‘Gawd, why don’t ’e stop?’ thought Ben. His hat was now sticking all round him. His head felt like wet sand in an upturned pail; if the head had been shaken out, it would not have made a good castle. ‘’E orter stop. It’s silly. ’E don’t know I don’t like it!’
‘Perhaps you have a secret vice, Carlos, or whatever your name is,’ Sims went on. ‘Perhaps, despite your apparent lethargy, you are in love with another man’s wife! Who knows? Sin lies behind the smoothest forehead—though I expect yours is lined, eh?—and romance stifles the humpback. The thwarted instinct goes inwards, Carlos, and comes out again in the wrong place—twisted.’ He laughed softly. ‘And I know where to look for the place, and how to utilise the twist!’
‘Now ’e’s gettin’ jest foolish,’ decided Ben.
There was another short silence. Some way ahead, to the right of the lonely, tree-lined road, loomed a dull yellow building. Ben eyed it apprehensively. His passenger was eyeing it also.
‘We shall soon part company, Carlos,’ said Sims, with a little sigh; ‘but I’d love to discover your secret before we part. You see, I’m quite sure you have one. I’ve an instinct for smelling them out. All I need is the tiniest lead. If only you had a voice one could hear, or a face one could see!’
‘Lummy, ’e’s at me fice agine!’ thought Ben.
‘But your hat conceals your face, and, as for your voice, you are deaf and dumb. So that’s that, isn’t it?’
Two men lounged out of the yellow building at the side of the road. One had a scar, and the other had a squint. ‘Wouldn’t they!’ thought Ben. He wasn’t being let off anything.
‘Yes, I really am sorry you are deaf and dumb,’ said Sims, ‘because if you weren’t I could have asked you a question I’m terribly curious about.’
They were now almost up to the inn. A third man joined the other two, who had now grown considerably larger. But the third man was the largest of the lot. ‘Why is it that, when people are agin yer, they’re always big?’ wondered Ben.
‘Here we are,’ said Sims, as Ben pulled the reins and the horse stopped.
He rose from his seat, and turned to dismount.
‘Oh, by the way, that question,’ he said, pausing. ‘You won’t hear it, of course, but I may as well ask it. Since you are deaf and dumb, Carlos, pray how did you know what I wanted when I first spoke to you, and how did you know where I wanted to go?’
‘Well, I was goin’ that way any’ow, wasn’t I?’ burst out Ben.
‘Thank you, Ben,’ smiled Sims. ‘Thank you very much indeed.’
33
Flying Knives
Five men sat in a small, ill-lit room. One had a squint, another had a scar, and another was twice as large as any man had a right to be. The fourth was Sims, with his back to the slit of a window. The fifth was Ben, with his face to the slit. Only on Ben’s face was there any light; Sims knew how to arrange his pieces.
Other people were in other rooms in Don Manuel’s unsavoury establishment, but for the moment their business does not concern us. We are only concerned with the conference that was taking place around Ben’s face.
The room itself was close and foul-smelling. ‘And if I think a plice smells bad, it must smell bad!’ decided Ben. He supposed it had something to do with Spanish onions.
‘Now, Ben,’ began Sims, ‘we will get to business. You know, of course, that we mean business?’
‘Cut aht the frills,’ replied Ben. ‘Wot is the bizziness?’
‘You are going to tell me things, Ben,’ said Sims; ‘and the first thing is how you come to be alive after being shot?’
‘Ah, yer’d like ter know that, wouldn’t yer,’ answered Ben.
‘I’m going to know it. Are you related to Houdini?’
‘’Oo wot?’
‘Or Maskelyne? If you ever get back to England, you’ll be able to get a job at St George’s Hall. If you ever get back. Well, speak up. We’re waiting.’
‘Yer can go hon waitin’.’
‘Oh? So that’s your humour?’
‘’Umer’s right! Carn’t yer see, I’m shakin’ with larfter!’
‘Then I’ll have to make you shake with something else. Don Manuel, show our friend your little knife trick.’
The elephantine man grinned, and his hand suddenly shot out of a shadow. Something gleaming left it like a released arrow, flashed by Ben’s head, and ended with a little ping in the wall behind him.
