by Molly Thynne
“Hum. Make up the fire and give me the Times. The Times, you fool, not the Mail.”
The old man literally snatched the paper from him and ran his eye down the page. It was his boast that he could still read without spectacles.
“I thought so,” he muttered. “Switch on the wireless and bring me the earphones.”
He heaved himself on to his feet, limped back to his big armchair by the fire, and settled himself comfortably.
Johnson turned on the valves of the wireless and brought the earphones across the room. Sir Adam adjusted them carefully and sat listening, his face, for the first time, exhibiting an expression of comparative tranquillity.
Johnson bent once more over the fire, then straightened himself and stood waiting.
With a look of intense annoyance, Sir Adam removed the earphones.
“What is it?” he snapped.
“Any letters for post, Sir Adam?” asked the man imperturbably.
Sir Adam glanced uncertainly at the bureau on which lay his half-finished letter. For a second he hesitated, then the faint sound of music came from the earphones he had dropped across the arm of his chair. He readjusted them hastily over his ears.
“No,” he mumbled. “Finish it later. And see that you leave the kitchen door shut when you go out.”
Johnson departed, and stretching out his feet to the warm blaze of the fire, Sir Adam gave himself up to the enjoyment of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony.
A few minutes later a far more human Johnson, clad in a heavy overcoat, and unlighted cigarette between his lips and exasperation plainly written on his face, emerged from his bedroom. He went into the kitchen, picked up a beer jug from the dresser, and came out again, shutting the door audibly behind him. Then he made his way out of the flat, pausing for a moment on the landing to light his cigarette, and ran down the stone staircase and out into the dank November night.
As he passed through the main door of Romney Chambers the clock of the church that stood at the end of the street chimed the half-hour. Six-thirty. He glanced involuntarily up at the windows of the flat he had just left. It was in darkness save for a knife-edge of light where the heavy curtains in the study did not quite meet. For a moment he pictured the old man sitting there, alone with his music, in the otherwise empty flat, and, for the first time since he had entered Sir Adam’s service three years before, felt an inclination to turn back and forgo the pleasantest half-hour of his working day. The impulse passed, and he hurried on in the direction of “The Nag’s Head,” stopping for a moment to buy an evening paper at the little shop at the corner of the road.
Mr. Ling, the proprietor, glanced up with a friendly nod, as he picked up his paper and threw a penny on the counter.
“Easy to see where he’s goin’ to,” he remarked facetiously to his only other customer, a labouring man who, both elbows on the counter, was spelling out the winners in the stop-press news with the aid of a grimy forefinger.
The man grinned.
“I’ll lay ’e’ll ’ave a couple afore gettin’ ’is little jug filled,” he said; “and then a pint with ’is supper after ’e gets ’ome. Some people don’t ’alf ’ave luck. You wait till you’ve got a wife and ’alf a dozen kids, my son!”
Johnson’s mouth twitched, then closed stubbornly, as if he had had a mind to answer and had then thought better of it.
With a nod to the proprietor he left the shop, and less than ten minutes later was deep in the discussion of that most absorbing and unfruitful of all topics, racing, with the barman of “The Nag’s Head.”
He had hardly disappeared round the corner when a woman who had been standing in the doorway of a block of flats opposite to that which he had just left, emerged on to the pavement. Carefully avoiding the circle of light thrown by the street lamp, she stood in the shadow, scanning the windows of the flats above that of Sir Adam Braid. They were both in darkness, and with a little sigh of exasperation she turned to re-enter the friendly shelter of the doorway. As she did so, her attention was caught by the movements of a man, who, like herself, had been lurking in the shadows between the lamps. She had noticed him more than once during her vigil, and now she watched him, with the casual interest generated by boredom, as he slipped furtively across the road and into the doorway of Romney Chambers. Driven out of her shelter by the return of the porter in whose doorway she had been standing, she moved farther up the street, still idly watching Romney Chambers, in the upper windows of which she seemed to take so keen an interest. Thus it was that though she saw a second man enter the flats and actually noted the fact that the two men had gone in within five minutes of each other, she was not standing close enough to distinguish either their faces or the clothes they were wearing. Neither could she tell which of the two men it was that came out some two minutes later and almost ran down the street and round the corner. After that nearly ten minutes elapsed before the other man appeared, and mechanically her brain registered the fact that his gait was less hurried, suggesting that of a man who has been about a more legitimate business.
It was owing partly, no doubt, to the fact that she was tired and bored with waiting and that she welcomed any incident, no matter how puerile, which might serve to divert her attention, that the movements of these shadowy figures remained so clearly in her mind. Also her own desire to remain unobserved would render her specially sensitive to anything furtive in the actions of others. The fact remains that, later, she was able to give a fairly accurate account of the times at which these people, whose appearance she could not even describe, had gone in and out of Romney Chambers between the hours of six-thirty and seven-five. The entrance of one, the third and last, she was able to place to a minute, for the church clock had just struck seven when she saw the figure of a woman—a girl, judging by the lithe freedom with which she moved—turn the corner, pass down the street, and enter Romney Chambers.
From then onwards, any one who went into the building did so without her knowledge. For, tired of waiting, she strolled to the end of the street, still taking pains not to linger within the radius of the light of the street lamps.
It was close on half-past seven when one of the two people for whom she had been waiting swung round the corner and passed her, walking so quickly that she almost failed to recognize him.
With a low cry that brought him to a standstill she hurried up to him and gripped his arm.
Published by Dean Street Press 2016
Copyright © 1929 Molly Thynne
Introduction Copyright © 2016 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
This ebook is published by licence, issued under the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme.
First published in 1929 by Hutchinson
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 911413 54 7
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk