All at once, through the smoke, or the fog, or both, he got a shock. His eyes fell on a poster, and the poster asked a question. The question ran:
‘Where’s the sailor?’
The next moment, the sailor was somewhere else.
But the change of location merely brought Ben up against another poster asking the same question. Lummy, wasn’t there no way of getting away from it?
Southampton had followed Ben to London! Turning from the second poster he came face to face with a third: ‘Murder in a Taxi.’ It was a relief to find, after this, that one editor preferred politics to police news and contented himself with ‘Medway Bill This Week;’ but the relief was short-lived. In the next ten seconds Ben came upon three more posters each asking in fierce type where he was.
The entire world appeared to be hunting for him. Because of this, and because he felt that every official was looking at him suspiciously, he discarded his original intention of getting a bite and a gargle inside the station. Also because of this, he did not learn that he could have got to Wimbledon from Waterloo. His one desire was to quit this unpleasant review of glaring posters and staring porters! There would, of course, be posters outside, but not perhaps such a conglomeration of them! Moreover, as he passed from the roof of the station to the more distant roof of the street, he discovered that fog did indeed exist outside, and that its concealing cloak was very comforting …
Well! Here he was, back in London again! He had left it as a fugitive. As a fugitive, he returned. But in spite of its associations—in spite of the kicks and the hunger and the poverty it had meant for him, and the fear it still held for him—there was something homelike in its oppressions, something queerly sweet in the fog that stifled his eyes and nostrils. Out of the foggy metropolis Ben had been conceived! He had learned his very accent in it. If you were going to be tortured, it was something to know that your torturer would understand you when you said, ‘Wot cheer!’ …
A smell brought him to a standstill. A smell of coffee. He turned aside and tracked it, through what looked like a hole in a wall, to its source.
He found himself sitting at a cheap, stained table. A large figure materialised out of a dimness that appeared to have been hatched by human nature rather than by the elements. From this large figure Ben ordered a cup of coffee, which he hoped would be equally large, and a lot of bread and butter.
‘A ’ole loaf,’ said Ben.
He hadn’t had any breakfast.
‘I s’pose yer can pay for it?’ inquired the proprietor, impolitely.
His answer came rattling out of Ben’s left trouser leg. A shilling emerged on to the floor.
‘Wot’s this?’ exclaimed the proprietor. ‘A slot-machine?’
‘That’s right,’ answered Ben. ‘On’y yer gotter put corfee in me marth ter mike me work proper.’
The proprietor laughed, picked up the shilling, paid himself out of it, and brought the coffee. Financial doubts appeased, he lingered to chat.
‘’Ow d’yer like this weather?’ he asked.
‘Rerminds me o’ the Sarth o’ France,’ answered Ben, swallowing.
‘That’s good, that is,’ grinned the proprietor. ‘But there won’t be no more South o’ France for England, I reckon. ’Ollerdays at ’ome now, ain’t it? I wonder what the South o’ France thinks of Medway?’
‘Medway? Wot’s orl this abart Medway?’ mumbled Ben, chewing.
‘Go on!’ exclaimed the proprietor. ‘Medway’s goin’ to bring England up to the top again, ain’t ’e?’
‘Up ter the top? Ain’t we always up at the top?’ retorted Ben, spitting. ‘I don’t know wotcher mean.’
The proprietor tried a new tack.
‘Well, p’r’aps I could get up to the top if I could find that sailor they’re after,’ he chuckled. ‘Fifty pounds’d look just nice in my bank balance.’
‘Eh?’ jerked Ben, now ceasing all operations.
‘So I’ve ’eard. Fifty pounds for catchin’ ’im. It ain’t given in the papers, yet, but I got it from my brother-in-law, whose cousin’s in the Force.’
He paused, to mark the effect. But Ben was struggling to conceal the effect.
‘Well, I ’ope somebody catches ’im,’ went on the proprietor. ‘We don’t want no Chigargo ’ere! Sticking the knife right through the feller’s stomach! It’s enough to make yer sick.’
It nearly made Ben sick.
‘’Corse, wot we’re waiting for is a proper offishul discripshun,’ said the proprietor. ‘’Allo! There’s a boy callin’. P’r’aps there’s some more news.’
He went out of the shop. When he returned, his customer had left. Before opening his paper, the proprietor stared at the empty seat for quite a considerable time.
And, while he stared, the late occupant of the seat continued on his anxious, foggy way.
At first Ben concentrated solely on the object of putting as large a distance as possible, in as short a time as possible, between himself and the shop where he had begun but not finished his late breakfast, but presently he realised the need of a more constructive policy. You cannot run away for ever. There must, eventually, be some place to run to. Where was this place?
Was it Greystones, North Lane, Wimbledon Common, where the mysterious Mr Lovelace lived? In the circumstances, that spot now seemed as unhealthy as any he could choose! Yet, anomalously, there was no other spot that called him. If Molly had acted in the manner he had surmised—if she had gone back to Southampton, collected the letter, and decided to carry out her intention of warning Mr Lovelace—it was towards Wimbledon Common she would be journeying at this instant!
She wouldn’t be there yet. That was impossible, without an areoplane! But, at some moment of the day, she would present herself at Greystones, and wasn’t it unthinkable that she should present herself alone?
‘Yus,’ decided Ben.
Then his mind ran on:
‘But orten’t I ’ave wited at the stishun? ’Ave I bin a blinkin’ idjit?’
He decided, after careful reflection, that he had not been a blinkin’ idjit. Firstly, how did he know what train she would travel on? Secondly, he might easily miss her in a station crowd. Thirdly, with all those platforms, two trains sometimes came in at once, and then where were you? Fourthly, to hang around in the middle of all those posters, drawing greater attention to himself as each minute went by, was more than heart could stand or brain advise. Fifthly, there mightn’t be time to go back now, anyway.
No, he had not been a blinkin’ idjit.
And thus Ben decided to stick, after all, to his plan, and made a decision upon which hung issues bigger than any he dreamed of.
And thus, by devious routes through the fog-bound south of London, he found himself at last standing in a cold, white mist, staring at a little strip of metal on a derelict wall bearing the words, ‘North Lane.’
10
Incidents in North Lane
As Ben gazed at the two words he had been groping for through miles of mist, trying to persuade himself that they were just ordinary words and not in the least uncanny, a figure approached from the left.
Was this figure, as yet only an indistinct blur, the mysterious Mr Lovelace—the man to whom Ben had been despatched to offer himself for two pounds a week? There was no special reason to suppose it, for Mr Lovelace did not comprise the entire population of Wimbledon Common, nor was it likely that he had a monopoly even of North Lane; but while Ben had been drawing closer and closer to his destination, Mr Lovelace had grown and expanded into an obsession that stretched spiritual tentacles over the whole of Wimbledon Common with the embracing completeness of an octopus!
The approaching figure did not turn out to be Mr Lovelace. The indistinct blur materialised, rather surprisingly, into an attractive outline. For an instant Ben thought it was Molly, and his heart gave a bound. Then the attractive outline defined itself into a girl some inches taller than Molly, though with the same willowy slenderness.
Ben,
close against the wall, was to her left as she approached. She did not see him because her head was turned slightly to the right, and her eyes were fixing themselves on an object which appeared to interest her unusually. The object was an ordinary red pillar-box.
She paused for an instant, regarding it. Then she advanced again, reached the pillar-box, and paused again. Ben, watching from the wall, vaguely expected that she would post a letter, but no letter was forthcoming, and she continued to regard the letter-box as though it were some oriental curiosity.
‘I’m blowed!’ thought Ben. ‘Ain’t she never seed a piller-box afore?’
Perhaps ten seconds went by, during which neither of them moved. The pillar-box fascinated the girl, and the girl fascinated Ben. Then she turned her head, and looked back along the lane from which she had come … North Lane …
Very little of the lane could be seen. The mist blotted most of it out. Somewhere in a region beyond the mist a dog barked. The bark became a whine, and the whine suddenly ceased. Ben found himself shivering.