‘Now will you answer me?’ inquired Sims.
Why should he? They were obviously going to do for him anyway, and the sooner it was all over the better. So he grunted, ‘No!’ and, at a sign from Sims, Don Manuel’s hand again shot out, and there came another flash of supple steel through the air. The blade passed this time within two inches of Ben’s other cheek.
‘One on the right, two on the left,’ observed Sims, ‘and the third, if it comes, in the middle.’
‘It wasn’t me wot yer shot,’ muttered Ben.
‘No?’
‘Ain’t I sed so?’
‘Then who was it?’
‘Little Red Ridin’ ’Ood.’
‘Think again.’
‘Orl right. But wot’s it matter now, any’ow? It was a Spaniard wot come in dyin’ like, and arter ’e begins ter hundo me ’e pops orf.’
‘Non comprendo,’ murmured Don Manuel.
‘Pop off. Morir. Expirar,’ explained Sims.
‘Si, si,’ nodded Don Manuel. ‘Pop off! Ah!’
He laughed, and the other two Spaniards grinned, but with less intelligence. Although they gathered that something funny had happened, they hadn’t the muddiest notion of what it was.
‘You have still to tell me,’ resumed Sims, whose eyes had never left Ben’s, ‘how the dead man came to be bound and gagged?’
‘Are you a mug,’ retorted Ben, ‘or jest pertendin’ ter be?’
‘You bound him?’
‘’Corse! When yer dead yer dead, ain’tcher?’
‘Then where were you?’
‘Hunner the tible.’
‘Really!’
‘Yus, reely. And if yer’d come a step closer, yer’d ’ave got a sirocco in yer foot!’
Sims looked thoughtful. He was beginning to realise certain things that had not been apparent before. When Don Manuel began to address him, he motioned for silence. His mind was engaged on a new problem.
‘I see,’ he said, at last, in the soft voice Ben hated. ‘There is, after all, a brain. One would not think it. But it is there. Yes, clearly, it is there. And what did the brain do, after I left? Did it wait under the table or emerge?’
‘’Oo?’ jerked Ben.
‘I’m asking you what happened next, Ben? You followed me?’
‘No.’
‘What did you do, then?’
‘I took a trine ter Wigan.’
‘I think that had better be your last humorous remark, Ben,’ said Sims ominously.
‘Well, yer asks sich silly queshuns,’ retorted Ben. ‘’Corse I follered yer.’
‘Why “of course”?’
‘Well, I’m ’ere, ain’t I?’
‘You are undoubtedly here—and are likely to remain here. We will take it, then, that you followed me. How did you know where I was going to?’
‘Eh?’
‘How did you know I was here?’
That needed thinking about. Ben temporised.
‘’Oo sed I knoo yer was ’ere?’
‘Well, then—did you know?’
‘No. Yus. No.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Yus. Meanin’ no.’
‘You didn’t know I was here?’
‘Yus, I didn’t.’
‘Then how was it,’ inquired Sims, ‘that I found you barely half a mile away?’
‘’Omin’ instink,’ suggested Ben.
‘I’m afraid that won’t do,’ replied Sims. ‘You knew the name of this place before you arrived here.’
‘Did I? Well, ’corse I did
! When you pops in the cart, you tole me, didn’t yer?’
‘My precise remark,’ observed Sims dryly, ‘was “Lleveme al posada.” Of course, you speak Spanish?’
‘No, I don’t speak Spanish,’ exclaimed Ben, struggling to keep his head under this ruthless cross-examination. He knew what Sims was driving at, and he wasn’t having any! ‘If I could speak Spanish I’d tell yer somethink yer wouldn’t fergit in a ’urry! Torkin’ through yer ’at, you are. I took you ’ere ’cos there wasn’t nowhere helse.’
‘Then you’d never heard of Don Manuel or of Villabanzos before?’
‘No, and I never wanter ’ear of ’em agine.’
‘In that case, why did you inquire for them at the house you stopped at in the last village?’ That was a nasty one. So Sims had been talking to them, had he? ‘By the way,’ added Sims, ‘they’re still looking for you in that village. You’re wanted for murder.’
