“What are you doing?”
“Seeing what presents I’ve salved from the train.”
“You won’t need them here.”
“I may. Christmas has got to be Christmas, wherever you spend it. Would you like a dear little white bunny or a golliwog?”
Jessie laughed. Without the Carrington’s, she felt the situation would have been unbearable.
The door of the adjoining room opened and closed. Jessie stopped laughing, and Lydia raised her head, catching sight of Jessie’s face in the dressing-table mirror.
“There goes our bore,” she said. “You don’t like him any more than I do, do you?”
Jessie hesitated for an instant. Her virtues, like her vices, were simple. One of the virtues was that she hated talking ill of people. She had had plenty of opportunities.
“We can’t help being what we are,” she replied.
“No, if a tiger eats you, it isn’t really his fault,” answered Lydia. “God gave him his appetite. He’s going downstairs. Mr. Hopkins, not the tiger.” She listened. “He has a heavy, distressed tread. Have you noticed how circumstances have changed him?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the same. I’m the same. But people like Mr. Hopkins alter with the weather. They’re up at top when things are going right, and down at the bottom when things are going wrong. In the train, compared with Mr. Hopkins, we were all tiny little worms. Of course, things weren’t going right in the train, but they hadn’t reached this pass. Now he’s becoming the worm. Yes, I think I’ll give him the golliwog. Hallo, somebody else! Who is it this time? I hope Mr. Thomson hasn’t become delirious!”
She ran to the door and opened it a crack.
“Maltby,” she reported, closing it, “of the R.P.S. He’s another rum one, though I rather like him. I wonder what he’s been poking about upstairs for? Half a mind to do some poking myself.”
“Don’t!” exclaimed Jessie.
Lydia gave a little sigh.
“Perhaps you’re right. But I’m wondering how long we can go on like this? Somehow everything seems so—I don’t know—unsatisfactory.”
“We’re lucky to have found a roof.”
“Oh, yes—that. Only it all might have been so different. Suppose, for instance, our party had been you and me and David and two or three others more like us. We’d have made a team. Had fun. But, as it is, we’re all bits and pieces. We don’t fit. Mr. Maltby thinks only of his psychic vibrations; Mr. Hopkins of his comfort; Mr. Smith, well, I don’t know what he’s thinking about, but I’m sure it isn’t up our street; and poor Mr. Thomson ... what we need is pulling together, yes, and don’t be too surprised, Miss Noyes, if you see me behaving astonishingly!” she exclaimed suddenly. “The one thing that can save us from causing each other nervous break-downs, if we’re to be forced on each other for much longer, is a common object, and that common object is Christmas itself. If we can’t leave this place, it’s no good sitting about watching the front door. Yes, from this moment I’m going to work to make this the jolliest Christmas of our lives! You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“Yes! Of course!” replied Jessie rather breathlessly. “But what can I do?”
“You can just lie there and back me up. Help me to feel I’m not doing this all alone. Once I get a start David will join in, and it’ll grow like a snowball. Only it won’t grow on empty stomachs,” she added. “What would you like for dinner? Dinner’s at eight. Tomatoes and spaghetti?”
In the full tide of her enthusiasm, she ran from the room.
Jessie opened her diary again and wrote:
“——rest. But I’m sure I’m not as bad as Mr. Hopkins. Or as good as Lydia Carrington. I hope she won’t be gone too long. Somehow, when she’s not here, this room seems to get on top of me.”
CHAPTER IX
STUDIES IN ETHICS
FOR a few minutes after Mr. Maltby left him for his tour to the attic, David sat and smoked. He had rather less fear than the average, although his courage had never been yet severely tested, and he was not worried personally that an alleged murderer was in an adjacent kitchen, trying at that moment perhaps to remove bloodstains! Smith might be homicidal, but he had shown no symptoms of insanity, and it was not likely that he would suddenly leap back from the kitchen and plunge the bread-knife in David’s back. There were others, however, whose nerves might be more severely strained by the situation if they became fully alive to it, and Mr. Maltby’s policy of endeavouring to keep a wild animal tame and unsuspecting was obviously sound.
