He gave a yelp. The yelp was echoed. Now Ben was no longer flat. He was on his feet, shaking like a struck tuning-fork. For if the second yelp had really been an echo of the first, its character had changed uncannily in the tiny space of time between!
Ben’s yelp had been the yelp of one in sudden pain. The other seemed to have come from one in sudden panic.
‘Well, I’m in a panic, ain’t I?’ chattered Ben, struggling for comfort in the thought.
He stood, listening—for thirteen years. The echo was not repeated. Then, deciding that any place was better than where he was, a condition which possibly explains the source of most human energy, he groped his way through darkest dockland in search of a happier spot. He did not know in what direction he was walking saving that, if the second cry had come from the north, he was unerringly walking south.
He came upon another post. It wasn’t a nice post. It was unnaturally white, and it fluttered. All at once it occurred to Ben that it wasn’t a post at all, and that he had better hit it. The blow proved, painfully, that it was a post, but the fluttering white costume still needed explaining. A match explained it. Matches, at certain moments, are wonderful company. The service performed by the present match, however, might have been improved on. The costume turned out to be a newspaper poster tied round the post with a piece of string, and the poster said:
OLD MAN
MURDERED
AT
HAMMERSMITH
‘Gawd! Ain’t I never goin’ ter git away from it?’ muttered Ben.
For a few seconds the match-light flickered on the gruesome words—words against which the holder of the match might have laid his head. But sleep was no longer in the immediate programme. A rat, an echo, and a placard had combined to demonstrate that dockland—or, at any rate, this particular corner of dockland—was unhealthy, and that the best thing to do was to get right out of it.
The match-light touched his fingers. He dropped it spasmodically, but suppressed the exclamation. He had an idea that ears were listening, and in the darkness that followed the match’s descent the policy of retreat became instantly more appealing. Even in the darkness the horrible placard was still visible. It shivered palely as a little night breeze slithered from the sides of ships, and suddenly Ben turned and darted away. His foot caught in a chain, and he made a croquet-hoop over it.
He remained, croquet-hooped, for nearly half a minute. Only by utter staticism, he felt, did he stand any chance that Fate would lose him and pass him by. He knew for certain by now that Fate was hunting him, and that the invisible fingers were groping to make their catch. It was only when he considered that it would not be dignified to be caught in the shape of a croquet-hoop that he cautiously rose and proceeded on his miserable way.
He trod gingerly. He raised his feet high over many chains that were not there, and failed to raise them over another that was. He didn’t fall this time, however. As the ground rose up towards him, like the deck of a rolling ship, he lurched his left leg forward with a bent knee, recalling a trick of his old sea days. ‘Not this time, cocky!’ He glared at the chain. But a couple of seconds later he looped over some fresh obstacle, and his hands descended on something soft.
‘Wot’s ’appened?’ he wondered. ‘Is the bloomin’ ground meltin’?’
Or was it grass? But what would grass be doing here? Soft. Soft and warmish. Now, what was soft and warmish?
The solution came to him in a sickening flash. Suddenly weakened, the human croquet-hoop went flat, doing a sort of splits north and south from the stomach. Then it bounded up towards the unseen stars. It is doubtful whether anything in dockland had risen so high in the time since the days of bombardments.
Obeying the laws of gravitation, Ben came down on the spot from which he had vertically ascended. In other words, he came down on a dead man. After that, he ran amok.
He ran without knowledge of time or direction. Actually, the time was five minutes, and the direction was a very large circle. He fought imaginary foes all the way, and at every fifth step he leapt high over imaginary corpses. By the time he had completed the circle, his breath was spent. But, as events were soon to prove, that needn’t stop you. You can always borrow a bit of breath from the future if you’re really pressed.
Back at the spot where he had started from, he paused. He knew it was the same spot for various reasons. One was the chain—the chain over which he had nearly tripped just before falling over the dead body. There it was. No mistaking it. Another reason was a shape looming on his left. A bit of a boat. He remembered that too. Another reason—the strongest reason—was instinct. He knew this was the same spot. Couldn’t say why. Just knew it. It was as though he had stepped back into a picture he had temporarily deserted, completing it again … Yes, but one thing wasn’t in the picture. What was it? What was missing?
