When they had emptied their glasses he asked them if they would like another, but they both shook their heads, so he said cheerfully:
‘Well, if you’re satisfied about me now, I must be getting along.’
‘Yes. Everything’s O.K., sir, and many thanks for the drinks,’ replied the spokesman. Both now appeared in an excellent humour.
At the front door Hemmingway hoped he would be able to rid himself of them; but it wasn’t going to be quite as easy as all that. With their long, unhurried strides they accompanied him back to the garage and, as he put his hand on the door to open it, a sudden, appalling thought struck him. What was going to happen if there was no car inside after all?
Taking a deep breath, he pulled the door open. To his immense relief a big Rolls and a Ford were inside; but both of them were chocked up and all their metal work was protected by sacking.
The senior constable gave Hemmingway a suspicious glance. ‘You don’t seem to have used either of your cars much lately, do you, sir?’
‘No.’ Hemmingway plunged in boldly again. ‘We keep half a dozen, and the ones in regular use have already gone to the country. They’ve landed me with the job of getting one of these going. I only hope to God they’ve left me some petrol.’
The suspicions of the police were apparently allayed once more and, to Hemmingway’s inward amusement, the two constables set to with a will helping him to prepare the car he was about to steal for his journey.
On the old principle that one might just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, he had selected Mr. Guggenbaum’s Rolls rather than the Ford. In twenty minutes they had the big car out in the mews, unwrapped from its sacking and with its tyres pumped up. To Hemmingway’s relief, he had discovered some spare tins of petrol and oil at the back of the garage. They filled the tanks, he got into the driver’s seat and prepared to depart. Just as he was about to do so a last bright idea occurred to him.
‘Can either of you chaps drive?’ he asked.
‘I can,’ volunteered the younger constable ‘Why, sir?’
‘Well, I can’t lock the garage up again and it’s a pity to leave the Ford there at a time like this when it might come in useful to somebody. It would probably be stolen if I did, anyhow; so I suggest that you drive it round to the nearest A.R.P. authorities and hand it over to them with Sir Samuel Curry’s compliments.’
‘That’s a very good idea,’ agreed the senior policeman, and, with a wave of his hand, Hemmingway drove away in the luxurious Guggenbaum Rolls.
His journey to the East End was uneventful. After he had passed through the City he found that there were more people about than in the West End. Most of the women and children had been evacuated, but quite a number of the male population, having no place in the country to go to, had had perforce to remain in London. A few food shops were open, but no other business was in progress, and here and there groups of men were standing talking on the street-corners.
According to plan, he drove all-out down the Commercial Road, with his hooter screaming, to prevent a possible hold-up. Angry looks were cast at him here and there from the groups on the pavements as he whizzed by; and he was loudly booed by a crowd outside the Catholic Church. At the crossing by Lime-house Town Hall a policeman waved to him to halt, but he ignored the signal, swerved violently and raced on. As there was little traffic, and no children were playing in the gutters, he reached the ‘Main Brace’ without accident.
Pulling up, he saw half a dozen tough-looking men in caps and scarves standing outside on the pavement. They immediately began to eye the car with an interest that Hemmingway found disturbing. With the memory of the hold-up he had seen earlier that morning fresh in his mind, it seemed to him quite on the cards that, if he left the car to go into the pub and rouse Lavina, and if any of them were capable of driving, they might quite well steal it.
Looking up at the window of the room on the first floor in which Lavina was presumably still sleeping, he plied his klaxon for all he was worth in the hope of rousing her, but, as it was only 8.30 and she had been in bed under three hours, he felt certain that she must still be sunk in exhausted slumber.
Next door to the ‘Main Brace’ there was a small greengrocer’s which still had a little stock for sale, and, propped up on the pavement, were some baskets of potatoes. Taking a half-crown out of his pocket, Hemmingway slipped out of the driver’s seat, ran across the pavement, threw the half-crown towards an astonished looking young Jewess who was seated inside the shop, and grabbed up two handfuls of the potatoes.