Other matters, also, needed the soothing influence of tobacco smoke. David possessed a normal respect for property, and his ethical as well as his legal sense was troubled by the free use that was being made of the house. He imagined himself the owner, returning suddenly and plugging the uninvited guests with indignant questions. “What do you mean by coming into my house?” “The door wasn’t locked, we had to get some shelter.” “Well, why not somewhere else?” “There wasn’t anywhere else. We were nearly frozen, and one of our party had had an accident.” “Did that excuse you for drinking my tea?” “We needed it pretty badly; we had an idea you’d have offered it if you’d been here.” “All right, let it go. But you’re using the bedrooms!” “Yes, two.” “Suppose I need them for myself, for my own party?” “In that case, of course, you must have them, and you can’t turn out a girl with a damaged foot and a man with a high temperature. Do you suppose we’d have used them if there hadn’t been real need? And do you suppose we’d have even used your towels and dried ourselves if we hadn’t been up against it? Some of us might have got pneumonia!” “You’ve miscounted. Three bedrooms are being used.” “I hold no brief for the third.” “All right, let that go. But suppose I hadn’t come back? Suppose I hadn’t come home at all?” “We didn’t think you would.” “Why not?” “For the same reason that we’re here—the weather.” “But you knew I’d been here—I or somebody! Who laid the tea and put the kettle on and lit the fires?” “We had no idea.” “Did you try to find out?” “Obviously.” “How?” “We searched the house.” “What about outside the house?” “Impossible.” “Are you quite sure?” “Look! ... ”
Having reached this point in the imaginary conversation, he jumped up and went to the front door. Opening it, he showed the imaginary interrogator the banking snow in the porch. If he had intended to stagger the imaginary one with the sight, he forgot this in his own astonishment. The bank had mounted almost beyond belief and was now a glimmering white wall.
“I don’t believe we could get out of this door now if we tried!” he said aloud. “So tell me this, old chap, how the devil did you get in?”
He closed the door, relieved by this further argument in his favour. They couldn’t get away. Which, in its turn, meant that the owner of the house couldn’t return and the imaginary cross- examination couldn’t take place. For the first time in his life, David was realising the true meaning of the word, “snowbound.”
“And, the situation being what it is,” his mental defence continued as he returned to the fire, “are we to die of cold and starvation, when the means of staving off each is at hand? Is that humanly reasonable? Would a shipwrecked party thrown up on a desert island wait for legal permission to eat the cocoanuts?”
The legal aspect brought him suddenly to an entirely different question.
“What is the penalty for harbouring murderers, if any?”
He turned towards the kitchen. He listened to vague sounds. Then another sound caught his ear, and he turned to the staircase. Lydia was coming down for the unsatisfactory interview she described on her return to Jessie.
“Any news?” she asked, as she reached the bottom.
“Have you?” he parried.
“Dear brother, I asked first!” retorted Lydia. “Don’t be irritating!”
“Well, I have one bit of news,” he said. “Our friend Smith has returned——”
“What! That horrible man——”
“Oh, thanks for the warning,” she answered, lowering her voice. “What’s he doing in the kitchen?”
“Getting clean. So now run upstairs again, or he may come out and see you.”
Lydia regarded her brother indignantly.
“Will he eat me if he sees me?” she demanded. “Really, David, you’re being rather bright! Or is there something you haven’t told me? I know he’s a sort of suspect, but——”
“Well, if he’s a sort of suspect, why not keep clear of him?” interrupted David. “Do go!”
“Where’s Mr. Maltby?”
“Upstairs.”
“What, is he getting to bed, too?”
“Of course not!”
“Then what’s he doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try again?”
“Why should I know?”
“I don’t know why you should, but I know you do. You’ll go to heaven, David, you’re such a rotten liar! What’s Mr. Maltby doing upstairs, or am I too young to be told?”
David took a deep breath.