He stared at the ground ahead of him. His eyes glued themselves to the spot.
‘Lummy!’ he murmured. ‘Where’s ’e got ter?’
A splash answered him.
Several nasty things had happened during the last few minutes, but this splash was among the nastiest. If it had been followed by a cry, or by further splashing, or by any sound denoting movement, it would have seemed less ominous. But it was followed by nothing. Just silence. Whatever had caused the splash had made no protest.
And then, suddenly and without warning, a dark form came vaguely into view, and stopped dead.
The form was tall and shadowy, and the reason of its abrupt halt was obvious. If it had come into Ben’s view, Ben had also come into its view. Each was a dim shadow to the other. Too frozen to move, Ben stared at the spectre, while the spectre stared back. Then, when the silence at last became unbearable, the weaker broke it.
‘’Allo!’ said Ben stupidly.
He heard himself saying it with surprise. He did not recall having instructed his tongue to say it. And, now he came to think of it, had he said it? The spectre made no sign of having heard it.
‘’Allo!’ He tried again.
He was sure he had said it that time. His voice rattled like hollow thunder. But the spectre still made no sign. Slightly encouraged by the astonishing fact that he was still alive, Ben became informative.
‘There was a deader ’ere jest now,’ he said.
The spectre moved a little closer. Ben backed a little farther.
‘’Ere, none o’ that!’ he muttered, and then added, in nervous exasperation, ‘’As somebody cut out yer tongue?’
He closed his eyes tightly the next instant. He was afraid the spectre would answer the question by opening its mouth and revealing that its tongue had been cut out. He couldn’t have stood that. The darkness of closed lids was momentarily consoling, for it not only shut out the spectre, but it induced the theory that perhaps there really wasn’t any spectre at all. The whole thing might be just imagination. There were not many things, come to think of it, Ben had not imagined in his time. Once he had even imagined a transparent tiger with all its victims. ‘Wot you gotter do,’ he told himself soberly, ‘is ter stop bein’ frightened. See?’ Then he felt two arms around him, and forgot the advice.
Ben’s accomplishments were few, but he could carve little statues out of cheese, and he could bite. He bit now, and fortunately what he bit proved vulnerable. The spectre emitted a savage oath—there was no doubt now that it possessed a tongue—and Ben felt a pain somewhere. He didn’t know where. There wasn’t time to find out. But he knew he felt it, and the knowledge was so acute that he was urged to give a second bite. The second bite produced a second oath and a temporary loosening of the tentacles around him. He slid down, dodged left, slid up, dodged right, twisted, turned and ran.
He heard a heavy fall behind him. The chain that had once proved his enemy now proved his friend. His pursuer had tripped over it.
Profiting by this incident, Ben ran as he had never run before. That is to say, his legs moved as they had never moved before. For some reason, born of the nightmare
atmosphere, his body seemed to be insisting on slow-motion, and as his legs raced beneath him he had a queer feeling that he was travelling in first gear.
That wasn’t the only trouble. As he ran, everything about him appeared to have increased in size and in height. The posts he sped by had grown four yards. The iron rings in the posts could have encircled Carnera. A wooden partition actually became taller as he passed it. The roof of a vast shed was as distant as the stars. And while his eyes grappled with these grim illusions, his brain grappled with the grim realities that had brought him to this sorry pass. The realities formed themselves into another chain, a chain this time in his mind. It was a chain of six links. Rat—cry—poster—body—splash—spectre. Rat—cry—poster—body—splash—spectre. But wasn’t there something else? Wasn’t there a girl somewhere? A girl who had blundered into his arms? And a man who had hurriedly left a coffee-stall without waiting for his change? Girl—man—rat—cry
Oi! What was this? Another link? The dark world began to swim. The spectre was behind him, twenty feet, or two, but this new apparition was before him. Short, thick-set, and stumpy. And motionless.
