Give Us This Day

by R. F Delderfield

He said, grimly, "Where's the yard manager? Where's Wesley Tybalt, Edward?"

  "I don't know, sir. George is away, and Giles too… Shall I try and find Tybalt?"

  "Yes… you do that. I'll stay as close here as I can. They seem to be containing it about here."

  "Hadn't you better get back to the street, sir?"

  "Do as I say. Find Tybalt, and if you can't bring Hugo."

  The boy dashed off, moving in a way that reminded Adam of Henrietta's claim that, of all the Swanns, only Edward favoured her father Sam. It was true. He had Sam's big head and squat, squarish frame, Sam's bustle and air of guarded alertness. In a matter of seconds he was lost in the swirl of smoke from the stable block, but he re-emerged a few minutes later with Hugo in tow. It was the first time Adam had ever seen Hugo blown, despite his string of triumphs on the running track. He gasped, "It's a regular shambles, Gov'nor. All happened so quickly. Never seen a fire get a hold like that. But we got the horses out. All seventy of 'em."

  "Anybody hurt?"

  "No, sir, I think not. But the superintendent says he can't save Four and Five warehouses. He's concentrating on the others, giving them a rare soaking. The waggons are our property but there are customers' goods in all the sheds."

  "Water will spoil what the flames don't get," Adam grunted. "How about Tybalt? Is he over there?"

  "I haven't seen him," Hugo said. "Come to think of it, I haven't seen him all day."

  "I have," Edward volunteered. "He came into the counting-house and went through to his office some time in the afternoon."

  "When was it? Think, boy, think hard!"

  "It must have been about an hour or so before the alarm was given."

  "You didn't see him go to the key rack?"

  "No, sir, but he doesn't have to. He has duplicates in his office over there."

  "Where, exactly?"

  "In a rack on the wall behind his desk in the annexe," and Edward pointed to the butt end of the clerical building, the one portion of the block that was still more or less intact. Even its window, facing the yard, was unbroken.

  He said, "Come with me, Edward. Hugo, go back and tell the superintendent to make his major effort on the warehouses. You're quite right. The waggons are fully insured but we've only minimum cover for goods in transit, once they're stored in the yard!" As Hugo hurried off he led the way to the abutting end of the clerical section, Edward following with a bewildered expression on his pink, squarish face. There was a pinnace axle-tree resting against the brickwork and Adam lifted it, smashing the frame and the four panes of glass with a few swift blows. The heat here was intense, but under the wall they were protected from the dense clouds of smoke issuing from the burning half of the building. He turned to the boy. "Scramble in and look at that desk and key rack. Jump to it. Desk first…" and Edward dived through the aperture and was at once shrouded in smoke.

  He called back, "All the drawers are open or thrown down. He must have saved his papers."

  "Are his keys there?"

  "Yes, sir, I think so."

  "Bring 'em out, boy. Sharp about it," and Edward came tumbling out, his hands full of keys, each with its oval label.

  "Shall I give them to the firemen?"

  "No, I'll take them. They'll hack their way in if they have to, but it mightn't be necessary. You say the desk was cleared?"

  "More or less. There were papers on the floor."

  "Right, now listen here. I'm staying in town, at the Norfolk, and there's nothing I can do here. Tell Hugo where I am, and tell him to notify the brigade chief and the senior police officer. I need a drink and a good wash while I'm at it. You and Hugo watch out for yourselves, and don't take chances saving property. We can always replace property," and he walked away, leaving the yard by the main entrance and pushing roughly through the ranks of sightseers now contained behind a rope barrier. He was more than halfway across the bridge before he saw an empty cab going his way. He said, clambering inside, "Norfolk Hotel," and settled back in the interior, his mind juggling with so many factors that it finally abandoned any attempt to relate them. The stench of woodsmoke clung to his clothes, and he had inhaled so much of the stuff that he felt sick and muddleheaded. But then, as he stretched his legs, he heard the keys jangle and thought, sourly, That was a bonus, anyway. I don't know as it will prove anything, but it's a lead having regard to Tybalt's jumping the gun in order to empty that desk.

  2

  His over-riding desire, before he so much as ordered a drink, was to have a bath. The stench that hung about him was not merely unpleasant. It darkened his thoughts to a degree that the fire could not have achieved. The depression was at a different level, the deepest level of his consciousness. He probed its source, asking himself why a fire, even one so fierce and destructive, should make him feel lonely and desolate. Then it came to him in the whiff of his jacket as he peeled it off, a stink of frustrated wretchedness and personal degradation that took him back to a time years before Swann's waggons roamed the highways, to places on the far side of the world. It was the once familiar reek of burning towns, the stench of Delhi, Cawnpore, Lucknow, and Jhansi, ravaged, looted, and fired. It struck him that the nose was the best barometer of the spirit, that certain smells one associated with hope and happiness, and others, like this one, with bitterness and defeat.

  He muttered, "Here now, this won't do! You're responsible for it in a way, so keep your nerve and see what can be salvaged from the mess!" He spread the keys Edward had given him on the bed, examining each label carefully.

