The door remained unsympathetic. It did not open and receive him.
And that being so, he had to endure out of the corner of his eye the spectacle of Mr Lovelace growing larger and larger, while the little man with the side-whiskers waited for the restaurant proprietor’s return with the cap.
And now here came the proprietor, bustling with importance and significance.
‘’Ere it is!’ he exclaimed. ‘Large as life! Left it on the seat aside of ’im.’
He held up the headgear as he spoke. A few yards away, Mr Lovelace paused. A triumphant light shot into his eyes, to be extinguished the next instant. For the moment he was not betraying his interest.
‘Well, I never!’ said the whiskered man, making use of his stock phrase while he stared at the cap as though it had been a royal crown. ‘So that’s it, is it?’
‘This is it,’ nodded the proprietor, as though he had made the royal crown.
‘Looks new,’ commented the whiskered man.
‘Newish, any’ow,’ conceded the proprietor, ‘and better-lookin’ than the ’ead that was under it! Talk about a scarecrow! But there, it takes all sorts to make a world, don’t it?’
The whiskers wagged up and down. Mr Lovelace advanced a step or two closer. The proprietor held the cap up so that they could have a better stare at it.
‘Well, what are you going to do?’ inquired the whiskered man.
‘There you are!’ answered the proprietor. ‘What’d you do?’
‘That’s easy!’
‘Let’s ’ear it, then?’
‘Earn that fifty pounds!’
‘Ah!’
‘What’s keeping you?’
The proprietor hesitated, then said,
‘Well, of course—it mightn’t be the man, might it? As I say, it never come over me at the time. “There’s a mug,” I thought, “poppin’ off like that!” But ’e might ’ave seen a friend or anything. As I say, it never come over me.’
‘No, but it’s come over you now!’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, then!’
The proprietor smiled.
‘As you say,’ he observed, ‘well, then!’
‘I can’t make you out,’ frowned the whiskered man. ‘What are you waitin’ for?’
‘Ah, now you’ve struck it, lad!’ grinned the proprietor, with a wink. ‘What am I waitin’ for?’
‘I’m askin’!’
‘Yes, and I’m tellin’!’ said the proprietor, dropping his voice. ‘That fifty pound ain’t ackerchelly offered yet, but I ’ear it’s goin’ to be, and so that’s why I’m waitin’, laddy! See?’
‘Well, I never!’ exclaimed the laddy.
Then for a moment there was silence. Ben’s ill-equipped mind struggled for a brain-wave. The only brain-wave was so obvious that it scarcely deserved the title. It was to dive out of his doorway, snatch the cap, and run. Probably no mortal in the country was better fitted to attempt this policy, for Ben was so swift that, when in form, he could sometimes be running away before he started. At this instant, however, he felt sadly out of form, and he was convinced that as soon as he grabbed the cap Mr Lovelace would grab him!
And while this distressingly inadequate thinking was holding Ben static, Mr Lovelace suddenly became mobile, and advanced to the restaurant door with a brisk smile.
‘You’ll forgive me for intruding,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid you’ll have to give up that cap!’
The proprietor wheeled round and stared at him, while the whiskered man drew away sharply as though he had been shot at.
‘I am afraid I overheard your conversation,’ Mr Lovelace went on, ‘so, you see, I know all about it.’
Then the proprietor found his voice.
‘Well, s’pose you do?’ he retorted. ‘Does that make the cap out yours?’
‘No, but it makes it common property.’
‘Eh?’
‘Come, come, you must understand me!’ retorted the old man, sharply. ‘A murder has been committed, and any evidence that will help to bring the murderer to justice must be produced—in the public interest! That’s obvious to anyone, isn’t it?’
The proprietor scowled, and the man with whiskers nodded anxiously.
‘That’s right, it’s just what I was going to tell him,’ he exclaimed. ‘I was just saying, when you came along, that he ought to take it to the police.’
‘Well, who says I ain’t goin’ to take it to the police?’ snapped the proprietor. ‘Yes, and who says they won’t call me a mug for doing it? After all—’
‘After all, your suspicions may be quite unfounded,’ interposed Mr Lovelace, soothingly. ‘Probably they are unfounded. Let me have a look at the cap.’
He advanced a step closer and held out his hand. Ben prepared to hurl himself forward without the slightest idea as to whether this would do any good or not. But the proprietor postponed the crisis by moving back a little and holding the cap behind him.
‘Yes, but wait a minute!’ he exclaimed, with sudden doubt in his eye. ‘The cap won’t tell you anything about whose face was under it, will it?’
Now Mr Lovelace frowned, while Ben wondered whether it would be possible to nip in and snatch the cap while it was behind the proprietor’s back. The proprietor had his back towards Ben, but unfortunately the whiskered man was standing between.
‘I’m only trying to help,’ snapped Mr Lovelace.
‘Well, p’r’aps I don’t want any help,’ answered the proprietor, and suddenly added, ‘Yes, and if you got hold of the cap, you mightn’t give it back again.’
‘Well, I never!’ muttered the whiskered man, shocked at the notion, and also at the proprietor for mentioning it.
‘Why shouldn’t I give it back to you?’ demanded Mr Lovelace, indignantly.
‘Maybe you’ve heard of that little reward, too!’ grinned the proprietor. ‘Anyhow, we’ll soon settle the matter. I’ll go off to the police this minute. There’s a bobby round the corner.’
‘No need to go as far as the corner, my man,’ said Mr Lovelace, quickly.
‘Why not?’ blinked the proprietor.
‘Because there happens to be a police official nearer than that.’
‘Where?’
And the proprietor looked along the road. So did the man with the side-whiskers.
‘Here,’ said Mr Lovelace, quietly.
‘Eh?’ jerked the proprietor, bringing his focus back sharply. ‘What—are—you—?’
‘I am,’ nodded the old man, now introducing a new note of authority into his voice. ‘And, that being so, let me tell you that you will get into serious trouble if you don’t hand that cap over at once. You ought to have done it before,’ he went on severely, while the proprietor began to look worried, ‘but I’ll overlook that if you’ll behave sensibly now and do exactly what I tell you.’
‘And what I’ve been telling him all along,’ interposed the whiskered man, endeavouring, apparently, to win official favour. ‘Hand it over, Tom. Or shall I?’
‘Shurrup!’ growled the proprietor, snatching his hand away as the whiskered man advanced his. ‘You speak when you’re spoken to!’ He turned to Mr Lovelace, suspicion not yet quelled. ‘So I’m to ’and the cap over to you, eh?’
‘Unless you prefer to do so under pressure?’
‘Pressure be blowed! And what ’appens then?’
‘You can leave that to me.’
‘But won’t you want my evidence?’
‘Oh, certainly.’
‘Then I’ll come along with you to the station!’
‘You seem exceedingly anxious to, all of a sudden!’ observed Mr Lovelace, dryly.
‘That’s right, I am,’ retorted the proprietor. ‘I’m thinking of that reward, and I don’t mind admitting it.’
‘If there is any reward, you shall have it.’
‘I’ll see to that! Wait while I get my own cap, and we’ll go along together.’
‘Come, come, my man!’ exclaimed Mr
Lovelace, testily, ‘are you running matters, or am I? We want this cap first, and we’ll have your evidence afterwards. A detective will call on you—’
‘Yes, and meanwhile you go off with the cap!’ interrupted the proprietor warmly. ‘I don’t think. Let’s see your ticket? Ain’t you got a badge or something?’ ’Ow do I know you’re what you say you are? There’s been tricks of that sort before, and I wasn’t born last Sunday!’
The man with whiskers looked scandalised. Mr Lovelace looked black. Then, all at once, Mr Lovelace’s expression changed, and it was impossible to describe it by any colour. It became variegated.
There was an electrical moment. The human kaleidoscope was in the process of violent, instantaneous transition. The whiskered man cried, ‘What’s up?’ and ducked, though no blow threatened him. The proprietor stared at the old man with his mouth open, and then, as though somebody had clapped him on the side of his head, swung round. Ben held his breath, and felt as though he were standing naked in a lime-light.
‘There he is,’ said Mr Lovelace. His voice, to Ben, sounded a mile away. ‘Seize him!’