Now another sound caught the girl’s ear. Ben didn’t know what this sound was. Perhaps he had made it himself. On the other hand, perhaps he had not. The girl turned abruptly, and the movement put Ben to flight.
‘Why am I runnin’?’ he asked himself, as he felt North Lane swallowing him up. ‘’Abit?’
He consoled himself with a possible reason. After you’ve been watching a person, well, you don’t want to be spotted, do you, not even if you haven’t meant no harm? Ben didn’t want a nice girl like that to take him for a bag-snatcher!
It wasn’t a very good reason, but it would have to do, and anyway she was blotted out behind him now and he had more important things to think about. He’d got to find a house called Greystones. Yes, and how was he going to do that in this fog?
He stopped running, and, lost in a maze of space, felt his way towards the right-hand side on the lane. Once he only just saved himself from stepping into a ditch that wasn’t there, and another time he all but bumped his head against a non-existent post. But at last, after walking a distance that seemed about a mile, he found himself kissing a hedge, so concluded that he had arrived somewhere.
Endeavouring to be a little less intimate, he followed the hedge for several yards, lost it, found it, and lost it again.
‘Oi! Where are yer?’ he asked.
The dog answered him. Its bark sounded closer. And, as before, the bark dwindled into a plaintive whine and suddenly ceased.
‘Wunner if I’ll go on?’ reflected Ben.
But he went on.
The hedge, rediscovered, became a fence, the fence became nothing, nothing became a tree, the tree became a hedge again, the resuscitated hedge became a wall. There was a bit of everything barring the one thing he was looking for—a gate.
‘Ain’t there no ’ouses nowhere?’ he wondered.
Then his guiding hand slithered along a bush and touched wood. A gate, at last!
Now, was there a name on the gate? And, if there wasn’t, would he have to pass through the gate and make inquiries?
There was a name on the gate. You could just see it if you stuck your nose close. The name was ‘Greystones.’
‘’Ome!’ muttered Ben. ‘I don’t think!’
Well, home or not, here he was! And now, what? Just go in and say ’Allo?
Ben made a few decisions in his life, but Fate made most, and if the decisions of Fate were not too agreeable, they at least saved trouble. Fate decided now what Ben’s next step was to be by selecting this moment for the passage of a policeman through North Lane.
Even an unskilled ear can generally identify the peculiar acoustics of a policeman’s boot, and Ben’s ear was far from unskilled. As soon as the familiar tread resounded on the invisible road, he knew its origin. It was hardly likely that a chance meeting with a policeman in a London fog would lead to an arrest for a murder in Southampton, but Ben had the wit to realise that this was the last spot on earth where it was advisable for him to be seen, even foggily, by official eyes. The house outside which he stood was connected in some strange way with the murder in Southampton. It stood at the other end of the chain. With posters shouting, ‘Where’s the sailor?’ the most dangerous path for Ben, obviously, was along that chain!
So he opened the gate swiftly and jerked himself through, his immediate object being less to call upon Mr Lovelace than to avoid being called upon by a constable.
The gate swung to behind him with a clank. To Ben the clank sounded deafening. Had the constable heard it? The cessation of the constable’s footsteps suggested that he had, and also that he had paused … Well, what of that?
Darting a few steps to one side, so that there could be no possible view of him from the gate, even if the sun suddenly came out, Ben waited for the footsteps to continue. Presently, they did continue. They came towards the gate.
When a policeman comes nearer, you go farther. That is one of the vital principles of lower life. Ben began to go farther. But all at once his retreat was impeded by an unpleasant sensation at his feet. They had touched something soft. He stopped, and at the same moment the unseen policeman stopped. The obstacle in the policeman’s way was, apparently, the gate.
A vague amber warmth appeared in the mist. It moved about in the indecipherable region between the policeman and Ben, illuminating filmy outlines and revealing wraiths. The wraiths slithered slowly in fantastic shapes. They were the population of the mist. Some were definite. A dog with a glowing head. A snake with three curling tongues. A skeleton, swimming. But others were merely half-formed, offering themselves for completion to the sculpture of fevered imagination. Thus among the white population appeared a Spaniard with a dagger in his mouth, and a pale young Englishman, still and flabby …
Had the policeman realised the visions his light was helping to create, his interest would have increased.