Ben, also, became motionless. When you’re the middle of the sandwich, you just wait to see which way you get it from. He expected to get it from the new apparition, and couldn’t understand the delay. Then, all at once, he discovered the reason. The new apparition had his back to him.
Fate was giving him a chance, and he took it. He could not advance, and he could not retreat, and on his right was a brick wall. On his left was another wall, but this was of iron, and in the iron a black hole gaped. It was a short distance from Ben’s feet to the hole. Just the length of a board that spanned a few inches of water.
‘’Ere goes fer Calcutter!’ thought Ben.
And into the hole he shot.
3
The Stomach of a Ship
The ship you know is probably a very pleasant affair. It has scrupulously scrubbed decks, luxuriously carpeted stairways, palatial dining-rooms, and snug cabins. In these surroundings you meet clean, trim officers, talk with some of them on polite subjects, stretch, yawn and play shovel-board. But the ship you probably do not know—the ship that provides the real service for which you pay—is a very different matter.
It is dark, and it is hot. It is honeycombed with narrow passages and iron ladders. You go up the ladders or down the ladders or along the ladders. Some are fixed at an angle, some are vertical, and their only object seems to be to lead to other ladders. Your Mecca may be the scorching side of a huge boiler, or a little gap in the blackness through which hell peeps, or a metal excrescence bristling with a thousand nuts, or a mountain of coal. None invite you to stop, unless economic pressure has forced them upon you, or some other strange necessity has brought you to seek their ambiguous consolation. On you go, sweating, through the bewildering labyrinth, from ladder to ladder, from passage to passage, from dimness to dimness, from heat to heat. A germ in the ship’s stomach.
And so Ben went on. When he had first entered the black hole in the ship’s side he had shot across a dark space in a panic, and then, striking something—whether human or not he had no notion—he had shot across another dark space in another panic. He had stopped dead on the edge of a dip. He had heard a movement near him. Human, this time, he swore. He had shot down the dip, fallen, clutched, and discovered a rail. Thus he had arrived at the first of the interminable ladders.
Now he was in a maze of ladders. A metallic city of descents. But he did not always descend. Sometimes he went up. The main thing was to keep moving, and to move in the least impossible direction. Presently one would come to a dead end, and then one would stop because one had to.
It is probable that if Ben had never been in a ship’s stomach before he would have been killed or caught during the early stages of his journey. A ship’s interior is not designed for the speed of those who dwell in it. In his zenith, however, Ben had stoked with the best of them, and a long-dormant instinct was now reasserting itself and leading him towards coal.
But it was the simple law of gravitation that finally brought him there. He was descending a particularly precipitous ladder, a ladder that seemed to be hanging down sheerly into space, and all at once something caught his eye between the rungs. He became conscious of a sudden flutter. A small shape, like a detached hand, loomed momentarily, and it gave him a shock that loosened his grip. ‘Oi!’ he gulped. The rung he had been grasping shot upwards, while he shot downwards. A short, swift flight through space, and he landed on the coal
He was oblivious to the impact. As his long-suffering frame rebelled at last against the indignity of consciousness, he swam into a velvet blackness, and this time the blackness was utterly obliterating.
Thud-thud! Thud-thud! Thud-thud!
Ben opened his eyes. He came out of the greater blackness into the lesser. Cosmos was replaced by coal.
Coal was all about him. Under him, beside him, on top of him. He could understand the coal that was under him and the coal that was beside him, but he couldn’t understand the coal that was on top of him. When you fall upon coal, it doesn’t usually get up and lay itself over you like a counterpane.
But that wasn’t the only thing that puzzled him. There was something else. Something new. Something …
Thud-thud! Thud-thud! Thud-thud!
‘Gawd—we’re movin’!’ thought Ben.