The whiskered man sprayed forward, with arms wide. The proprietor leapt. As he did so, the cap dropped from his hand, and Mr Lovelace also leapt.
But so did Ben. Events were taken out of his hand, and the world had suddenly become simple again. There was nothing to decide. The problem was set. He simply had to see whether he could plough through it.
Before anyone knew he was moving he had hit the proprietor five times and the whiskered man twenty-two. Then he dived through the pieces and grabbed the cap. A strong, bony hand had already seized the other end of it.
The bony hand was stronger than his, and the mind that controlled it was keener, but when brain and brawn failed Ben summoned emotion to his aid, and he summoned it now. In a terrible red flash he visualised the bony hand throttling the life out of a fellow-creature, stuffing a rag in a girl’s pretty mouth, and pouring drugs into a tea-pot. The hand looked white to others, but, to Ben, it was crimson. And, with his own free hand, he struck for all he was worth.
The blow went wide, for Mr Lovelace was no novice and ducked; but it shot Ben forward off his feet, and since he still held grimly on to his side of the cap it also jerked his antagonist off his feet, for his antagonist was holding on to his side of the cap with equal grimness.
Ben was the first to rise. He saw, through a mist, two figures leaping towards him, one big, the other small. He received eight blows and gave eighteen. Then, after a spell of confusion which was rendered wholly unintelligible by bright lights and dark dots and whirling limbs and millions of shouts, Ben discovered himself erect, with his own limbs moving very rapidly—when he counted he found he had all four of them—and the streets of London flying past him backwards at a pace they had never known before.
‘I b’leeve I’m runnin’,’ he told himself.
23
Ben versus London
By all the rules of logic Ben should have been caught. A crowd had begun to collect outside the restaurant before he shot away from it and some of the new arrivals loomed up as obstacles. One man indeed succeeded in tripping him up and making a grab at him, ‘but before I could lay hold of the fellow,’ this would-be captor explained subsequently to a policeman, ‘he’d rolled through my legs like a barrel! Talk about quick! This wasn’t a man at all, it was a bullet!’
Three blocks away, a motorist was arriving at the same conclusion. The bullet leapt into the back seat, was carried thirty yards, and then leapt out again.
‘Catch him!’ shouted someone.
‘Who? Where?’ cried the motorist.
Nobody knew who and nobody knew where. Ben only had the foggiest notion himself.
And so, by dizzy ducking and impossible twisting and outrageous behaviour generally, Ben confounded logic and knocked the bottom out of the Einstein Theory, pulling up at last as he emerged from a by-street into a crowded, congested thoroughfare.
The crowd, with a blessedness unusual in his experience, swallowed him up. Unconsciously it directed his course and afforded him protection. It bore him to a bridge under which the Thames ran darkly. Ben found himself elbowed near the parapet. He squinted over.
Mist, wraith-like, curled over the surface. It had a queer fascination. A quick little jump, and there would be no more chasing of Ben in this world! Yes, but what about the next world? Ben jerked his head back again. If one had to be chased, it was better to be chased by solid matter. Even Mr Lovelace was preferable to a horned individual with a tail!
As he jerked his head back something fell from it and began to descend over the bridge. He caught it in mid-air. It was his cap.
He made his way from the parapet to the curb, striking a forward diagonal course and advancing like a bishop on a chess-board. When he reached the curb he jumped on to a bus. The conductor stared at him and he jumped off again.
Above him towered the Houses of Parliament. In spite of his need to keep moving he paused for a few moments to gaze up at the impressive building. He didn’t know why he paused, yet he felt there was some reason. What had he to do with the edifice from which came the nation’s laws—those laws he always seemed unwittingly to be breaking? Then, all at once, the reason came to him, and he knew why he had paused. It was a sort of salutation from one poster to another!
‘That’s it!’ he murmured. ‘Me and Medway!’
The sailor and the statesman, bound together by an invisible thread, and unconsciously drawing closer and closer each moment!
And then another thought flashed into the humbler man’s head, emphasising the association in a more whimsical way.
‘Big Ben and Little Ben! Well, I’ll be blowed!’
