Ritchie Barnabas possessed a striking appearance at all times, but, seen at a reasonable distance in the lamp-lit dusk of a spring evening, he presented a spectacle of fantasy. He lolloped along at a great pace, each knee giving a little as it took his weight, and his great arms flapping about him like the wings of an intoxicated crow.
He pulled up with a jerk which almost overbalanced him as the Lagonda slid to a standstill at his side, and thrust an anxious face into Campion’s own.
‘The key of the office?’ he repeated after the younger man had made the request. ‘Certainly. Let you in myself. All the cousins and Miss Curley have keys. John’s out, anyway. Gone to see Alexander.’
All the time he was speaking he watched Campion’s face with the eager but diffident curiosity of a child. The other man found himself apologizing.
‘If I had anything definite I’d tell you,’ he said, ‘but at the moment I’ve only got an idea, supported by two or three dubious facts.’
Ritchie nodded humbly and his blue eyes blinked trustingly at his friend. He opened the front door of Twenty-three and hesitated.
‘Wait for you?’ he inquired hopefully.
‘I shouldn’t.’ Unconsciously Mr Campion spoke in that firm but regretful tone with which one tries to persuade a strange and friendly dog not to accompany one home.
‘All right,’ Ritchie agreed sadly. ‘Lock up behind you. Good night.’
He strode off, to return at once.
‘Only live in Red Lion Square, you know address,’ he murmured. ‘There if wanted. Any hour.’
He went off again, successfully this time, and Mr Campion set about his investigations, blessing the idiosyncrasy of the firm of Barnabas, which made them elect to have their offices cleaned out in the early morning instead of at night.
It was practically dark indoors, and the big untidy rooms looked unfamiliar in the gloom ; nor were they particularly silent. The ticking of clocks, the stir of papers in a draught and the vibrations of the nearby Underground railway combined to make the place sound alive.
Anxious not to advertise himself, Campion did not turn on the lights, but relied upon his torch. He went up to Miss Curley’s room, a neatly kept glass and panelling cubicle built round one window in the typists’ office. The strong-room key hung upon its hook on the inside of the old-fashioned desk. As soon as he handled it one of Mr Campion’s minor theories collapsed gently, to be replaced by a sense of misgiving and a wholly unwarrantable suspicion of the innate honesty of Wardie Samson.
He compared the two keys as they lay side by side on the desk in the gleam of his torch. Apart from the fact that they were both of the ordinary or old-fashioned type and were both over four inches long, it would have been difficult to find two such instruments more dissimilar. The key of the strong-room door was long and slender with three wards, but the key which Wardie Samson had made for luck was squat and heavy and had that curious unsatisfactory appearance which is peculiar to old-fashioned patent devices which have never been really successful.
Mr Campion turned it over thoughtfully and an idea occurred to him. Placing both keys in his pocket, he went slowly downstairs. It was growing darker and the well of the front hall, which had no windows to admit the gleam from the street lamps, was completely black.
Because it is natural to keep quiet in the dark, Mr Campion trod gently. At the top of the stone staircase leading down into the basement he paused to listen. His quick ears had detected something that was not one of the ordinary night noises and his interest quickened. It did not come again, however, and he went on.
On the landing, where the stair turned to face the basement wall he paused abruptly, extinguishing his torch. Below him, at the end of the passage, a thin angle of light gleamed in the darkness. The strong-room door was ajar and there was a light within, a fact which might not have been so very astonishing even out of office hours had he not carried the only official key in his pocket.
Campion advanced cautiously, feeling his way down the shallow worn stone steps. His foot had just touched the concrete floor of the passage when the angle vanished as the light in the room went out.
He stood motionless listening. The silence was uncanny and he hesitated to use the torch until he knew more of the situation. An unarmed man with a torch is an admirable target.
He was some half-dozen yards from the door and the basement was less disturbed by vibrations and draught-disturbed papers than the rest of the building, yet he could hear nothing. There was not a breath, not a rustle, not even the almost indetectable whisper of a well-oiled hinge. It was a paralysed silence, not altogether natural.
Mr Campion did not consider himself a nervous man, but neither was he sufficiently thick-skinned to let the piquancy of the situation pass by him. Someone, presumably with a guilty conscience and possibly with a gun, was aware of his presence and was waiting for him.
Campion stood quite still, holding his breath lest any sound should reveal his exact position.
The silence continued.
It came to an end at last, and in so unnerving a fashion that all his preparation was wasted. At the moment when he had decided that he must breathe deeply or burst, a yell so loud that its nature or even its origin was indeterminate sounded within a few feet of his ear and practically at the same time something apparently demoniacal struck him in the chest, knocking the torch out of his hand and most of the breath from his body.
There is to most of us a secret savage satisfaction in receiving a blow that one knows that one can repay with interest. As Campion staggered back against the wall beside the staircase his left came in contact with something that was hard enough to be a man’s head. He heard a grunt and deep breathing and, as a knee came up to catch him in the stomach, he threw his arms round it, hurling his weight forward so that he went down on top of his unknown adversary.
During the next few seconds he had little time for speculation, but he became aware that he was fighting something human, since it was clothed, and of an iron hardness and ferocity which suggested a hank of steel rope temporarily possessed by a fiend.
Campion had some experience of catch-as-catch-can fighting. During his adventurous life he had enjoyed scraps in most strata of society, so that he was aware that the Queensberry rules have many variations, but that evening in the pitch-dark basement he received an education.
The unseen creature bit, clawed, sobbed and pummelled, interspersing this unconventionality with occasional scientific blows. Campion was temporarily outclassed and was only relieved that his enemy had no weapon.
He was lying upon his face with a teetering, kicking thing trying to force him through the concrete floor when his groping hand caught an iron banister and he dragged himself up and let out with his right, the full weight of his body behind the blow.
It dawned upon him then, as he felt the wet chin go back under his fist, that he was fighting with a man in terror. The sobbing ceased and something thudded satisfactorily at his feet. Campion shook himself and waited, but there was no further sound from the ground. He moved unsteadily down the passage and, after a considerable delay, discovered the switch.
The first thing he saw as his surroundings leapt into view was a reflection of his own face in the mirror which hung just inside the open door of the little wash-room. It was not a reassuring spectacle.
He did not stop to examine the damage, but swung round just in time to see a tousled object creeping furtively towards the stairs.
Mr Campion leapt upon it, caught it by the remnants of what had once been a collar, and jerked back its head.
Shivering, whimpering, his face covered with blood and tears, cowered a star witness for the Crown, Mr Peter Rigget.
Campion gaped at him and let him go. He dropped to the floor, crawled into a sitting position on the bottom step of the staircase, and wept. Never an irritable man, Mr Campion felt himself excused in the exhibition of a little impatience. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped some of the blood off his fac
e.
‘What in the name of all that’s holy do you think you’ve been doing?’ he inquired.
Mr Rigget continued to blubber. Presently he stopped and his head fell forward on his chest. Campion bent over him, his eyebrows raised. But Mr Rigget had not fainted. He was asleep.
Campion was not surprised. He had seen the same thing happen before when great physical exertion had been allied to emotional upheaval. Since it is a natural phenomenon, occurring only in young people in exceptional health, Mr Campion felt unreasonably angry with Mr Rigget.
He left him where he was and retired to the wash-room where, with the door open, he could keep an eye upon the heavily breathing figure at the foot of the stairs.
A wrenched shoulder, a cut over the left eye, and four weals left by four finger-nails travelling from his right temple to the top of his collar seemed to be his principal injuries. His clothes were in ribbons. There was a piece missing from the sleeve of his jacket which could only have been bitten away, and there was blood all over him.
He cleaned himself up as best he could and felt better after his head had been under the cold tap for a minute or two.
