Of course, it was different for him. He was O.K. Mr Veesey Blaize had said so. It wouldn’t be long now till the Appeal. And then They’d see. Including the judge. From the way Mr Veesey Blaize had spoken about misdirection, he wouldn’t be surprised if old pie‐face didn’t lose his job over it. And a good clean‐up too. What was the point of having a judge sitting there if he didn’t know enough to direct a jury properly? It was a nice safe job a judge’s, with no competition. And it was only natural that some of the elderly ones should get careless after a bit.
It was going to be the Lord Chief Justice himself who would hear the appeal. Mr Veesey Blaize and Mr Barks between them had arranged that. No half‐measures, no middle‐men, for Mr Veesey Blaize. He’d got everything fixed up. He was probably seeing the Lord Chief Justice at this moment. Telling him where the judge had gone wrong. From the way he talked you could tell that it was going to be a proper show‐down once they got into court.
And if anything went wrong and he didn’t get a chance to say his little bit at the appeal, there were still other ways of doing it. He’d split the whole thing wide‐open in the Sunday Papers. He’d give the Police the scare of Their lives. He’d expose what They did to you when They got you in prison. Talk about Third‐Degree! Talk about rubber‐truncheons! He’d give the public what it wanted all right. There was money, too, in that kind of journalism. Full‐page stuff. With pictures. And signed in his own handwriting to show that the revelations were genuine. He’d look all right at the top of the page, head and shoulders, wearing his pin‐stripe. Perhaps he wouldn’t do it all in one article. He might decide to run a series. Then he’d get his name known, and he could sit back for a bit. He wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the making of him. FLEET STREET DISCOVERS NEW CRIMEWRITER – that sort of thing. He knew the inside story.
Because it was getting on for eight o’clock, Scottie was growing restless. The dark one was due almost any minute now. Then Scottie would be free to go back to his wife. She was an Argentinian that he’d met in the United States and she was a Canadian who’d fallen in love with him when he’d been a steward on a liner, and she was a… but what was the use? He bet she was just like any one else’s old woman really. And you wouldn’t get a decent class of girl marrying into the prison trade. Smell of the charnel‐house wasn’t in it.
There was that awful jangling of keys outside the door and the same silly business of sliding back the peep‐hole cover to make sure that everything was all right before coming in. Scottie got up from the chair he’d been sitting on for the last two hours and tried to pull back the creases into his trousers.
‘See you to‐morrow,’ he said.
‘So long,’ Percy answered.
They had spent the better part of the last eight hours together, and were glad to see the last of each other.
It was typical of the dark warder that he didn’t even say good‐evening properly. He just nodded, and then sat down on the chair that was still warm from Scottie. And he hadn’t even got an evening paper or a book or anything with him. Which meant that he would simply sit and stare. Percy had had some of that before. And it got on your nerves being looked at as if you were some kind of specimen. He’d decided last time that he wouldn’t have any more of it. So he started in to‐night while he was still fresh.
‘Who you looking at?’ he asked.
He put it quite bluntly – just like that in fact – so that the other man should know that he wasn’t joking. After all, Percy could afford to be rude to warders because he’d be a free man again in about ten days’ time. They didn’t mean anything to him, warders didn’t.
But the warder did not reply. Merely went on sitting there, staring. So Percy asked him again.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘You seen me before, haven’t you? Who you looking at?’
It seemed to get home that time, because the warder roused himself.
‘I’m not looking at you,’ he said. ‘I’m just sitting here.’
‘Not looking at me! Don’t talk silly,’ Percy told him.
The warder said nothing. Nor did he move. His eyes were still fixed on Percy. Staring right through him as it were. And now that Percy realised that the warder was up to those old tricks once more, he found himself jumpier than ever.
‘Take your eyes off me, can’t you?’ he demanded. ‘Turn your chair round if you can’t stop staring.’