‘Wot’s that?’ exclaimed Ben.
‘Yes, you seem to have killed a couple of people somewhere near the coast. Did you kill Greene and Faggis as well, by any chance? What’s happened to them?’
Ben was silent.
‘What’s happened to Greene and Faggis?’ repeated Sims sharply.
‘Lummy, ’ow do I know?’ burst out Ben. ‘I tell yer I don’t know nothink! If yer goin’ ter do me in, fer Gawd’s sake do me in. I don’t mind bein’ dead, we orl gotter, ain’t we—yus, and you too, the ’ole lot of yer, but this waitin’ abart fair gits on me nerves. I ain’t goin’ ter hanswer no more questions, see? Orl right. Now tell ’im ter chuck ’is sirocco and mike a butterfly of me! ’Oo cares?’
Sims glanced at Don Manuel. Don Manuel bared his teeth at Ben, with deliberate intent to frighten. Ben closed his eyes.
‘Well, I won’t worry you about Greene and Faggis,’ came Sims’s voice through Ben’s self-imposed darkness. ‘Probably they are interesting the police, also, and may already be under lock and key. But there is one question you have got to answer, Ben, and that without any more delay. How did you know the name of Don Manuel, and of Villabanzos?’
Ben closed his mouth, as well as his eyes.
‘Did somebody tell you?’
Ben remained obdurate.
‘Was it the girl who calls herself Molly Smith?’
‘There,’ thought Ben, ‘I knoo that was wot ’e was arter!’
‘And where is Molly Smith now?’
‘Now I’m orl right,’ thought Ben. ‘If yer die pertecktin’ a gal, ’Eaven’s a cert.’
A few moments of silence followed. Then Sims’s voice sounded again, softly but clearly.
‘Let him have it, Don Manuel,’ he said.
‘Now it’s comin’!’ thought Ben.
It came an instant later. There was a sickening swish. A violent sensation pierced his forehead or his nose, or his neck. He couldn’t decide which. All he knew for certain was that one had a huge hole in it. Then the voice of Don Manuel sighed:
‘Diablo! I mees!’
‘Gawd! ’As ’e?’ gasped Ben, and opened his eyes to find out.
Yes, Don Manuel had missed, and since his aim as a rule was deadly, there was probably a reason for it. He and Sims, despite their differences in temperament, bulk and nationality, seemed to understand each other perfectly.
‘Do you know, you’re rather a nuisance, Ben,’ said Sims, paying an unusual compliment. ‘I said a few moments ago that you had the smatterings of a brain. You also appear to have smatterings of courage. Well, we’ll have to try another method of making you talk. This method is invariably successful—but you’re giving us a lot of trouble.’
He rose, and, at a sign, the man with the scar and the man with the. squint pulled Ben out of his chair and began to march him from the room. Ahead walked Don Manuel. Behind came Sims. The other men were on either side. ‘Blimy, if we ain’t like the Five o’ Diamonds,’ thought Ben.
He was conducted through a narrow passage to a stone stairway. The stairway wound downwards, ending in total darkness. Someone switched on a spotlight, and the procession, no longer like a playing card, proceeded in single file along a narrower passage. It halted at a door on the left. A key was turned. A large key, that groaned. Then Ben was pushed into a damp-smelling cellar.
The spotlight now played on a wooden trestle at the end of the cellar. Seated on the trestle was Miss Holbrooke.
She raised her eyes apathetically as Ben stared at her, and for a moment seemed too weary to show any special interest; but as her eyes met those of Ben, they flickered with a new though still vague emotion …
The door was closed behind Ben. For an instant Ben thought his guard had left him, but Sims’s voice soon dispelled that illusion. With a hollow ring above the cold stone floor, it informed Ben why he had been brought here.
