by Zenith Brown
The livid eyes peered secretly down. A sharply drawn breath, again the knife blade of fear. The hands seized the suffocating afghan, thrust it back in its place as the silent feet slipped back through the darkened room and out into the empty hall. The door closed quietly. No one would come. No one ever came. There would be no one until Pegott brought the breakfast tray in the morning—later than to any other room, because the little grey man did not matter. He would stay there, silent and motionless, until it was safe to return. In the morning they would find him down there in the street.
“I never thought he’d do himself harm.” Then Miss Grimstead could weep and explain he really had looked ever so seedy lately. It was her constant explanation for tenants who vacated their flats, whether they married, emigrated to South Africa, or died—it made no difference. They had looked very seedy. Miss Grimstead always recalled it vividly.
4
AS DAN MCGRATH’S taxi skidded into Godolphin Square the driver stopped talking long enough to sound his horn viciously at a man who had slipped out of the shadowy darkness almost under the wheels.
“Number Four you said, sir?” He drew up at the curb and went round to open the door. “And as I was telling the wife just this morning, you voted for the beggars, I didn’t.”
He was a voluble man with politico-domestic grievances; Dan McGrath was an American newly arrived and interested. “—now in America, sir, it’s my understanding . . .”
Dan McGrath listened, the two of them smoking his cigarettes, standing together on the curb in front of Number 4 Godolphin Square, four storeys beneath the stone coping overhead. When he finally came in, Mason the night porter opened the iron grille into the lift, and dropped both arms to his sides in impotent frustration as Miss Myrtle Grimstead came trippingly toward them.
“Oh, Mr. McGrath, I can’t think what you’ll say.” Miss Grimstead was at her most ingratiating worst. “I was so sure one of my people was going on holiday. He’s looked so very seedy lately I’d quite got it into my head he’d be off to the sea for a bit of rest and fresh air.” Her bright toothy smile remained bright, but there was a calculating flicker in her eye that Dan McGrath could hardly miss. “Of course, there may be some mistake. He tells me he’s a friend of yours . . .”
“Who—” Dan McGrath caught himself quickly. “Oh, the little—Mr. Pinkerton. Sure, he’s my pal. Known him for years.” He smiled at Miss Grimstead with easy assurance. In the face of her disparaging skepticism he would have claimed Mr. Pinkerton as brother in arms or in nature. “If it’s his room you were going to give me, skip it. Any place suits me so long as it’s got a bunk in it.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. McGrath.” Miss Grimstead covered her disappointment with a shake of her bright curls. “That is kind of you. You mustn’t think I was trying to inconvenience dear Mr. Pinkerton. He’s such a sweet old thing, so shy and so anxious never to make any trouble. Well, good night, Mr. McGrath. We do like people to be as comfortable as possible, especially the Americans. Poor England . . .”
“Don’t worry about me, Miss Grimstead. Good night.”
The porter stood aside for him to come into the lift.
“Not tryin’ to inconvenience ’im, not ’er she ain’t. Not always tryin’ to get ’im out because ’e’s a poor connection of the owner and likely to peach on ’er, she ain’t, poor little blighter.”
He stopped the car. “ ’Ere you are, sir.”
It was a small airless cupboard at the end of the transverse hall opposite Mr. Pinkerton, ventilated by a pull-up oblong of glass set in the sloping roof. It had a bed and washstand with crockery basin and tall blue hot water jug, a chair, and a small table with a lamp on it, attached by a long cord to the single drop light from the ceiling. From Mr. Pinkerton’s room probably, Dan McGrath thought with a smile.
“It ain’t much,” Mason said. “Mr. Pinkerton’s opposite, next the bath and w. c. You share it with ’im—’im and the chef when ’e sleeps in. Chef’s got the best room. Got to mind ’im, sir.” He touched his temple significantly. “She’d not ask ’im to move out, not ’er, and ’im not sleeping in more than ’alf the time. Kid gloves is what she ’andles ’im with, ’im and the valet.”
Dan glanced along the hall at Mr. Pinkerton’s closed door. “This suits me dandy,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’ve made a lot of trouble.” He took a pound note out of his pocket and handed it to Mason. “Good night.”