‘I’m not turning my chair round for any one,’ the warder replied quietly. ‘You go on with what you’re doing. I’m not looking at you…’
That was why first thing in the morning Percy asked if he could write a letter to his solicitor. And he didn’t care if They read it either. He’d got the jitters and didn’t mind who knew it. People would be forgetting him if he didn’t do something.
It was cheap stuff, prison notepaper. It looked as if it ought to have been wrapped round something. And the nib! Even a post office would have kicked up a fuss about it. It kept on digging up little tufts of the paper and carrying them along with it like a small inky comet. The ink, too, looked as though They’d been washing‐up in it.
It wasn’t exactly easy to know how to begin. Even ‘Dear Mr Barks’ sounded a bit familiar, remembering how important Mr Barks was. And Percy had got to watch his step: he didn’t want to do anything to suggest that he was trying to come it. He sat biting the end of the already‐bitten pen while he was trying to work the problem out. But he got started at last.
Dear Sir, was what he wrote finally, Knowing how busy you are I am apologising for bothering you. But I would be obliged if you would kindly let me know that everything is O.K. I am looking forward to the Appeal and if there is anything more that I can do I await your esteemed instructions. (‘Esteemed instructions’ was lock‐up garage language to the better class of customers, and there was a pleasantly West End professional ring to it.) If you would care to see me, I am in at all times. (That sounded funny, but he couldn’t help it: he couldn’t very well say: ‘I am inside at all times.’ It meant the same thing anyway). Trusting that you are keeping well and thanking you for past kindnesses. Yours… Yours… Yours – what? Sincerely? Truly? Faithfully? Ever? What he fancied most was: ‘Ever so sincerely yours.’ But again that might seem to be coming it. So he compromised. ‘Yours respectfully’ was what he wrote.
It was Scottie who was sitting with him at the time. And seeing Percy chewing at his pen reminded him of a piccaninny class that he had once seen in West Africa. ‘When I was in Lagos…’ he began.
Chapter LVI
It would have had to be Connie. Not that it was her fault exactly. In the black‐out accidents were happening to other people all the time.
And as accidents go, it was a thoroughly de luxe affair. She was bumped – not much more – by a slow‐moving Daimler with a crest on it, at the corner of Jermyn and St James’s Streets. She wasn’t even hurt. But luckily she had the forethought to scream and go down flat in the roadway. And having gone down, she kept her head and lay there without moving.
It was a bit risky, of course, with other cars about. But as things happened, it worked perfectly. The Daimler stopped and a man got out. She couldn’t see what kind of a man because of the black‐out; and in any case she wasn’t opening her eyes for the moment. But he seemed a very nice kind of man. He bent over her almost tenderly and tried to lift her up. Then, when he found that she was limp – horribly limp – he began calling out asking if there was a policeman anywhere.
As soon as she heard him do that she knew that she was all right. Positively in luck’s way, in fact. He wasn’t one of the hit‐and‐run sort: he was going to stop where he was and see the whole thing through. And every time he called out she got to liking him more. He had just the right kind of voice – loud, commanding and unmistakably upper‐class.
The next few minutes were naturally a bit of a strain on Connie. She wanted ever so to open her eyes just for a moment to take one peep at her assailant‐rescuer. But she couldn’t, because quite a crowd ha
d collected by now and someone was flashing a torch in her face. She could feel the beam of it tickling her eyelids. Then a real busybody in the crowd, a sort of amateur Red Cross specialist, announced that he was going to shift her into a neighbouring doorway and asked for someone to help him. There was nothing that she could do about it – she just had to let them do it. But it was dangerous. From the way they were holding her they might have been going to set her down on her head.
All the same it was interesting to hear the comments of the crowd while this was happening. The general verdict was that she was done for. ‘She’s finished, poor old thing,’ someone said; and a woman in a high hysterical voice observed suddenly: ‘Look at her hands, they’re dragging.’ Connie wanted to laugh at first. Then she couldn’t because she felt so sorry for the motorist to think how worried he must be. And after that the crowd grew too big for her to make out any further individual comments. It was just a vague murmuring mass of curiosity.
