all right,” said Todd. “I’m not rugged, but I’m supple. I used to be reckoned one of the best dodgers in London. You’re about all in,” he added suddenly, “I’ll get you a taxi. Or better still, Hoggarty lives in your part of the world. I’ll ask him to run you home. The sooner you’re in bed the better.”

  “I expect you’re right,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  An hour later, as Todd was preparing to pack up for what was left of the night, the house-telephone rang. He listened for a few moments and said: “Have you any idea what the old boy wants?”

  The voice at the other end had no idea.

  Todd went out into the corridor, took the lift up three floors, and went through a swing door marked “Private”. A stepping up of the chromium, pressed rubber, and indirect lighting indicated that he was approaching a higher authority.

  He went through another door, and a middle-aged woman who was sitting at a desk said: “Straight in, Mr. Todd, he’s expecting you.”

  “Did you realise, Aurelia,” said Todd – “I only mention it in case no one has ever broken it to you before – that you sound exactly like the compère at a Roman circus, saying: ‘This way for the lions’.”

  “That’s your conscience,” said the woman. “As a matter of fact he’s in rather good form.”

  Duncan Robarts was the greatest editor that the Kite had ever had; at that time the brightest star in the night sky of Fleet Street. Yet “star” was hardly the word. Of heavenly bodies he most resembled a planet. There was no twinkle about him. He shone, with a steady, lowering power and lesser bodies moved in their orbits under his influence. His private intelligence system was remarkable, and he knew every last member of his staff, and liked them all. The moment he ceased to like them, they ceased to belong to his staff. It was as simple as that.

  “Come in, Alastair,” he said. “Sit down. Tell me, now, who was that man you salvaged?”

  Todd told him, as succinctly as he could.

  “You were friends before, were you? What sort of man is he?”

  Todd considered carefully before he answered.

  “He’s a likeable person,” he said, “and remarkably adult for a schoolmaster. In ninety-nine situations out of a hundred I should say he would behave in the decent, woolly way that his class always do behave.”

  Robarts was small and thick and he sat so hunched over his desk that he looked almost deformed.

  “In the hundredth case,” Todd went on, “if his blessed principles happened to be involved, and if he saw what he conceived to be a duty ahead of him, and if he got the bit between his teeth – well, I don’t know of anyone with wrists strong enough to hold him.”

  Robarts swung his chair round suddenly, hopped out of it, and moved across to the fire.

  “It’s not quite our usual line, is it? What are you planning about it?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I thought of spending a little time on it myself, but I don’t—”

  “You think it’s too big to tackle?”

  “I certainly think it’s too big for Wetherall to tackle.”

  “Don’t you be too sure of that,” said Robarts. He had his hands behind his back and he flirted his coat-tail up and down like a sparrow in the spring. “The Liverpool race gang got broken up before the war – but I don’t need to tell you about that.”

  “No indeed,” said Todd, fingering a white scar on the side of his jaw.

  “Because one stupid, obstinate, frightened little cockney bookmaker refused to play ball and got himself kicked to death behind the grandstand at Aintree. And the biggest racket in organised prostitution that this country has ever seen came to grief when one girl – one absolutely innocent girl – was arrested in Regent Street for soliciting and refused to back out by the easy exit that was offered to her – plead guilty and pay ten shillings – and stuck her toes in, in the face of every filthy threat that was made until – well, you know that story too.”

  “Yes,” said Todd. “I know that story too.”

  Outside, a long way down, they could hear London coming to life. The lights were going out and the wheels of day were beginning to turn.

  Robarts walked back to his desk and sat down. “Don’t get us officially involved unless I tell you,” he said.

  7

  WEST END CENTRAL

  When Mr. Wetherall crawled back to consciousness next morning he found that most of his resolution had drained away. His right hand was an aching lump. His head was opening and shutting in hellish rhythm, and the first thing he did on leaving his bed was to be sick. After this he felt a little better and put some coffee on, using his left hand. Then he shaved and (very slowly), dressed.

  The only grain of comfort was that, since it was a Tuesday, he need not be at the school until after lunch. Apart from this, the difficulties loomed in successive and aspiring crests.

  First, he must have his hand dressed and set at the hospital. Then he must see the police. Then he must get hold of some money. And send his suit to the cleaners. And think out what to say to his wife when she came back that evening.

  On the hall mat he found a further letter from Mr. Bullfyne.

  “I have had no luck so far,” said Mr. Bullfyne, “in placing your short story The Chimes at Midnight. I myself enjoyed it, and it was well written, but you might like to see the comments of the editor of Home Detective, which I enclose.”

  Mr. Wetherall said something uncharitable about the editor of Home Detective, but he had never yet had the strength of mind to throw away such an enclosure unopened.

