‘All the more reason–’ he said and paused.
‘There’s half a dozen more coming,’ she told him in the same angry, moody tones, ‘marked “Malted Milk”. Don’t you try to stop them.’
He closed the cupboard very carefully and slowly, and came back towards her.
‘I suppose you’ve gone quite mad,’ he said.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she answered. ‘That’s what’s done it. I can’t sleep.’
He made no comment on this, but his eyes gleamed like those of the weasel before it springs. She mumbled,
‘It’s all very well for you, you’ve no nerves. I have. I tell you I can’t sleep. I just lie and I can’t sleep.’ Her voice rose suddenly from its mumbling to a scream. ‘Not without that stuff,’ she cried.
He continued to watch her in the same slow, malevolent silence. Still he did not speak, and now she struggled up to a sitting position on the sofa and sat, staring back at him.
‘It’s not only me,’ she said presently. ‘Zack’s the same... it’s all very well for you... you took jolly good care you weren’t in it... nothing you saw... we did, Zack and me.’
‘Zack’s as big a fool as you, bigger,’ the little man snapped out at her. ‘What you want, both of you, isn’t whisky, it’s prussic acid.’
‘Well, fetch it along, quick as you like,’ she answered, staring at him still.
It was in a milder voice, as if that defiance had a little affected him in one way or another, that he answered,
‘It’s all right if only you and Zack don’t lose your heads. We’re perfectly safe.’
‘Safe,’ she almost screamed, her face flushing suddenly, her eyes bloodshot and wild. She was on her feet now, gesticulating with both hands, ‘Safe?...’ she repeated. ‘With him... following... watching... waiting... there all the time and making sure you know it.’
‘Who’s that?’ Bryan asked.
‘You know,’ she answered, ‘you know all right... that Scotland Yard man... Owen they call him... Owen... knows, he does... and now he’s only waiting till he’s ready.’
‘Nonsense,’ Bryan answered, ‘he doesn’t know anything... how could he?... and it wouldn’t matter if he did... You’re just panicking... why, you’ve never even seen the fellow, have you?’
‘No,’ she admitted, ‘but he’s there... all the time... that’s what gets on your nerves... you never see him, but all the time you know he’s there and all the time you keep hearing things...’
‘Nonsense,’ Bryan repeated. ‘What’s all that amount to?... He can’t know anything.’
‘He suspects,’ Miss James answered. ‘If he doesn’t, why is he always... always just not there?’
‘You’re letting your nerves run away with you,’ Bryan insisted. ‘It’s just your nerves... that’s all... Only once you start giving way to nerves, you’re no good, and you’re only making it worse with whisky. All you’ve got to do is to keep yourself in hand.’
‘Zack’s just the same,’ she said, sitting down again. ‘He feels just the same... He says he thinks Owen was one of the men in the private enclosure yesterday, only he’s not sure which.’
‘Zack’s as big a fool as you,’ Bryan retorted. ‘You and he, you have got to stop this whisky game, both of you.’
‘Can’t be done,’ she answered sullenly, and then, when he turned his cold patient eyes on her, she added in the same sullen way, ‘Not till you’ve got rid of that detective fellow... Owen... if that’s his name.’
‘All in good time,’ Bryan answered quietly. ‘There’s that new odd job man, Bobs-the-Boy he calls himself. It seems he doesn’t like this Owen person any more than you do, or even less perhaps. Got you both scared seemingly, but perhaps this Bobs-the-Boy may be useful.’
Miss James began to laugh, a low cackling laugh that went on and on, breaking at times into a high note, and then resuming its low tone.
‘Shut up, can’t you?’ he said to her fiercely.
‘All right, all right,’ she answered. ‘But you’re so funny... You’ve always someone else on hand to do the dirty work for you... Don’t forget to tell him if he can’t sleep, then whisky’s the boy, whisky, not Bobs-the-Boy then.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Bryan snarled at her again. ‘Besides, he’s not the sort of sniveller you are, and Zack too... he let out a lot... I’m not quite sure what he meant, but whatever it was, it didn’t trouble his sleep. And he thinks it’s him this Scotland Yard fellow’s watching. I don’t know if he’s right, but that’s what he thinks, and he don’t like it, either... he was hinting what he would do.’