  There were seventeen in all, eight giving access to warehouses, two to the main entrances of the yard, one to the head clerk's office, one to the clerical building itself, one marked "postern" (he assumed this opened the new Tooley Street exit), and four belonging to other sectors of the yard, the tack room, the waggon-stores, and the forge. He set aside all but the warehouse keys and studied these again, marking off in his mind the buildings they represented, the row of one-storey warehouses facing his old tower that were used, in his day and since, for goods awaiting shipment and onward transmission into the Kentish Triangle and Southern Square.

  At first the set seemed complete, but then it came to him that one was missing. The key to that smaller, newer warehouse across from the counting-house, with its exit at the rear, and the significance of this occurred to him at once. It told him that Wesley Tybalt, slipping into the office to empty his desk, had hooked this key from the rack and used it to further some purpose of his own.

  Cautiously he pondered that purpose, forgetting his need for a wash and a drink but sitting there in his shirt-sleeves, his mind reviewing every factor in the case.

  Wesley had not been seen about the place all day, save for that fleeting visit to his office. Wesley had been nowhere around when the fire started and gained its hold. The fire had begun in that quarter of the yard. Wesley had not returned the key, a golden rule at the yard all the time it had been Swann's headquarters. It pointed, he would say, to two certainties. One, Wesley was the last to visit the small warehouse, and two, Wesley had been warned by someone that the hunt was up and he would be required, within the next twenty-four hours, to answer a number of awkward questions. Concerning himself and Robsart, seen in Linklater's yard last night, and concerning, above all, the contents of that warehouse and the invoices representing the goods inside. Dramatically, a pattern emerged revealing so much that it had the power to make him leap up, putting so much reliance on his tin leg that he stumbled.

  Great God, the fellow's not only a thief but an arsonist, covering his tracks! he thought, and almost choked with rage, calling himself an absolute fool not to have spotted the grand design days ago, or at least last night, after Tybalt senior told him about the Swann packages in the Linklater waggon.

  His first impulse was to contact the police and put them in touch with their colleagues at the seat of the fire. His second, on the heels of the first, was more complicated. It involved not only Wesley Tybalt, but Tybalt senior and mayb
e a dozen subverted men at headquarters and out along the network. Detection on this scale called for skilful timing and absolute secrecy if the entire gang was to be rounded up and the network purged from top to bottom. And he was unequal to the demands of that task right now, when he was tired, hungry, and filthy.

  He looked at his watch, surprised to find it was coming up to eight o'clock, four hours since he had stampeded over London Bridge to the burning yard. He shrugged off the rest of his clothes, put on his dressing gown and slippers, took his towel, soap, and razor, and went along the corridor to the bathroom, an innovation up here, for until recently guests had made do with tin bowls and cans of hot water carried up three flights of stairs. For half an hour or more he soaked and scraped, turning the finer points of his assumptions over and over in his mind, and then, feeling ready for battle, he sprinkled himself with lavender water and went back along the corridor to his room.

  He had not locked it and on crossing the threshold it seemed that the place was full of people. He drew back, rubbing eyes that were still smarting from smoke and yellow soap. Then he saw that there was only one person in there, but the man by the window was so huge, and possessed such a commanding presence, that he seemed to fill the room. It was Saul Keate, his former waggon-master, who had been his friend and confidant since that first summer evening in '58, when Avery had introduced him as the likely recruiting sergeant of a South Bank work force. A gentle giant, standing six feet six in his socks, with a great, slabsided face and mild blue eyes, a man who had searched the docks night after night for lost souls with potential that could be channelled into the network. Another Bible-puncher, certainly, and a prude who winced every time he heard a carter swear, but a person of immense positiveness for whom he had always entertained the greatest respect.

  He said, "Have you just come from the yard?" and Keate, surprisingly, said no, although he had heard about the fire from one of the men who lived in his street. "According to him there was little I could do," he said, "so I thought it best to come here and give you this, sir. It had this address on it or I would have travelled down to Tryst, late as it is." He handed Adam a sealed envelope addressed to him in Tybalt's hand and marked "Urgent and Personal."

  "Where did you get it?"

  "At Tybalt's home. It was on his sitting-room mantelshelf when I called round for some mission funds appeals he asked me to collect this afternoon. His front door was ajar but he wasn't there. I called up the stairs and then made enquiries. He lives alone, as you know, except for a woman who comes in and does for him since his wife died. I found her eventually. She told me he was there at midday, when she left, but she hadn't seen him since." He waited in his grave, self-effacing way that recalled so many orders-for-the-day sessions down the years.

  Adam said, "Very obliging of you, Keate," and carried the envelope over to the window, opening it, taking out two closely-written sheets and reading them with his back to the light.

  The first lines made him catch his breath for Tybalt began:

  My dear Mr. Swann,

  When you read this I shall have moved on, and I pray God Almighty finds it possible to forgive me for what I am about to do. But I thought it only honourable to admit that I did not follow your advice last night. I was far too agitated to let it rest until morning. I took a train to Annerley to discuss this grave matter with my son, and try and discover whether he had remained in ignorance of the fact that Robsart and others were robbing the firm. I learned a great deal more than I bargained for.