  “It seems to us,” said the editor, “that although Rupert Fraser (the name under which Mr. Wetherall wrote) has talent, he seeks to describe scenes of which he can have no first-hand knowledge. If he would abandon his attempts to describe night-life, gangs and physical violence and would devote himself to those sides of life—”

  “Tcha!” said Mr. Wetherall.

  II

  Divisional Detective-Inspector Clark inspected Mr. Wetherall with distaste.

  “Where did this happen?” he asked.

  “In a street off Dean Street, in Soho.”

  “When?”

  “At about eleven o’clock last night.”

  “Then why wasn’t it reported before?”

  “I was in no condition to report it,” said Mr. Wetherall, indicating his hand which, plastered and strapped at the hospital, lay like a whitewashed football on his lap.

  “May I ask what you were doing in Soho at eleven o’clock last night?”

  “It doesn’t seem to me to be entirely relevant, but if you must know, I’d been having a few drinks – at a public house.”

  “I see.”

  Inspector Clark managed to vest these simple words with such bottomless depth of innuendo that Mr. Wetherall wriggled on his chair afresh.

  “Were you alone?”

  “I started the evening alone. I finished it in the company of a man who stated that
he was a Scotsman. I understand that his name is actually Higgins, and he earns his living by entertaining queues in Leicester Square.”

  Inspector Clark was beyond comment. To gain time he wrote down Leicester Square on the corner of his blotting pad. “Perhaps you would describe the men again – the ones who you state attacked you.”

  Mr. Wetherall described them again.

  “Have you any idea why they should have attacked you?”

  “Well, they took my wallet.”

  “Yes. Any other idea?”

  Mr. Wetherall’s mind stalled at this question, like a tired horse at a high fence. It had taken him an hour when he had talked about it to Todd the night before. How could he begin to explain it all over again to this large, angry, person?

  “I—yes—” he said. “I did think that there might have been other reasons, but they’re rather complicated ones. I don’t want to waste your time.”

  Inspector Clark sighed. The expression on his face was more eloquent than speech. If, said his expression, fools get muddled up in matters they don’t understand, and if their warped minds invent tortuous reasons to explain their imbecile conduct, then it was his unhappy duty to listen to them. That was the sort of work he was paid for. The job for which he drew his inadequate salary.

  No treatment could have been better calculated to provoke Mr. Wetherall’s familiar spirit.

  “Well,” he said more cheerfully, “if you’re really sure you’ve got time for it, I will tell you about it.”

  It proved easier a second time, and in ten minutes he had reproduced, with very few omissions, the story of his doings during the previous week.

  Mr. Wetherall had not been instructing classes for twenty years for nothing and one thing was apparent to him as he spoke. His audience might have started cold but it was warming up. The interruptions became fewer and fewer and the inspector’s careful parade of indifference became more and more perfunctory. At the end he was listening with more than interest. There was an undercurrent of stronger feeling.

  “So it seemed to me,” Mr. Wetherall concluded “although there isn’t any direct proof, I know – this part is really only guess work – but it did seem possible that the men who assaulted me were—”

  A curious thing occurred at this point. He had been intending to finish the sentence by saying “—were part of the crowd who run this food racket.” Instead, at the last moment, and for no reason at all he changed it: “—were part of the crowd who murdered Sergeant Donovan’s wife.”

  If he had produced a hand grenade, extracted the pin from it, and dropped it casually into the wastepaper basket, the effect could hardly have been more remarkable.

  Inspector Clark jumped to his feet, turned extremely red, glared down at Mr. Wetherall, opened his mouth as if to say something, shut it again, and sat down with an effort at self-mastery that was so obvious as to be almost ludicrous.

  Then he said, in a choked voice: “Will you kindly leave Sergeant Donovan out of this?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Wetherall. “As a matter of fact I didn’t mean to mention Sergeant Donovan at all, but he happens to be a friend of mine—”

  “I don’t want to hear anything about Sergeant Donovan.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Mr. Wetherall. “It was just a thought. Let’s all forget about it, shall we?”

  Before the inspector could say anything further there was a knock on the door and a sergeant came in and put a note on the desk. The inspector read the note, snorted, and said to Mr. Wetherall: “It looks as if we might have something for you soon. You said that one of those men called the other ‘Sailor’? “

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Well, as sure as I could be in the circumstances. There was quite a lot going on.”

  The inspector looked at him with distaste.

  “You realise,” he said, “that if we arrest these men yours is going to be almost the only evidence.”

  “The waiter in that night-club ought to be able to identify them.”

  “He might identify two men who called for you. That won’t prove that they were the ones who assaulted you.”

  “No—” said Mr. Wetherall, doubtfully. His head was aching, and he was disliking Inspector Clark more and more every moment. “There was a girl too.”

  “A prostitute?”

  “Yes – well, I’m afraid she probably was, but she seemed a kind creature.”