“Mr. Maltby is poking around upstairs, urged by an insatiable curiosity,” he said. “You forget, he has the scientific mind.”
“I didn’t see him on the first floor.”
“Then he must be on the second.”
“That’s the top floor, isn’t it?”
“Lydia, does all this matter?”
“Not a bit, darling. I’m only trying to irritate you as much as you’re irritating me, but I think I’ve taken on more than I can manage. I say, aren’t we peace-and-goodwilly? So that’s the lot, is it?”
“No, there’s one thing more, if you want it,” he replied. “The snow outside the door is higher than ever, and it’s still coming down.”
“Thought for the day. The more the snow comes down the more it comes up. Never mind, dear, we’re all tired; perhaps we’ll love each other next time. Kind regards to Mr. Smith.”
As she ascended and disappeared, he turned again to the kitchen. At the same moment the door opened, and the man who called himself Smith took shape out of the shadows.
“Hallo; how are you getting on?” asked David.
“I’ve ‘ad a wash,” replied the man.
“Well, cleanliness is next to godliness,” said David. “Feeling all right again?”
The man nodded. David found himself staring at his big rough hands.
“Where’s the others?” inquired the man, after a little silence.
“They’ll be down in a few moments,” answered David. “Have a fag?”
“I don’t mind if I do,” grunted the man. “Upstairs, eh?”
David offered his case and struck a match. When the man’s cigarette was gleaming between his thick lips he moved casually towards the staircase. David moved casually with him.
“What’s all this abart?” exclaimed the man suddenly.
“What’s all what about?” asked David innocently.
“Nothink!” muttered the man.
He sat down on the bottom stair and puffed for a while. David studied his face through his own tobacco smoke. The man had a pasty complexion, and although he had said he had washed, the statement was necessary to impress an otherwise doubtful fact. His eyes, surly beneath heavy black eyebrows, were too close together, and he had a boxer’s nose. Probably he had helped to give somebody else a similar identity mark.
“Well, it might be worse’n it is, mightn’t it?” he commented with a rather suspicious change of attitude.
“The weather mightn’t,” answered David.
“I mean in ‘ere.”
“Ah, in here, I agree.”
“There’s warm fires.”
“One might even describe them as scorching.”
“Wot?”
“I merely agreed with you again. Go on counting your blessings.”
The man frowned, then smiled.
“Well, ‘ere’s another blessin’,” he continued. “Plenty o’ stuff in the bloody larder.”
“I take it you have looked,” murmured David.
“Yus, and I tike it I wasn’t the fust!”
“You were not.”
“Orl right, then! So nobody can’t say wot I begun it. No, and when the bloke wot this ‘ouse belongs to comes ‘ome and finds there ain’t so much in it as wot there was when ‘e left, don’t blime me!”
David looked thoughtful. A new aspect of this man’s presence was beginning to dawn.
“Nobody’s going to blame anybody, Mr. Smith,” he said, “so long as the stuff we remove is strictly perishable.”
“Wot’s that?” jerked Smith. “Perishin’?”
David decided to apply a little test, in the centre of which was wrapped a warning.
“Listen, this is how I’ve worked it out,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, I was working it out in here while you were removing—washing yourself in there.” He nodded towards the kitchen. “I’m really no happier about all this than you are yourself——”
“Eh?”
“I mean, like you I can’t help worrying about the food we’ve taken, and that we may have to go on taking——”
“Oh, we’re goin’ on, are we?”
“Well, if we’re imprisoned here all night I expect we’ll have to——”
“Imprisoned—orl night?”
“You know the weather as well as I do.”
“That’s a fack.”
“So I don’t have to tell you that we may have to stick here all night.”
“That’s right.”
“In which case, as I was just saying, we shall wake up hungry, won’t we?”
“Corse.”
“So——”
“’Arf a mo’.”
“What?”
“S’pose when we wike up termorrer mornin’ it’s still snowin’?”
“Then it will be a real White Christmas, and we mustn’t turn it black.”