  He looked up, glancing across at the impassive Keate. "You say you couldn't locate Tybalt? You're sure he wasn't somewhere about the house?"

  "As I said, I called, sir…"

  "Then listen to this, Keate. I'll read it first and explain on the way over there. You and I are going back as soon as I've got some clothes on..."

  "…You will understand, Mr. Swann, how excessively painful it is for me to write this, so I do not propose to go into details. You will do that as soon as you confront my boy, Robsart and that scoundrel Linklater. The truth is, in a word, Wesley was implicated so deeply that he heard me out and then offered me a substantial bribe to forget what I had seen and deduced, saying he could concoct some plausible explanation to satisfy you and dispose of Robsart and his associates overnight. I do not think I need tell you I spurned his offer and counselled him there and then that there was only one course open to him now, to lay everything before you and Mr. George, and throw himself on your mercy.

  "At first he brushed this aside, saying you would make certain he went to prison, but I went on and he finally promised he would consider taking this course, provided I would allow him a few hours to make up his mind. It seemed to me I owed him that, or rather I owed it to his wife and child, so I left and went home. No words of mine can express the shame I feel on his behalf. I can only assume he was a far weaker vessel than I thought and was led away by Linklater or Robsart, but one thing he did add and I pass it on for what it is worth. The pickings were trivial at first but when Mr. George took to travelling more, and gave Wesley a free run of the yard, he plunged deeper and deeper into wickedness and began organising big-scale runs from the north and Midlands, roughly along the lines you suggested—that is to say, our vehicles making the long hauls and Linklater's onloading from that warehouse whenever the occasions were propitious.

  "I can only add that never, under any circumstances, could I look you in the face again. Our long association has been, to me at least, a very happy one, and I will carry with me to the grave a deep appreciation of all your trust and kindness since I came to work for you in the earliest days of Swann-on-Wheels.

  "I remain, sir, your very humble servant, Hubert Tybalt."

  He had never seen Keate so blanched and tense. The big man seemed dazed with shock and when his lips moved no sound issued from them for a moment or so. Then he said, hoarsely, "He can't… he wouldn't do anything so… so foolish, so dreadful, Mr. Swann?"

  Adam said, sharply, "He certainly will if we aren't lucky enough to run him down and persuade him a man can't take upon himself the guilt of others, no matter how close they are. Go down and get a cab. Pick the youngest horse in the rank and tell the cabby we want him to risk his neck in a dash to Rotherhithe. Don't say anything more now, we haven't time. I'll be with you in less than five minutes." And without waiting for Keate to leave, he tore open the wardrobe and threw his spare suit on the bed, struggling out of his dressing gown and flinging himself into his clothes. He went out in such a hurry that he left the door open and the bed strewn with keys.

  3

  Traffic had eased off at this hour, but the journey seemed a tedious one, for it did not take him long to acquaint Keate with the basic facts of the situation and afterwards, following a futile speculation or two, the pair of them jolted on in gloomy silence. It wanted a few minutes to ten when the cab drew up beside Tybalt's little house and he bundled out of it, calling to the cabbie to wait. Keate was close behind him and they paused in the narrow hall to light the gas, then went on into the front-room, where Tybalt's mission appeals lay in neat stacks on the red plush tablecloth. He said, gruffly, "You stay here. I've got to make sure before we alert the police. I'm pretty certain it'll be the river, and I only hope it takes him a long time to screw up his nerve!" Adam clumped upstairs, finding a candlestick on the tiny landing and lighting the wick.

  Tybalt's bedroom, tidily done over by the woman who looked after him, was empty, and the bed had not been disturbed, but that meant nothing, for she had been here until midday. He went back across the landing and examined the other two rooms, scarcely more than boxes. One that was furnished had been Wesley's all the time he was growing up here, and a text hung over the bed, one of those framed Biblical quotations that hung in the homes of all men like Tybalt. It read "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light." He went out and was beginning to descend the stairs again when he noticed a door midway between the bedrooms that he had mistaken for a cupboard. He now saw that it was not a
cupboard but a recess, converted into a water-closet. On impulse he turned back and flung open the door, holding the candle high above his head.

  Tybalt looked back at him, a baffled, outraged expression in eyes that were wide open, as was his mouth. His feet reached to within about six inches of the floor. The knotted cravat about his neck was hooked over the trigger of the cistern and entangled, somehow, in the short length of chain; even as he stared, the final irony of the situation jumped at him in the form of the raised lettering on the cistern. It announced that the water-closet was the product of James Lockerbie & Company, Ltd., Sanitary Engineers, Glasgow, the man George was cuckolding. George had given Wesley Tybalt so much rope that he had succeeded in hanging not Wesley but Wesley's father.

  He would have thought himself proof against the shock of witnessing a violent death, but this death was more than violent. It was obscene, a bizarre and shuddering mockery of all the man hanging there had believed in and practised throughout his blameless life. It was as ritualistic as the death of a terrified savage willed to destroy himself by a witch-doctor, and it was acknowledgment of this, rather than the spectacle itself, that made him recoil retching, steadying himself by throwing up a hand to grasp the lintel of the makeshift door frame.