She could tell as soon as the policeman arrived. There was the usual ‘Move away, there,’ and almost at once she heard the motorist explaining at the top of his voice that he had hardly been moving when it happened. But that didn’t cut any ice with the crowd, and he’d have done better to keep quiet. Connie could tell whose side the gallery was on.
The policeman picked up her arm and tried to feel her pulse. She was surprised how gentle his fingers were – the last time a policeman had had his hands on her he had been trying a half‐Nelson. Then the policeman dropped her arm and began putting his fingers down inside her bodice. This seemed to be going just a bit far, especially with a crowd around. But without coming to before she was ready, she couldn’t stop him. She just lay there all humped up against the step and let him get on with it. Not that it went on for very long. He soon got tired of it and contented himself with smoothing down her skirts which had ridden up all anyhow. Then Connie felt a warm, heavy coat descend on her and she realised that she was being tucked up. Good class of copper, too, she reflected.
‘Move along there,’ she heard him say again. ‘There’s no good standing round. The ambulance’ll be here any minute.’
He’d got a nice voice, too. Not a bit like the old‐fashioned flatty. This one was real Hendon College. It might have been a deep contralto who was speaking. A deep contralto! Connie felt her blood run cold – colder than it was already from having lain in the roadway. The worst, the very worst, had happened. She had allowed herself to be pawed over by a policewoman…
After that – and she very nearly wept from the sheer shame of it – she didn’t properly begin to enjoy herself until she heard the ambulance bell in the distance. Then the old spirit of adventure returned to her. In all the years she’d been about, this was the first time she ever heard an ambulance‐bell and known that it was coming specially for her.
She opened her eyes just as they were lifting her up on to the stretcher. Opened her eyes and gave the crowd her blessing. ‘Don’t worry, folks,’ she said in a quavering, feeble voice. ‘I’m all right. Only shaken.’ She could have bitten her tongue out, of course, as soon as she’d said it – it was giving the whole case over to the insurance company.
But once an actress always an actress, she tried to console herself. There are some exits which are better absolutely silent and some that need a line or two just to point them…
The hospital was thoroughly up‐to‐date and efficient on the accident side. More efficient than really suited her, in fact, and somehow not friendly. There was too much white tiling about, and too many unshaded lights. And too many nurses. After her nasty experience with the police‐woman she was in no mood to have every stitch of clothing taken off her by a couple of brisk young females who kept finding fresh places to wash. They might have been laundresses, not nurses, from the way they set on her. And she had to remind them that if they’d lain unconscious in the roadway they’d have been pretty dirty, too.
The surgeon who examined her was the cool sort. Cool and aloof and indifferent. He went all over her and then told them – more like an instruction than a good‐night kiss – to tuck her up for the night. From his manner she got the impression that he’d cleared the operating‐table specially for her and now felt himself cheated out of something.
It wasn’t any friendlier in the night‐ward either. She couldn’t even raise a drink before they left her. She said something about brandy. But the sister only laughed at her, and came back in a few minutes with something in a cup. Because there was nothing else, Connie drank it. It was tea, sweetened with glucose, and about the worst cup of tea she’d ever had brought to her.
They let her out next day after the doctor had been round again. And Connie made her own way back to Dulcimer Street. She was so stiff at first, especially where the wing of the car had touched her, that she began to wonder whether she could really have got out of the gutter if she had wanted to. The whole of one side felt as if a goods‐train had run into it. But she put it to herself this way.
‘Well, m’old duck, suppose the car had really been moving? Would you still have stayed there and said your prayers? Would you, Connie dear?’ And back the answer came: ‘You bet your sweet life, you wouldn’t.’
Besides, there was always the insurance claim to console her.
Chapter LVII
1
Mrs Jan Byl had replied. And the reply had been just what Mr Squales had hoped for.