“Look ‘ere!” exclaimed Smith, with nervy impatience. “Why carn’t yer tork like an ordin’y bloke? If you’ve got anythink to say, say it and ‘ave done with it!”
“I am longing to say it and have done with it,” retorted David, “and I should have said it and had done with it years ago but for your continual interruptions! Perishable goods, to get back to our muttons——”
“Mutton?”
“Do you want me to hit you?”
“Try it on, guv’nor!”
“I should hate to try it on, but I may have to. Perishable goods are things to eat. If we are destined to have breakfast here, followed by lunch, tea, and Christmas dinner, we shall be forced to take more perishable goods, i.e., more things to eat. But we shall pay for them, and we shall confine our burgling to perishable goods, i.e., things to eat. We shall steal merely to live. And pay for what we steal.”
“Well, that’s orl right——”
“Quite all right. But it wouldn’t be all right if—well, if I got interested in a book I happened to find here, and went away with the book in my pocket. The rest of you would probably jump on me. Get the idea?”
“’Oo’d go away with a book in ‘is pocket?” answered Smith with a sudden grin.
“I was speaking of myself,” responded David. “I’m quite sure you wouldn’t.”
“Corse I wouldn’t!”
“There we are, then.”
“If I went away with anythink in me pocket, it’d be the duchess’s diamonds.”
David smiled back.
“Then it’s very lucky,” he said, “there are no duchesses here. Hey, where are you going?”
For Smith had risen from the stair and thrown his cigarette away.
“Stretch me legs,” replied the man.
“Not upstairs.”
“Why not upstairs?”
“Well, you heard what Mr. Maltby said.”
“That old bloke?”
“Yes.”
“Is ‘e me
father?”
“It would probably be news to him.”
“Then ‘ere’s some news fer you! We’re orl ‘ere without permishun and we’re orl in the sime boat, and I ain’t takin’ orders from nobody! See?”
He swung round and begun to ascend.
But he stopped half-way up. The stout figure of Mr. Hopkins came round the bend of the stairs, to stop just as abruptly.
“Hallo! Who are you?” exclaimed Mr. Hopkins.
“Come to that, ‘oo are you?” retorted Smith.
“No need to be impudent!” snapped Mr. Hopkins. “My name is Hopkins, sir! I suppose you’re another off the train?”
“Well, you s’pose wrong! I ain’t off the trine.”
Mr. Hopkins shrugged, then suddenly looked at the man more closely.
“What’s the idea?” he demanded. “Of course, you were on the train! I saw you!”
CHAPTER X
WOMAN DISPOSES
A DULL flush spread over the cockney’s cheeks. The cheeks of Mr. Hopkins, on the other hand, became suddenly paler as he regarded a clenched fist uncomfortably close to his nose.
“I’m a liar, am I?” shouted the cockney.
“Now, then, there’s no need to get so excited!” muttered Mr. Hopkins.
“No need ter git excited!” retorted Smith. “Corse, it wouldn’t excite you if a bloke called you a liar? ‘Ave another look at me!”
A faint perspiration glistened on Mr. Hopkins’s forehead.
“Yes, I see I was mistaken,” he said. “I have never seen you before in my life, and I sincerely hope I never see you again!”
“And that’s a ‘ope,” growled Smith, “becose’ ain’t I snowed up ‘ere sime as you, so you’ll ‘ave ter stick seein’ me, see? Well, ‘ow much longer are yer goin’ ter stand there? Are you comin’ dahn, or am I goin’ up?”
Mr. Hopkins swallowed and stepped aside. The cockney brushed past him unceremoniously, deliberately barging him against the wall as he did so. It was significant of Mr. Hopkins’s mood that he accepted the insult without protest.
“For all his bragging, Hopkins is a confounded coward!” thought David.
But the cockney’s passage to the top of the stairs was still not free, for now there occurred a second block in the traffic, and Smith found Mr. Maltby in his path. Ready for a further altercation, Smith glared at the old man; but the old man merely smiled back.
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