  “I’m afraid her identification wouldn’t carry very much weight.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Mr. Wetherall, suddenly feeling he had had enough. “Perhaps it would and perhaps it wouldn’t. But I can’t help feeling that if you would concentrate a bit more on helping and a bit less on making difficulties, we should get on faster.”

  “My duty is to assess the evidence, and see if there is a case on which we can act.”

  “Then assess it. Don’t act as counsel for the defence.”

  “I don’t think we need trouble you any more at the moment,” said Inspector Clark, standing up.

  He did not offer to shake hands. Mr. Wetherall fumed his way out into the street.

  It was half-past twelve and the sun was out. When he had recovered his equanimity, it occurred to him that he might get some lunch before going back to school.

  In spite of his aches his mind was tolerably clear, and as he sat at the cafe table, awkwardly ladling soup into his mouth with his left hand, he was hammering out a proposition.

  Sergeant Donovan had been engaged in cases to do with food stealing. His wife had been attacked and (though possibly accidentally) killed. Sergeant Donovan hinted that he knew who was responsible, but he had not passed on the information to his superiors. Now he, Wilfred Wetherall, had almost certainly run into the same crowd – or a branch of the same crowd – and had got into trouble. Yet any suggestion that the two cases were connected was anathema to the police. Or was anathema to Inspector Clark – who might not be the highest court of appeal.

  It did not make sense.

  And yet, in another way, it did.

  “Cottage pie, mashed potatoes, anything that doesn’t need cutting up,” he said to the waitress.

  “You hurt your hand?”

  “It was trodden on by an elephant,” said Mr. Wetherall. The girl rewarded him with a smile, and he suddenly felt better.

  His good humour stayed with him until he got back to the school and found Colonel Bond there.

  The first disconcerting thing about the colonel’s behaviour was that he made absolutely no reference to Mr. Wetherall’s appearance. Even allowing for the tidying-up process which he had undergone in hospital that morning, it was, as he was aware, remarkable.

  However, if the colonel was going to play at not noticing anything, it was hardly Mr. Wetherall’s place to bring the matter up.

  They discussed staff discipline and the revised time-table for the coming term and the difficulty of obtaining reliable charladies at reasonable prices – reasonable, that is to say, so far as the pockets of the Education Committee were concerned.

  At the end of it, and as he was on the point of leaving, the colonel said, with ponderous casualness: “I hear you had some trouble in the West End last night.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall guardedly. “Yes, I did.”

  “Robbery, I suppose?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir. I lost my wallet.”

  “Extraordinary,” said the colonel. “I’ve been living in the West End for twenty years, and no one has ever taken my wallet.”

  “You must have been lucky.”

  “Just a question of—er—keeping one’s wits about one,” said the colonel. “These chaps will always take advantage of you if—if they see half a chance.”

  Whilst he had been speaking, he had been edging towards the door, and before Mr. Wetherall could think of any suitable reply, he had gone.

  Mr. Wetherall sat staring after him.

  Five minutes later Peggy came
in.

  “Well, you’ve done it this time,” she announced.

  “Done what?”

  “Got ‘em all talking about you.”

  “And just what,” said Mr. Wetherall, “are they saying?”

  “It goes by age-groups. The younger ones say that you got lit up and took on three policemen outside the Wandsworth Tube. But Sammy won’t have that – and he’s got a lot of supporters.”

  “Sammy?”

  “He says you got your face caught in Tower Bridge when they were winding it up.”

  “I see.”

  “The bigger ones say you went on a spree in the West End and got beaten up by a gang in Soho.”

  “They do, do they,” said Mr. Wetherall thoughtfully.

  The telephone rang.

  “West End Central Police Station. Is that Mr. Wetherall?” said a woman’s voice. “One moment please.” Then a man’s voice. “Superintendent Huth here, Mr. Wetherall. Could you come over here as quickly as possible, sir. I’ve got Inspector Clark with me here. We have two men we hope you may be able to identify.”

  “Yes – I think I could.”

  “I’ll send a car for you.”

  “All right,” said Mr. Wetherall. “But for heaven’s sake don’t send it to the school, or you really will start something.”

  “I’ll tell them to pick you up at the corner of the road,” said Superintendent Huth.

  III

  The police had done their work well and fairly. The room seemed to be full of large men with reddish hair and open-air complexions and thinner men with white faces and black hair.

  Despite the competition, Mr. Wetherall picked out the two men as soon as he came into the room, and he saw from their expressions that they knew him and knew that he had recognised them. The red-haired man looked indifferent. The young one had a calculating look in his eyes which Mr. Wetherall found disquieting.

  “Just line up there,” said Superintendent Huth. “Now Mr. Wetherall. Would you have a good look at them all. Do you see anyone you know?”