‘Well, then...’ Miss James said, ‘well, sounds like he’s the man we want.’
‘We should have to take him into our confidence,’ Bryan observed.
‘If it’s right what you say,’ she observed, ‘we can risk that... if it’s right Owen’s after him, too.’
‘Owen seems to have got on all your nerves pretty thoroughly.’ Bryan grumbled. ‘I don’t know how he’s managed it... he isn’t on mine... but then I don’t cultivate nerves... Why do you think he’s so dangerous?’
‘I just feel it,’ she answered. ‘If he wasn’t... he suspects... he’s watching all the time, never showing himself, just watching, asking questions, putting everything together; I can hear him when I lie awake... I can hear him making notes... only you never see him... other people do but you don’t... you just feel him all the time... laying a trap there... noticing something here you’ve never thought of yourself... I would rather be a fox or a hare with the dogs after me; at least they can see what’s following them but you can’t.’
‘He’s just got on your nerves,’ Bryan repeated, ‘that’s what it is... he’s got on your nerves and you’ve made it worse swilling whisky... If you had kept off whisky you would have forgotten all about him by now.’
‘If it wasn’t for whisky,’ she retorted, ‘I wouldn’t ever sleep.. If you don’t sleep, then you go mad. Whisky’s saved me from that; at least, I think it has.’ She stopped and gave her cackle of laughter again. ‘Set on your Bobs-the-Boy to save us from Owen; if he does, then I’ll stop the whisky, too.’
Mr Bryan did not answer. He was deep in thought, his sharp chin cupped in one skinny hand. There seemed something uncanny about him now; he had the air of a skeleton musing upon death.
Miss James lay back again on her sofa. The evening was warm and still and the window at her side was open. She stared out idly at the garden below where the shadows were lying thickly as the darkness increased. Presently she said, half to herself,
‘I wouldn’t wonder if he wasn’t there now, just watching us.’
Bryan took no notice, and indeed did not seem to have heard. He was still deep in thought. After a long pause she turned her head and flung at him angrily,
‘All very well for you... you stop in the background... you take care you don’t risk your own precious skin... It’s different when you have to do things yourself.’
‘I have done – things myself before to-day,’ he answered calmly, ‘and perhaps I shall again soon.’
‘Oh, well,’ she said, letting her head fall back and resuming her stare at the garden, watching it intently as if she expected to see at any moment some sign of that watcher who some secret intuition seemed to tell her was there, implacable in patience and resolve.
It was a thought that set her trembling as she lay back on her couch, and then the door opened and Zachary Dodd came in, with a kind of clumsy silence, treading on tiptoe, but making the boards creak beneath his elephantine weight, closing the door behind him with infinite caution, and as he turned from doing so knocking over a chair to fall clattering backwards. He said in a rumbling whisper as loud as most men’s lifted voice,
‘Has Hunter come yet?’
Neither of the others answered. Apparently they thought reply superfluous. In the same loud whisper, Dodd said,
‘If he hasn’t, that detective has; Owen, I mean.’
‘What’s that?’ Bryan sn
apped, roused at once, and Miss James jumped to her feet.
‘You saw him? You’ve seen him?’ she almost screamed.
But Dodd shook his head.
‘When I do, I’ll scrag him,’ he said, mingling his words with many oaths. ‘I’m fed up... You know he’s always there and yet he never is.’
‘If you didn’t see him —’ began Bryan, but Dodd interrupted impatiently.
‘I tell you no one sees him,’ he almost shouted. ‘You only... one way or another, you know he’s been there and that’s all... when I see him, I’ll do him in,’ he added and confirmed it with fresh oaths.
‘What’s the good of talking like that,’ Miss James interposed. ‘You’ll never see him, none of us will, not till he’s ready... then it’ll be us that’ll be done in, not him.’
‘Well, then...’ Dodd muttered, ‘well... now then.’
‘If you haven’t seen him,’ Bryan repeated once more, ‘how do you know...?’
‘Oh, this time he left his card,’ Dodd answered, laughing harshly, and while the others stared at him he produced a slip of pasteboard from his pocket and threw it on the table. ‘There it is,’ he said.