He let Mr Rigget sleep for half an hour, and woke him by pouring a jug of cold water over his head. The puffed eyes opened sleepily and closed again.
Campion raised the stocky little body which was in such surprisingly good condition, and dragged it into the washroom where he repeated his treatment until Mr Rigget showed signs of returning life and intelligence.
‘All right?’ Campion inquired when once again the blue eyes looked out clearly from beneath their battered lids.
Mr Rigget said nothing. He turned his back on Mr Campion and began to wash his hands.
‘I think we’d better have a chat, don’t you, having been properly introduced?’
Still Mr Rigget was silent. His hands seemed to require a lot of attention.
‘What were you doing down here? You’ll have to explain to somebody, you know. You’d better tell me.’
Mr Rigget was trembling violently, but no sound left his lips and he went on washing his hands.
Campion leant forward, turned off the tap and threw him a towel.
‘Come on,’ he said, taking the other man by the arm. ‘We’ll go into the strong-room.’
Mr Rigget remained perfectly still. He was staring straight in front of him, his face pink where it was not discoloured and his eyes narrowed to pinpoints.
Mr Campion choked down his growing irritation.
‘Since that face of yours is going to create a scandal in the witness-box, anyway, we may as well have the whole truth,’ he said. ‘And by the way, next time you go leaping on people in the dark, don’t lose your head, or you’ll find yourself landed with a corpse which has been the victim of a murderous attack. Keeping yourself fit is all very well, but you don’t want to turn yourself into a dangerous machine every time you get the wind up.’
Mr Rigget’s trembling increased and suddenly, with an effect which was completely unnerving, he began to pray aloud. Mr Campion took him firmly by the shoulders and shook him.
‘Pull yourself together!’ he said firmly. ‘Don’t try to mesmerize yourself. You need your brain at the moment. Use it.’
Mr Rigget relaxed cautiously.
‘Where are you going to take me?’ he demanded.
‘Nowhere,’ said Campion. ‘We’re going to stay here.’
Mr Rigget shuddered and glanced at the strong-room.
‘Not in there. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything. I’m not really as bad as I look – at least I am, only I can’t help it. Oh, God, I’m so tired!’
Mr Campion sighed.
‘My car’s outside,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you back to the flat.’
Peter Rigget seemed agreeable to this suggestion, and they had started down the passage when he remembered the strong-room door and went back to it. To Mr Campion’s intense interest he thrust his hand into his tattered pocket, drew out a slender three-ward key identical with the one which Campion himself had borrowed from Miss Curley’s desk, locked the door and returned.
‘I’m tired,’ he said again.
He dropped to sleep in the back of the car, and Campion had to wake him again when they arrived at Bottle Street. Lugg, curious and openly appalled at his employer’s condition, went down obligingly to put the car away and Campion and his captive were alone.
In the bright light of Mr Campion’s comfortable room Peter Rigget made a pathetic and embarrassing spectacle. His pince-nez were gone, his normally thin sensitive nose was no longer thin, and his puffy red wrists stuck out some three inches from his torn shirt-cuffs.
Mr Campion, who knew a great deal about exhaustion, gave him some food, which he ate eagerly, swallowing great hunks of bread and lump sugar as though he realized instinctively how great was his need of them.
Gradually his unnatural lassitude disappeared, leaving him weary, but otherwise normal. Mr Campion sat opposite him.
‘Still feel like talking?’ he inquired pleasantly.
Mr Rigget looked at the ground. He was young, Campion decided, younger than he had thought ; twenty-five or six at the most.
‘I’m not a nice chap,’ he said. ‘I can’t help it. I fight against it, but my instincts are all wrong. I keep letting myself down.’
A dreadful sincerity in the statement robbed it of its humour and made it merely embarrassing. Mr Rigget appeared to be speaking the simple truth from the depths of a resigned rather than contrite heart.
‘I’ve been educated,’ he went on, ‘but it hasn’t altered me. I’m a cad. I’m dirty.’
‘Let’s get back to the strong-room, shall we?’ suggested Mr Campion gently. ‘You’ve got a key, I see.’
Mr Rigget shuddered; ‘I had it made. It was so easy. They ought not to put temptation in your way like that. I know I’m rotten, but I was tempted. Fancy leaving the key where anybody could get it! I took it home with me for a week-end in the summer and had another one made. Nobody noticed. Nobody asked any questions. Even the man at the shop believed me when I said it was the key of my own front door. I live with my people. They’re very respectable. This is going to break them. They’ve educated me and made me a better class than they are, and now I’ve disgraced them.’
He spoke sullenly and with a sort of masochistic satisfaction.
‘Been using the key pretty regularly?’ Mr Campion inquired.
The young man stirred. ‘Fairly often. Whenever I could stay behind. There wasn’t much in there. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t take anything. I only turned things over. They didn’t keep anything valuable there. It’s a sort of junk-room.’
‘What was the idea?’ Mr Campion sounded merely curious, even friendly.
‘I’m nasty,’ said Mr Rigget, raising very blue eyes bright with tears to his inquisitor’s face. ‘I just wanted to see if there was anything interesting there – something that might be useful. You don’t understand me. I’m not ordinary. I’m not decent. I haven’t got any instincts against prying into other people’s affairs. Most firms are dirty, and I wanted to find out anything I could.’
Mr Campion had an inspiration.
‘Like little evasions of income-tax?’ he suggested.
A secretive, rather repulsive smile appeared on Mr. Rigget’s swollen lips.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s the sort of thing. Only I couldn’t find any books or anything. They didn’t keep ’em there. I suppose they’re in the safe. Or more probably the important ones’d be at the bank,’ he added gloomily. ‘You’re shocked, aren’t you?’ he looked at Campion resentfully. ‘You ought to be if you’ve got the right instincts. But I’m not. I used to try to be, but I’m not. I’m dirty and mean and low and underhand, and all the things they educate you not to be.’
It was all very distressing. Mr Rigget’s excellent accent and obvious misery made him well-nigh unbearable.
‘Did you ever get the safe open?’ Mr Campion found himself
trying to put the question so casually that it would not sound offensive.
‘Oh, no, I didn’t touch the safe! That’s criminal. I haven’t done anything criminal.’
Mr. Rigget uttered the word as though it were blasphemous.
‘I’ve had the key in my hand, I admit that, but I’ve never used it.’ He writhed in his chair. ‘I’ve got a key of the safe. I may as well admit that, but I’ve never used it. I swear I’ve never used it! I daren’t do anything criminal. I want to, but I’m afraid to. That’s the sort of chap I am. I never ought to be in the sort of job I’m in. I’m only educated. I haven’t got any instincts.’
Mr Campion realized that he was confronted by a serious modern sociological problem, but he decided that it was far too large to tackle, especially at the moment. He concentrated on the keys. Producing the instrument which Wardie Samson had made ‘for luck’ he handed it to the man whom he was trying not to think of as his victim.
‘That’s it! Where did you get it? It was in my collar drawer, locked up at home. Mother didn’t know it was there, nor did Father, nor did anyone. Oh, God, you’ve been to them! They know about me. I’ll never dare to go home now. I never want to see them again.’ Peter Rigget trembled on the verge of hysterics.
‘This is my key,’ said Mr Campion firmly. ‘It’s nothing to do with your key. Pull yourself together.’
Mr Rigget wiped the tears angrily from his eyes and squared his powerful shoulders.
‘I give way,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘That’s weak. That shows I’m all wrong. I’ve been hiding myself up ever since I was a kid, but it’s coming out now. You can’t alter your instincts. You are what you are born to be, whatever you learn. If I’d been brave I’d have told what I knew on the Friday night, but I didn’t want anybody to know I’d been down there. I was glad,’ he added, his voice rising. ‘I was glad it had happened, and I knew about it. I was glad there was going to be trouble. It made me feel excited and important.’
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