A policeman eyed him. Ben was born to be eyed. He could never stand long in a London street without becoming what he’d heard was called a cynosher. He jumped on another bus with ‘Mansion House’ written upon it.
As he sank into his seat, two passengers in front of him were conversing eagerly. The backs of their heads bobbed and wagged as though they were on wires.
‘Somewhere near Waterloo, so I’ve heard,’ said one.
‘That’s right,’ nodded the other. ‘I saw the crowd as I went by.’
‘Tork abart famous!’ groaned Ben. ‘I’m orl hover Lunnon!’
Which being the case, what was the use of getting out of the bus again? He’d only bump into himself somewhere else! Nevertheless he kept a sharp eye on the backs of the two heads, and was ready for a fresh bunk the moment they ceased to be backs and became fronts.
‘What, were you there?’ exclaimed the first head. And added, when the second head nodded, ‘Did you see him?’
‘Only a glimpse,’ replied the second.
‘Fare, please,’ said the conductor.
‘What was he like?’
‘Smallish chap—’
‘Fare, please!’ repeated the conductor.
‘Eh?’ muttered Ben. It was his fare the conductor was requesting. ‘Oh! I’m jest gettin’ out.’
‘Just getting out?’ frowned the conductor. ‘Why, you’ve only just got in!’
‘So I ’ave,’ murmured Ben. ‘I was thinkin’ o’ the last bus.’
The second head was saying,
‘No, I don’t think he had a moustache.’
‘Beard, then?’ exclaimed the first head. ‘I’d like his description. What about a beard?’
The conductor began to grow impatient.
‘Where to?’ he demanded.
While Ben had trouble with his throat, the second head went on,
‘Well, he was a bit grubby about the lower portion of his face. Yes, he could certainly have done with a shave.’
The conductor regarded Ben’s chin.
‘How about his eyes?’
Now the conductor regarded Ben’s eyes. Ben closed them and said,
‘’Ammersmith.’
‘Hammersmith? We don’t go to Hammersmith!’ retorted the conductor, sharply
.
And before he could say any more, Ben replied, ‘Oh, doncher?’ rose rapidly, and jumped out.
He walked to the Mansion House. Waterloo would have been quicker, but he was giving Waterloo a wide, wide berth.
He preferred streets to conveyances. In conveyances you were packed too close, like. At the Mansion House station, however, he had to risk another conveyance, and he took his seat in the Southfields train wondering which of his fellow-passengers would start talking about him this time. For a change, none of them did. Of the four in his immediate vicinity, one was asleep, another was doing a crossword puzzle, while the third and the fourth were discussing the best way to make an omelette. He reached Southfields without any further shocks.
But at Southfields, after alighting, he received a bad one. Just as the train was beginning to move on again the man who was doing crosswords looked up from his paper, having caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye.
‘Hey, don’t you want this?’ he cried.
‘Lummy!’ gasped Ben.
And watched, with a sick feeling, his cap come sailing out of the window. Another second and it would have been lost for ever!
He made a grab at it, but a young porter was before him.
‘Now that’ll just suit me nice!’ grinned the porter, and removing his own cap he stuck Ben’s on his head.
‘’Ere! Give it hover!’ muttered Ben, not in a mood for play.
‘Let’s see your name inside it first!’ replied the porter, irritatingly. ‘I want to know if it’s Rockefeller or Ivor Novello!’
He took the cap off and, turning it over, began examining the lining.
‘Oi!’ protested Ben.
‘Hallo! Shop in Southampton—’ began the porter.
But the next moment the cap was snatched from him, and the owner was beating a rapid and indignant retreat.
‘Well, I’m blowed!’ exclaimed the porter. And, all at once, repeated ‘Southampton’ and whistled.
Before the porter whistled, however, Ben was outside the station, eagerly scanning faces.
He scanned in vain. The face he desired to see was not there. Depression seized him. He had expected this moment to mark the end of his troubles, but now responsibility descended upon him with all its arduous demands upon his brain. Something had gone wrong somewhere, and it was up to him to find out what it was.
Ben Sees It Through Page 15