The men on the pavement had now stopped talking and were watching his unusual procedure with amazement. Before any of them had moved he was back beside the car. Raising his arm, he hurled one of the potatoes straight through Lavina’s window.
The crash of glass roused the men into sudden activity. As the pieces fell tinkling on the pavement one little runt of a man stepped forward, crying: ‘Oi! Wot’s the gime?’
Hemmingway smiled disarmingly. ‘The woman, the dog and the walnut tree, the more you beat ‘em, the better they be,’ he quoted cryptically.
‘He’s loopy!’ said a brawny-looking fellow in a checked cap.
‘No, I’m not,’ Hemmingway grinned, ‘but my girl’s asleep up in that bedroom and I wanted to wake her. Nice little surprise for her. Treat ‘em rough, and they think more of you.’
‘ ’E is loopy!’ declared the man in the checked cap.
‘Bin seein’ too many films, that’s wot it is,’ remarked another. ‘ ’E thinks ‘e’s Errol Flynn or somethink.’
At that moment Lavina, blear-eyed and dishevelled, thrust her golden head out of the window. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ she murmured, still half asleep. ‘What a shock you gave me!’
Hemmingway looked up. ‘Never mind that. Get your clothes on and come down at once.’
The little man who had first spoken turned to leer at Hemmingway. ‘Nice bit o’ skirt you’ve got there, mister.’
‘Oh, she’s all right,’ Hemmingway consented casually.
‘Nice car, too,’ the little man went on, with a wink at his friends.
‘Yes. I wish it were mine.’
‘Ain’t it, then?’
‘No, I’ve borrowed it.’
‘Fancy, now!’ The tough looked round with a smirk. ‘Queer, ain’t it? Wot would you say if I told you me and my pals had been thinkin’ of borrering it ourselves?’
‘I should think it was your unlucky day,’ said Hemmingway genially.
‘Oh, you would, would yer?’ The little man ducked suddenly and came charging at Hemmingway to butt him in the stomach.
But Hemmingway was ready for the attack. During the whole of the conversation he had been leaning against the car with his right hand behind him gripping the end of his loaded crop which lay on the driver’s seat. He side-stepped neatly and, bringing the crop round, landed the little man a swift crack over his bullet head with it.
As the leader of the roughs went sprawling in the gutter his friends charged in. Hemmingway dodged round the back of the car. With loud shouts three of his antagonists followed. The other two came round the front of the bonnet, so that he was caught between two fires.
The big man in the check cap was one of the two who had come round by the front. As he appeared to be the most formidable of the troop Hemmingway leapt straight at him, bashing the leaded head of the crop into his ugly face.
The man staggered, screamed and fell, but his companion caught Hemmingway off his balance with a blow on the side of the ear, which sent him reeling. Next second the three in his rear rushed at him and he had fallen fighting to the roadway with the whole pack on top of him.
He kneed one in the belly and struck another in the eye, causing him to shriek with pain. Then, with a desperate wriggle, he freed himself, staggered to his feet and dashed back to the pavement. But they were on him again before he had time to get his back to the wall. One of them kicked him in the stomach, another hit him in the mouth and he fell once more.
Meanwhile, the little man had picked himself up, climbed into the driver’s seat of the Rolls and got the engine going.
‘Come on, boys!’ he yelled. ‘Finish ‘im off an’ jump in before the cops turn up!’
Those were the last words he lived to utter. There was a sharp report, his head jerked up, an ugly splodge of red appeared just below his temple; without a moan he sagged and collapsed in a silent heap.
The men who were on top of Hemmingway sprang up in panic. Gasping from the pain in his stomach he rolled over. Framed in the side-entrance of the public-house he glimpsed Lavina. Her face was white as a sheet, but his automatic was clenched firmly in her hand and a trail of blue smoke still drifted from its barrel.