He closed the door, tossed his hat and raincoat on the chair and went over to feel the bed. It was okay. For a moment he had an impulse to drop into it and sleep through the rest of his first night in London. There was no reason why he shouldn’t. Twenty-four hours from home in one sense, a lifetime in another, he had reached the first step to his goal more quickly by far than he had hoped when he stepped onto the plane, infinitely more quickly than he had despairingly thought as he stood in front of the ruined house that was the only tangible thread he had to lead him back to her. He hadn’t even known her name then, much less how to go about finding her, if she was still alive. Standing in front of the blasted remains of the house she’d lived in, the sudden agony of emptiness that hit him squarely in the pit of the stomach had been almost intolerable. Then the little guy had showed up. Showed up, and almost got kicked out of his room for his pains.
Dan McGrath glanced at his watch. It was almost nine o’clock—not too late, he guessed, to drop in on an old friend. He reached into his pocket to get a cigarette and pulled out a sheet of paper. It was a telegram from his father, delivered to him when the plane landed. He opened it and read it again.
LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP. BUT IF YOU DECIDE TO LEAP ALL OUR BEST WISHES AND LOVE. DAD.
Something smarted sharply along his upper eyelids for an instant. He knew they’d hoped he’d marry the girl next door, and he would have, probably, if it hadn’t been for that night six years ago on the steps of the Underground. It was a long time for an image to hold, the image of a face white and tense at first, in the dreary darkness, crowded with people coming home from work, reeking with antiseptics and the heavy acrid odor of cordite and the pungent smell of human fear. With his arm around her he could feel the bursting beat of her heart, pounding through her blue coat under his hand—just a kid, scared out of her wits. It was a long time to hold the image of the dismayed widening of her blue-black eyes as she realized she was clinging to him and that he had his arm around her, and her sudden crystal peal of laughter when she let go and he did not. He remembered her voice and the warmth of her slight body as they sat close together until the all-clear sounded, the curly tendrils of her clean-smelling hair tickling his flushed cheek. And stumbling home with her after it was all over, to Number 22 Godolphin Square.
It was a long time to hold the image of love that was in his heart that night. There had been times when he thought he had lost it, and times when he no longer believed in its validity as anything but an adolescent dream. It was his twentieth brithday, that night, and he’d come to London from camp to celebrate, and found himself alone and homesick, homesick as hell. It was easy to say that was the reason he thought he’d fallen in love. And he could be all wet, of course. Six years was a long-time period. It was cockeyed to remember a kid’s conversation for six years. About her father, for instance. Her father had gone away, but some day he’d come back. She didn’t remember him, or wasn’t sure; she might only remember her mother telling her about him. But she was sure he’d come back to them—or, if he didn’t, she would go and find him when the war was over. And that night, he was going with her. They were going to search the world together.
It was all crazy. If her father had been gone that long without any word, he was dead, or had changed his name and disappeared. But at the time it had seemed a high and noble quest. It was crazy, but he remembered it, practically every word of it. And here he was back in Godolphin Square—twenty-six years old, and she . . . He didn’t know. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, that night, sixteen maybe. Here they both were, af
ter six years. She was in the very house, down below, somewhere, in the dreary effluvia of boiled cabbage and brass polish and fresh paint that they hadn’t bothered to touch up the box room with. Or the little man had said she was.
Thinking of Mr. Pinkerton again, Dan McGrath went over to the door. There was someone in the hall. He had not heard the lift come up. It was probably the chef, or Mr. Pinkerton, going to the w. c. He opened the door, glanced out and closed it quickly.
It was a woman, coming out of Mr. Pinkerton’s room—or going into it, he couldn’t tell—dressed in something that looked very much like a wrapper and a nightgown, with a shawl about her shoulders. It was probably Mrs. Pinkerton. Nobody had mentioned a Mrs. Pinkerton, but if she was as pallid and self-effacing as Mr. Pinkerton, they’d probably not have bothered. He thought back suddenly. Miss Grimstead had only mentioned one of her people, not two, as going on holiday. He opened the door again. Whoever it was, he had scared her off. She was disappearing down the stairs, obviously frightened, clutching her shawl about her throat.