With Ben’s sense of sight disturbed by these unpleasant visions, and his sense of feeling tortured by the soft thing his feet had touched, his sense of hearing might have been given a holiday. But Ben’s senses were not designed for rest. A new sound fell upon his ears. The sound of gravel crunching.
Well, when you’re surrounded and know you can’t get away, you don’t try. You just stand still and dispose of your earthly property. Ben left all his to Molly, thereby enriching her to the extent of seven shillings and sixpence, a third of a cigarette, a bone penknife with most of one blade and the place where the other blade had been, a handkerchief of rare vintage, and clothes containing forty-nine holes and three pending.
Meanwhile, the gravel continued to crunch.
It crunched from the direction where the house assumedly was. All you can do in a mist is to assume. If it stopped crunching it meant grass and Ben. If it went on crunching it meant the gate and the policeman. It went on crunching. Perhaps Molly wouldn’t get the forty-nine holes just yet awhile, after all?
There came a brief moment when the white wraiths were obliterated by a large dim shadow. The shadow itself looked shapeless, but as the crunching came from immediately beneath it, it obviously had substance, and as though to support this contention a wisp of white hair gleamed for an instant in the amber glow. Then the shadow vanished. There were about half-a-dozen more crunches. Then they, too, ceased.
‘Anything wrong?’
The voice was high and shrill. It fitted into the wisp of white hair.
‘No, sir—not if nobody’s slipped in through your gate.’
This voice fitted into a dark blue uniform.
‘Nobody has,’ replied the first voice, very definitely. Then added, ‘Why, constable? Are ye looking for somebody?’
‘Well, there’s all sorts about this weather,’ answered the constable, non-committally.
‘I see. Protection’s in the air, and you’re doing your bit, eh?’ The humour sounded acid. ‘Much obliged to ye for giving me my moneysworth. But nobody’s come in! Nobody!’
The constable did not act immed
iately on the information.
‘I thought I saw someone run in through this gate,’ he persisted, rather heavily. He had to explain himself. ‘Seemed as if I heard the gate bang, too.’
‘Well, would that be a thing to write to Scotland Yard about?’ retorted the other. ‘I wish I had as good sight and hearing as you in a fog!’
Still the constable hung on.
‘And I thought I heard somebody cry out, sir,’ he remarked.
Ben gulped. Observations of this kind are peculiarly unsavoury after your feet have just come into contact with something soft on the ground. He moved away from the soft thing, and came into contact with another part of it.
‘The somebody was a dog,’ said the owner of the wisp of white hair. ‘Yes, and if there’s anything wrong here, the dog is the first to report it. Satisfied, constable?’
‘If you are, sir,’ responded the constable. ‘Good-afternoon.’
The silence that followed was broken only by the constable’s boots as they turned from the gate and departed with slow and measured tread. The measured tread grew fainter and fainter. It ceased to sound …
‘And now,’ said the voice, inside the gate, ‘where are you?’
11
Hunt the Corpse
When a person asks you where you are and you do not want him to know, you stay where you are if you think he doesn’t know, and you move if you think he does. Something told Ben that the old man who had just turned back from the gate knew. Wherefore, Ben moved.
The object of the move was to find some spot about five million miles from the gate, but unfortunately there were about five million obstructions. As he turned first this way and then that, bushes bounced him back again, and branches dealt him uppercuts. Only the ground beneath him remained kind. Being grass, it muffled the acrobatic perigrinations of his feet.
In a very few seconds he had lost his bearing utterly. He did not know whether he faced north, south, east or west. Whether the gate were in front of him or behind him, or to the side of him. Whether his unseen pursuer, whose footsteps, like Ben’s, were muffled, were a mile away from him or an inch. Once, by mistake, he left the sanctuary of the grass, and his boot struck the gravel with a thunderous scrunch. In his anxiety he added a lightning ‘Oi’ to the thunder, and the storm continued in his soul. He put his head down and ran till it hit something. It hit something hard.
Ben Sees It Through Page 7