It bore in fact Owen’s name and in addition to his address the legend: ‘C.I.D. Scotland Yard’. Round it the three of them stood, grouped in a common and disturbing fear.
‘Where was it?’ Bryan asked.
‘In my room, on the floor, down there,’ Dodd answered, with a jerk of his head over his shoulder towards that portion of the grounds where was the men’s private enclosure he was in charge of. ‘He must have dropped it... accident or purpose... he must have been there half an hour ago... Bobs-the-Boy says he saw a man walking down that way, but he thought it was one of the members and took no notice. Half an hour or more he may have been there, looking round.’
‘There wasn’t anything...’ Bryan asked quickly, ‘anything he could use?’
‘I don’t think so: how can you tell, those fellows will twist anything... twisters... What did he leave that card for?’
Bryan said,
‘Going a bit too far... I’ll have to do something.’
He said this very gently almost to himself, but the other two heard him and grew silent at once. It was as if those few muttered words had daunted them and satisfied them as well. Dodd sat down quietly on the nearest chair. Miss James went back to her couch by the open window.
‘There’s Bobs-the-Boy, of course,’ she remarked, ‘but we should have to explain a lot to make him trust us.’
‘I don’t want that,’ said Dodd. ‘Tell nothing. It’s never safe.’
‘We aren’t safe now,’ Bryan remarked in his gentle menacing voice, ‘not with Owen... Owen... I think this Owen’s getting on my nerves as well,’ he said.
From the window Miss James, who had resumed her almost mechanical watching of the garden below, said softly but very intensely,
‘There’s a man down there... I saw him... behind a tree and then he slipped away.’
‘A man? What’s he up to?’ Bryan asked sharply.
‘Watching,’ Miss James answered in the same low yet intent voice, ‘watching... waiting... watching...’ After a momentary pause, she added, ‘Owen, that’s who it is.’
‘Owen,’ repeated Dodd. ‘Oh, oh,’ he stammered, exactly as if he had received some sudden hurt.
Bryan was peeping over Miss James’s shoulder, but now in the garden there was nothing visible, only darkness and long, growing shadows. He drew back and took from his pocket first a small pamphlet on the uses and benefits of fruit juice, and then a small cardboard carton marked, ‘Raisins, shelled nuts, dried banana – one cake enough for one meal’. This he opened and took from it neither raisins nor nuts nor dried bananas, but instead a small, deadly-looking automatic pistol.
With it in his hand, without speaking a word, he slipped from the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘Bobs-the-Boy’ Joins
There was, in addition to the main stairway, a second, narrow and winding, originally intended for the use of the domestic staff of the house. It started from a passage at one end of which was the kitchen, at the other a small door leading into the garden. Down these stairs now Mr Bryan went at a light run, a small, grotesque, deadly figure, his shorts flapping about his legs like drum-sticks, his shirt open to show his narrow and sunburnt chest, the automatic pistol clasped in a hand as firm as it was bony.
A light was burning in the passage at the foot of the stairs. He switched it off before he opened the door. In a flash he was through it, running with extraordinary speed and silence across a space of open lawn till the shadows of the trees and shrubs beyond swallowed him up.
A weasel, questing to kill, could not have moved more silently or more swiftly. There was something strangely daunting between his odd appearance and attire that seemed to suggest the harmless crank concerned only with his own fads and fancies, and his purposeful and deadly movements.
He noticed that the window of Miss James’s room was now closed and the curtains drawn. With a grin of contempt he thought that up there they wished to remain in ignorance of what was happening.
‘Nerves,’ he muttered, ‘nerves...’ He had a silent gesture of contempt to himself there in the shadow of the trees. ‘Nerves...’ he said again.