He shook his head, wondering a little, started to close his door again, and stopped. Mr. Pinkerton’s door, he saw now, was ajar, but no light shone out. It seemed a little strange. He hesitated, left his own door as it was and went along the hall.
“Mr. Pinkerton?”
He put his head into the room and spoke again. Mr. Pinkerton was not there. He glanced back at the staircase, pushed the door farther open to let in the light from the hall, and crossed the room to the rickety lamp on the table. The bulb was cold as he felt for the switch. He pressed it on and looked about him at a room nearly as bare as his own. A couple of Dresden china shepherdesses and a few photographs on the mantel were the only personal property he could see, together with a red-green woolen throw on the sofa in front of the open French windows. He looked beyond the sofa, through the windows, out onto the balcony ledge, and took two quick strides across the room. The little man was lying inert, crumpled up, his head against the lead drainpipe.
Dan McGrath said, “Good God!” He bent down quickly, picked Mr. Pinkerton up, carried him into the room and laid him on the day bed. He loosened the purple string tie and ripped open the narrow celluloid collar, opened the band of the shoddy grey trousers and looked about. There was no telephone and no bell, no bottle of whisky, no water. He dashed out into the hall, jabbed the call button on the side of the lift half a dozen times and dashed back. The little man’s eyes were open. He was staring blindly, his face suffused, trying to struggle upright.
“Take it easy, Mr. Pinkerton.”
“She mustn’t go,” Mr. Pinkerton whispered. He clutched at Dan’s sleeve. “Mustn’t go. Mustn’t go to Paris.”
“Okay, okay. Everything’s under control. Just take it easy. It’s me—Dan McGrath.”
As if the word had got through into his dazed semi-conscious mind, the little man sank down on the couch.
“Well get a doctor right away.”
He strode out into the hall, punched the bell violently again and came back. The little man looked pathetically different, lying there, without his brown derby hat. There was something else, Dan thought—his spectacles. The lozenge-shaped steel-rimmed job that made him look like a Dickensian gnome. Without them and the hat he looked indecently nude. Furthermore, he probably couldn’t see. Dan went over to the balcony, hoping the spectacles weren’t broken in his fall, and glanced along the narrow ledge. The brown derby had rolled along nearly to the drain. He retrieved it and looked about for the spectacles. They were nowhere in sight. He glanced down into the street—they could easily have gone over—and went back into the room.
The little man was shivering, his whole meagre frame trembling.
Shock. You keep them warm and get a doctor. He could hear the lift coming up now. You get them warm quick. He picked up the afghan folded over the arm of the sofa, opened it up, threw it over Mr. Pinkerton, and stopped abruptly, staring. A curved metal bow was sticking up through the knitted material. He lifted it quickly and turned it over. Hanging from the coverlet on the inside, the bows caught in the soft woolen stitches, were Mr. Pinkerton’s spectacles.
Dan McGrath stared down at them. Wait a minute, McGrath. Wait just one minute.
He heard the lift stop and the door clang open, and stood there still staring down at the knitted comforter and the spectacles still hanging to it. He glanced out into the hall as it flashed into his mind that it might be a good idea to have a witness, if this meant what he thought it did. It was not Mason there, it was Miss Myrtle Grimstead; and prompted by a quick impulse he put the afghan back, flattened the bows and bunched the soft material together.
“Oh, Mr. McGrath—is there something?” Miss Grimstead had seen him through the open door and came hurrying along the hall. “Mason had to go out for a taxi. One of my people is going to Paris—”
She came to an abrupt halt in the doorway. “There! I knew it! I told him so not two hours ago. I said, Mr. Pinkerton, you are—”
“I know,” Dan said. “But let’s get a doctor, shall we? Quick?”
Miss Grimstead’s triumph transformed itself instantly into brisk and cheerful efficiency. “What a pity,” she said. “We’ll get him to hospital immediately. He wants rest and care.”
“He wants a doctor,” Dan said. “My friend Mr. Pinkerton wants a doctor. Right away. And I want the police, Miss Grimstead. I’ll settle for a doctor first.”