The roughs were staring at her. It takes a brave man to stand his ground when threatened with a loaded automatic; particularly when the person behind it has already demonstrated that he is prepared to kill with it. When that person is a woman, to take such a risk is no longer bravery, but madness. Hemmingway’s attackers turned and fled; the two remaining thugs picked themselves up out of the gutter and took to their heels with equal swiftness. In less than a minute after the shot had been fired Hemmingway was standing on the pavement alone, with Lavina.
‘God!’ he panted, looking again at the tumbled figure on the driver’s seat of the car. ‘You’ve killed him!’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lavina in a small voice. She seemed a little stunned but not particularly upset. ‘You know, it all happened so suddenly. I’d only just got my dress on when I heard the shouting and when I looked out of the window I saw them all attacking you. I simply grabbed up the gun, rushed downstairs and shot him. Funny, wasn’t it?’
The fact that she had killed a man did not strike Hemmingway as at all funny. The little rat was probably no better than he should have been but, all the same, he was a human being and if Lavina was caught all sorts of unpleasant complications might ensue. The thugs had stopped farther down the street and were shouting. The Jewish girl had rushed out of the greengrocer’s shop. Other people were running up the street from both directions to see what had happened. The fat landlord appeared in the doorway of the pub and after one look at the dead man in the driver’s seat of the Rolls, began to blow shrilly upon a police whistle.
Lavina still held the gun and Hemmingway yelled to her:
‘Don’t let him grab you but throw him his money for the bedroom!’ Then, turning to the car, he opened its door and dragged the dead body out on to the pavement.
Lavina held out one of the pound-notes that Hemmingway had left with her, but the landlord stopped blowing on his whistle to exclaim: ‘I wouldn’t soil me ‘ands with it.’
It was no time to argue. Hemmingway was now in the driver’s seat. As he called to her, she slipped round to the far side of the car and jumped in beside him. He let in the clutch and the big Rolls slid forward.
The roughs and a lot of other people were now barring their passage a hundred yards along the street, but Hemmingway sent the car charging straight at them. One flung a stone which starred the window, but when they saw that he was prepared to run them down they leapt aside and scattered. A moment later their shouted curses were fading in the distance.
‘By Jove! That was a nasty business,’ Hemmingway muttered.
‘Horrible!’ she agreed. ‘Of course, I didn’t really mean to do it.’
‘You knew my gun was loaded.’
‘Yes. But, except for the other night at the Dorchester, I don’t think I’ve ever seen men fighting in earnest before. In a way that I can’t quite explain, I felt as though I was back on a film set and we were all putting on an act. I was quite surprised myself when I saw that I’d killed him. I wonder if you can understand that?’
‘I think so,’ Hemmingway said slowly. ‘My hurling that potato through your window had only just woken you from a deep sleep. I suppose you must have felt that the whole thing was a sort of nightmare.’
‘In a way I did. But if I’d been fully conscious I believe I’d have shot him just the same.’
‘What?’ Hemmingway turned to stare at her for a second.
She nodded, and went on with that inexorable feminine realism which takes no count of ethics: ‘You see, it was us or them, wasn’t it? You were on the ground and it looked to me as though they were going to murder you, but I was scared that I might shoot you if I fired in that direction. The little fellow had started up the car and, if he had got away with it, I knew we’d both have been sunk. It just came to me in a flash that if I shot him that would scare the others out of their wits; so I aimed at his head and pulled the trigger.’
Hemmingway was quite staggered by the logic of her simple and effective reasoning. He knew there must be a catch in it somewhere but he couldn’t argue about it, and she was probably right in believing that she’d saved his life; or at least saved him from serious injury. His laugh was a little uncertain as he said:
‘Well, it was darned good shooting, anyhow.’
‘Oh, no,’ she demurred modestly. ‘I was only about six feet from him; the poor little wretch didn’t stand a chance.’
Hemmingway had turned south, into the Blackwall Tunnel, and was now running through it under the Thames. He was thinking what a mighty good job it was that there had been no police about; otherwise Lavina would certainly have been arrested for manslaughter in the first degree—and they were by no means out of the wood yet.