Yes, undoubtedly, the boat was moving. The engines were thudding rhythmically, like great pulses, and although there was nothing visible by which to gauge movement, Ben’s body felt a sense of progress. How long had he been unconscious, then? More than the minute it seemed, obviously. Was it ten minutes, or an hour, or twelve hours, since he had seen the little waving hand and had pitched down here from the ladder? Or … even longer?
He moved cautiously. Very cautiously. This surprising roof of coal must be treated with respect, or it would cave in. As he moved, his foot came into contact with something that, surely, was not coal. Something soft. Something warm. Then he remembered the last warm, soft thing he had touched, and he stiffened.
The fellow he had tripped over in the dockyard! Was he here, beside him?
No, of course not! Steady, Ben! There was that splash, don’t you remember? That fellow had been pitched into the water. And, anyhow, this soft thing was different, somehow. Quite different. Ah, a cat! That was it! The ship’s cat, come to see him, and to give him a friendly lick!
Now Ben moved his hand, groping carefully through the cavern towards the cat’s body. ‘Puss, puss!’ he muttered. ‘’Ow’s yer mother?’ He opened his fingers, and prepared to stroke whatever they made contact with. His fingers met other fingers. The other fingers closed over his.
‘That’s funny!’ thought Ben. ‘Why ain’t I shriekin’?’
It wasn’t because he wasn’t trying. He was doing all he could to shriek. Well, wouldn’t you, if you were lying in a cavern of coal, and somebody else’s hand closed over yours? But the shriek would not come. It was merely his thought that bawled. P’r’aps he had a bit of coal in his throat? That might be it! How did you get a bit of coal out of your throat when one hand was under you, and the other was being held, and your nose was pressing against another bit of coal?
Then Ben realised why he wasn’t screaming. The other person’s hand, in some queer way, was ordering him not to. It kept on pressing his, at first in long, determined grasps, but afterwards in quick, spasmodic ones. ‘Don’t scream—don’t scream—don’t scream!’ urged each pressure. ‘Wait!’
What for?
A moment later, he knew. Voices were approaching.
At first they were merely an indistinguishable accompaniment to the thudding of the engines, but gradually they drew out of throb and became separate and individual. One voice was slow and rough. The other was sharp and curt. Ben had never heard either of them before, yet he had an odd sensation that he had done so, and instinctively he visualised the speakers. The first, tall; the second, sho
rt, thick-set and stumpy.
‘This the spot?’ drawled the first speaker.
‘Yes. Charming, isn’t it?’ said the second.
There was a pause. When the first speaker answered he had drawn nearer, and seemed so close that Ben nearly jumped. He might have jumped but for another little pressure of the fingers still closed over his.
‘Can’t say I’d choose to live in it,’ came the slow voice.
‘Well, no one’s asking you to live in it,’ came the curt one. ‘It’ll do, anyway. That is, if we’re driven to it. But there may be another way.’
‘Seems to’ve been made for us.’
‘P’r’aps it was! Old Papa Fate hands one a prize once and again, doesn’t he? He handed you to me, for instance!’
‘And he handed you to me!’
A short laugh followed. Then the curt voice said:
‘Well, it’s fifty-fifty. Only, don’t forget, son of a gun, you don’t get your fifty unless I get mine!’
‘I’m not forgetting anything,’ retorted the slow voice; ‘and if there’s any damned double-crossing, I sha’n’t forget that, either! What’s beyond there?’
‘Water.’
‘Don’t be funny. Is all this coal?’
‘Ay.’
‘Just coal?’
‘Of course, just coal! D’you suppose we feed the fires with diamonds? Have a feel!’
Ben bared his teeth to bite. God spared him the necessity.
‘What’s all this curiosity, anyhow?’ demanded the curt voice abruptly.
‘Nothing special,’ responded the slow voice. ‘But there’s no harm in knowing, is there?’
‘None at all. And you can trust me with the knowing! I expect I know my own ship, and—hallo! What’s that?’
The curt voice broke off suddenly. Four pairs of ears listened tensely. Two pairs by the coal, two under it.
Murderer's Trail Page 2