Miss Grimstead, bending down to take the faded cloth cover off Mr. Pinkerton’s sagging couch, flashed rigidly erect. “The police? Mr. McGrath!” Her blue eyes were bulging, her pink powdered cheeks mottled. “What do you mean? Are you mad?”
“I’m pretty mad, Miss Grimstead. I’m going to be a whole lot madder if there isn’t a doctor here in about five minutes.”
Miss Grimstead’s eyes were sharp points of calculation.
“Very well,” she said stiffly. “I’ll call a doctor. I’d like to say first you’re making a great mistake. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but this is England. Not America. Mr. Pinkerton wants care. He’s got neither family nor friends here—”
“Oh, yes.” Dan gave her a frosty smile. “You’re forgetting me. And remember that doctor we were talking about? Isn’t there a doctor in the house?”
Miss Grimstead’s face was still more mottled. “It happens there is. Not professionally. He’s a surgeon, here making a social call. However, I’ll ask him if he cares to step up and see Mr. Pinkerton. Mr. Sidney Copeland is a very busy man . . .”
He listened to her departing feet pepper the worn hall carpet. Miss Grimstead was very angry. He looked thoughtfully down at the bunched bit of knitted wool concealing the lozenge-shaped spectacles. If they had been on the outside of the thing, it was conceivable that they could have fallen off as the little guy staggered out into the fresh air. But they were folded up on the inside.
He looked at the grey pinched face. Mr. Pinkerton’s eyes were closed. There was pain in the haggard lines about his nose and in the blind naked look about his eyes. Dan bent over him, looking more closely. There was a dark scratch on the left side of his nose. He took out his handkerchief and touched it carefully. The scratch was fresh. He had just put his hand out to touch what looked like a good-sized lump on the side of Mr. Pinkerton’s head when he started at the sound of a voice behind him.
“What seems to be the trouble here?”
It was not the voice that was startling but the approach, which had been silent and very prompt, and must have been by foot up the stairs; the lift had not come up. He looked around. Mr. Sidney Copeland was a precise middle-aged man, clean and antiseptic-looking, pleasant on the whole, or looking as if he might be under other circumstances. He seemed tired, but so did almost everyone else Dan had seen. He had good brown eyes and a solid chin and firm mouth, sandy hair greying, slightly stooped shoulders, and wore a neatly brushed threadbare black suit. He glanced at Mr. Pinkerton on the couch, and back. Of the two, he seemed more intently interested in Dan
McGrath.
“I found him out on the balcony. It looks to me like somebody’s conked him on the bean.”
Mr. Copeland put his fingers on Mr. Pinkerton’s wrist, passed his hand delicately over the swollen area at the side of his head, lifted up his eyelids and let them close.
“Should he go to the hospital?”
Copeland spoke with composed deliberateness. “Possibly. He seems to have got rather a nasty crack. It’s best to leave him here till he regains consciousness. His pulse is retarded, but it’s reasonably strong.”
Mr. Copeland, Dan thought, was at least reasonably casual.
“You found him out on the balcony?”
“Right.”
“And—you think somebody had—er, conked him on the bean. If I understand you, I presume you know what you’re saying? Isn’t it conceivable he may have fallen and struck his head?”
All right, McGrath. Why don’t you show him the spectacles folded up inside the wool comforter and see what he says to that? Dan wondered. It was the normal thing to do. But as the surgeon moved over to look out onto the ledge, the rigid lines of his back were even more skeptical, and to Dan even more positively offensive, than the brief smile that had been on his lips.
When he turned back from the window he regarded Dan with open amusement.
“Isn’t it simpler to assume he walked up the stairs, and feeling a bit faint went directly out for a breath of air? Had a touch of vertigo, stumbled and struck his head on the pipe? Miss Grimstead tells me he’s not been particularly fit recently.”
“Seedy, I believe,” Dan said.
Copeland glanced at him sharply. “Precisely. I believe in your country, Mr.—McGrath, is it?—it’s fairly common to find people conked on the bean, as you put it. You’re in England now, Mr. McGrath. However, I was already aware you’re a young man who enjoys making mysteries without regard to the feelings of the people they presumably affect.”