Fortunately, as it affected their situation at the moment, no private calls had been taken by the London telephone exchanges for the last twenty-four hours so that neither the landlord nor one of his neighbours could ring up the police, but the matter was certain to be reported as soon as they arrived on the scene. A description of themselves and the car would be given, and Mr. Guggenbaum’s luxurious Rolls would be a very easy car to trace. Hemmingway wished now that he had contented himself with the Ford.
The question was: would the police be too occupied with other matters to wireless their speed-cars on the south side of the river to keep a look out for the Rolls? They were certainly much too busy to bother about ordinary motoring offences, but to shoot a man dead and leave his body on the pavement was a very different business. He did not mention to Lavina his gloomy speculations about possible trouble to come. Instead, he asked her how she was feeling.
‘Pretty mouldy,’ she shrugged, ‘and I must look like the wrath of God. I lost my bag days ago in the riot at the Dorchester so there’s not a trace of make-up left on my face and I didn’t even have a chance to wash when you fetched me out of bed just now. D’you think we could pull up somewhere where I could buy a comb and some powder and a lipstick?’
‘No,’ replied Hemmingway, ‘I don’t. And it doesn’t matter much what your face looks like, anyhow. It’s how you’re feeling in yourself that I’m worried about.’
‘Then you don’t know much about women, my friend,’ Lavina said with some asperity. ‘A girl feels good or ill to exactly the extent she sees her face looking in a mirror. I caught one glimpse of mine in that lousy bedroom and I feel like Methuselah’s wife dug up out of her grave.’
‘Well, you’ll feel better when you get down to the country.’
They had left the Tunnel, crossed Greenwich Marshes and were passing the Naval College when Lavina suddenly exclaimed:
‘I say, what’s happened to Derek?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea and I don’t damned well care,’ Hemmingway said bluntly. While they sped on through South Street, across the main Blackheath road and uphill towards Lewisham, he proceeded to tell her of the extreme inconvenience which Derek had caused him.
‘You don’t like Derek, do you?’ she said quietly, giving him a quick look from beneath half-lowered eyelids.
‘I’ve no objection to him as a person but I don’t suffer fools gladly at any time and I just hate having them around when I have to handle an emergency.’
‘Poor Derek,’ she sighed. ‘And he’s so good-looking, don’t y
ou think?’
‘I’ve never even looked at him from that point of view. All I know is that he landed you in this mess and has given me one hell of a job to get you out of it.’
‘Why did you bother?’
‘Because you’re Sam’s wife, of course.’
She smiled a little acidly. ‘Thank you. That’s quite the nicest compliment I’ve had for a long time.’
‘Oh, come,’ he shrugged impatiently. ‘I didn’t mean it that way, but Sam’s been more than any father to me for the last seven years. I’d be selling pea-nuts in the streets of New York, or something of that kind, if it hadn’t been for Sam. You’re his wife, so it was just up to me to find you and get you down to Stapleton somehow.’
‘With a neat label round my neck, I suppose: “In good order and untouched”.’
‘That’s just the way I hope it’ll be,’ he agreed, refusing to rise to her baiting.
There was very little traffic about and few people; and Hemmingway was anxious to place a good distance between themselves and the East End as soon as possible; so, on entering the broad tree-lined streets of Rushey Green, he let the car rip. In Catford, as he slowed down to enter a narrower turning, sign-posted TO THE CRYSTAL PALACE, Lavina remarked thoughtfully:
‘You’re rather an extraordinary person, aren’t you, Hemmingway?’
‘No. I wouldn’t say that,’ he smiled. ‘My mental attainments are a good bit better than most people’s, if that’s what you mean; but otherwise I’ve ordinary feelings and only one head and a couple of legs like everybody else.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of you mentally or physically, but as a person. It’s so unusual to find anyone these days with such unquestioning loyalty.’
‘I don’t think so. Look at Sam. You couldn’t find a more loyal man than Sam anywhere.’ ‘He’s your hero, isn’t he?’
Sixty Days to Live Page 20