He went on sliding from one shadow to another, from one tree to the next. His eyes, his ears, every sense was alert, tuned to an almost unnatural keenness. It was as if he heard the grass growing, the worms burrowing, the beetles and the ants scurrying to and fro on their various occasions, as if he heard and distinguished every sound that filled the night with a faint continuous murmur. Far off, and then much nearer, he heard the clocks strike ten. He circled round a bush whence no sound came, where the shadows seemed to him deeper than elsewhere. His finger twitched upon the trigger of the deadly little weapon that he held, that carried seven deaths in its metal chambers. His tongue was sticking out and a few drops of saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth. A voice from the centre of the bush said,
‘You’re a bit too late, Guv’nor; Owen’s done a bunk.’ Bryan swung round quickly. His finger was on the trigger of his weapon but he did not fire. Rather clumsily, the figure of a man extricated itself from the bush. Almost as much by recognition of the voice as of the figure, for the darkness here was intense, Bryan understood that this was Bobs-the-Boy. He still kept his pistol levelled as he said,
‘What are you doing here? I thought it was a burglar.’
‘Not you, you didn’t, Guv’nor,’ retorted Bobs-the-Boy. ‘What you thought was that it was that Scotland Yard swine, Bobby Owen. And you was right, too, or would have been, if you had been just two minutes quicker. But now he’s off and Lord knows where.’
‘What’s that you’ve got in your hand?’ Bryan asked. Bobs-the-Boy held out his arm and let fall something heavy.
‘A brick,’ he said simply. ‘I was going to bash his nob in for him, so you couldn’t have told it from a pot of paper-hanger’s paste... and so I will sometime yet,’ he added with what seemed a burst of uncontrollable ferocity, ‘for I’m fed up with him following me the way he is; and if I’ve got to swing, why, it might as well be for him, too.’
‘What do you mean, “too”?’ Bryan asked. He put his pistol back in his pocket and began to walk away towards the more open parts of the garden where the darkness was less intense. ‘What have you done to swing for, as you call it?’ he repeated as Bobs-the-Boy followed him.
‘Nothing... that’s my business, that is,’ Bobs-the-Boy answered sulkily.
‘You may as well tell me; perhaps I could help you,’ Mr Bryan observed, and added carelessly, ‘I don’t know that I like this policeman person – Owen is his name? – I don’t think I like him any more than you do.’
‘No reason why you should,’ retorted Bobs-the-Boy, shambling along a yard behind his companion. ‘I don’t know if it was you and your pals did in that bit of skirt all the papers are talking about... and
I don’t care... nothing to do with me. But I do know the “busies” think you did it, and Owen thinks so, too, for I heard him talking to one of the big pots from the Yard, and that’s what it came to.’
‘That, of course, is quite a mistake, a regrettable, even a ridiculous mistake,’ Bryan told him. They were in the middle of the lawn now, and Bryan stopped and turned to face the other. ‘What were they saying – this Owen man and the person from Scotland Yard?’
Bobs-the-Boy shook his head.
‘I only caught a word here and there,’ he answered, ‘but what it came to was plain enough, and that was that she was done in here and that you and some of your pals done it. But they couldn’t think why.’
‘I should suppose they couldn’t,’ declared Bryan with a dry little sound Bobs-the-Boy did not at first realize was a laugh. ‘Of course, it’s obvious there could be no reason, quite obvious, isn’t it?’
‘There’s a many couldn’t give reasons for what they done,’ Bobs-the-Boy retorted with an unexpected touch of philosophy, ‘but that there’s what they think all right.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Nothing,’ Bobs-the-Boy answered promptly. ‘Why should I? What’s it do with me?’
‘What do they think about you?’ Bryan asked next.
‘It ain’t so much what they think as what they know,’ Bobs-the-Boy answered in a slow and hesitating voice; ‘only I’m not sure what they do know, and it wasn’t no fault of mine, for I never meant to do it. But she made me mad the way she talked and talked, and I never did a thing but what any other bloke she had aggravated so wouldn’t have done just the same as me.’
‘What was that?’
‘It was only a sort of a clip on the ear,’ Bobs-the-Boy answered sullenly. ‘But down she went flop with her head against the grate and looked so queer like, I shoved off. Then afterwards I heard as how she passed out for keeps, and like as not, if them busies can, they will bring it in murder, same as it never was, nor manslaughter neither, seeing I never meant a thing except to teach her to hold her tongue. But she always was an awkward one, and after that I never reported any more according to my ticket. And if that there Owen... Owen–’
Death Among the Sunbathers Page 16