In consequence, there he was in the corner of a first‐class carriage, a copy of Everybody’s Weekly open on his lap. He had been reading it earlier but now he was just toying with the pages.
‘In any case, I’ll chuck it out of the window before I get there,’ he told himself. ‘Bit too popular for this kind of a week‐end.’
Because he was alone in the carriage he had contrived to get thoroughly comfortable. With his legs up on the cushions opposite he was luxuriating. He had unbuttoned his waistcoat and loosened his cravat. His shoes, his new fashionably pointed shoes, were unlaced and the tongues folded forward on to the uppers. He had been smoking a railway cigar that he had bought at the station and, even though it had gone out in a pungent, unprepossessing fashion, he was reluctant to throw it from him. A cigar, a first‐class carriage and a country‐house week‐end ahead of him – Mr Squales did not want to forfeit even the least part of the savour.
‘It’s a long shot I’m taking,’ he told himself. ‘There may be nothing in it. But, after all, beggars can’t be choosers.’
He picked up his hat from the seat beside him and looked inside the lining. It was there. Mr Jan Byl’s obituary notice from the Times. Mr Squales studied it carefully. The need might not arise. But if it did – at a séance or something – he wanted to be prepared. If they were expecting any direct voice stuff from their visitor they’d surely rather have him word‐perfect than tongue‐tied. After a moment, he restored the cutting to its hiding‐place, and continued to stare out of the window.
His mind flitted back and he remembered his parting from Mrs Vizzard. He shuddered. It had been deplorable. She had behaved as if he had been leaving for the South Pole. Recriminations, tears and finally – as a token of her love – a packet of sandwiches for the journey. It was the sandwiches which he had most resented. He couldn’t really feel at his ease as a gentleman until he had been able to pop the small grease paper parcel into a waste basket on the platform. He kept the little label which said, ‘To Rico in case he is hungry in the train,’ simply because it flattered him to think what a masterful hold he had over her.
As a matter of fact, he rather regretted the sandwiches by now. Chiddingly was further than he had expected, and he was beginning to feel hungry. Also, it had somehow been such an ungracious thing to do. After all, as Mrs Vizzard had advanced the money for the ticket, it was not unreasonable that she should have imposed some kind of conditions on the journey.
Imposed conditions! That was precisely what, at the back of his mind, was now worrying him. And such conditions. She had asked him not to
be extravagant. Not as crudely as that, of course. But just as meaningfully. When, one by one, she had passed the three pound notes over to him, she had significantly added: ‘I’m not a rich woman, Rico. I only wish I was. Then I could give you this more often.’ Nicely put as it had been, the words still rankled. It was the one small, cankerous reminder in what promised to be a beautiful week‐end.
It may have been the smooth passage of the train, or the flat featureless countryside, or his own sandwich‐hunger – whatever it was, one of his queer fits of abstraction came over him. Suddenly he felt himself slipping. Not bodily, but mentally. He forgot about cigars, first‐class carriages, country‐house week‐ends – everything. His mind went reeling sideways into a somewhere that he did not recognise. He was in the railway train no longer. There were pebbles and coarse sand beneath his feet. And behind him – even though he could not see them he knew that they were there – were bleak jagged cliffs and rolling uplands. And, even though so to speak, he had only just arrived there he knew that he was on an island. What was more, he knew that he couldn’t get off: he was a prisoner. At the top of the cliff paths there were strands of barbed wire stretched across the sky and in the shadow of the cliffs behind him an armed guard was standing…
And then, as suddenly, the mood passed and he was back in the corner of his first‐class carriage again. But the impact of his experience remained. He was sweating and frightened. Yes, actually frightened.
‘It’s… it’s happened again,’ he told himself. ‘Just like the other times. I’m always getting these fits nowadays. I must see a doctor. A good doctor. Perhaps it ought to be a specialist.’
While he was still recovering from the shock of his discovery, he was aware dimly that the train had stopped, and a porter was calling out ‘Chiddingly.’
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