‘From some reason which is quite beyond my comprehension, Ben,’ said Sims; ‘but which I shall be interested to explore when I have time to delve into the subtleties of psychology, I have been more patient with you than, I think, I have been with anybody else in the whole of my life. You interest me, Ben. When you are dead, I hope to have the pleasure of dissecting the inside of your face. I feel sure I shall find some unusual and intriguing things there. But my patience is now at an end. There will be no more questions and answers in this new method of forcing you to talk. When I have finished talking myself, you will tell me what I want to know, or—’
He paused. If he intended the pause to be used by Ben for horrible visions, the intention succeeded. Before he continued his discourse, Ben had had his eyes gouged out, his tongue slit, and his thumbs pulled off.
‘You have shown a certain unintelligent bravery regarding your own skin,’ continued Sims presently. ‘The point you will have to decide is whether you care to show the same bravery regarding Miss Holbrooke’s skin.’
‘Wot’s that?’ cried Ben, and Miss Holbrooke suddenly took her eyes from his face and directed them towards Sims.
‘Don Manuel missed you with his knives because I had so instructed him,’ said Sims unemotionally. ‘You will realise that, if I had killed you, I should have also killed my chance of obtaining the information I want. The same does not apply to Miss Holbrooke. Remain obstinate, and Don Manuel will not miss.’
Ben gulped. They’d got him now! He’d have to give away one girl, to save another! Of all the foul, black-hearted tricks …
‘I am about to count five, Ben. Before I finish you will tell me who gave you the name of Don Manuel. If it was Molly Smith, as I suspect, you will also tell me how she obtained the information, and whether she obtained it before or after she left the ship. You may or may not understand the importance of that. It doesn’t matter in the least what you understand. But you may be sure it is important, and that I am going to find out whether the information has been passed on to anybody besides yourself. And finally, Ben, you will tell me where Molly Smith is, because I am convinced that you know. Now, then, are you ready? Good. One … two …’
Don Manuel raised his knife. Miss Holbrooke stared at him unbelievingly. She was something like a rabbit, held down by the malevolence of a snake. Ben felt as though he were being held down, too, by the malevolence of incapacity. What did you do in a case like this … what did you do?…
‘Three …’
Intelligence came to him suddenly. So suddenly, and so dazzlingly, that it almost hurt. Kill Miss Holbrooke? They wouldn’t do that! Why, wasn’t this a kidnapping scheme, and if they killed her wouldn’t they be killing the golden goose? Alive, she meant thousands of pounds. Dead, she meant nothing! This was just bluff, bluff …
‘Four …’
Then Ben’s brain leapt a stage farther. Sims’s compliment to it was being justified. Yes, it was bluff! But would Sims think Ben was clever enough to realise the bluff? Was not Ben, in fact, losing a fool’s advantage by revealing the little cleverness within him—and could he not play a useful card now, at this poignant moment, if he pretended that Sims had beaten him?…
&
nbsp; ‘Five!’
‘Oi!’ gasped Ben. ‘Oi!’
Don Manuel’s raised hand paused.
‘Put that dahn—yer’ve done me!’ shouted Ben. ‘I didn’t git it from ’er, I got it from Faggis, but I know where she is, ’cos I saw ’er afore I left that larst village, see, when she was runnin’ away.’
‘She’s in that village, then?’ inquired Sims sharply.
‘No!’ answered Ben. ‘She was givin’ some money to a chap ter drive ’er to a stashun. “I’m ’oofin’ it,” she ses, “and you better come too,” that was ter me, see, but I couldn’t, ’cos I was shut in the room, see, we was torkin’ through a winder, see, and then she spots you and carn’t wait, see, and orf she goes!’
Ben paused and stared at Sims to mark the effect. But Sims hardly seemed to hear him. His head was raised, and he appeared to be listening to something else.
‘Quick!’ he whispered suddenly. ‘Outside! All of you!’
The door was opened swiftly, there was a rapid exit, and then it swung to again. Ben and Miss Holbrooke were alone.
34
Confidences in a Cellar
Fate, dipping into the extremes of affluence and poverty with a disregard totally unknown to its own puppets, had thrown Ben and Miss Holbrooke together and had interwoven their destinies, but it was in this cold-stoned Spanish cellar, towards the conclusion of their strange adventure, that they actually conversed for the first time. Miss Holbrooke had only seen Ben once before, and then only for a few passing seconds. She barely saw him now, on this second occasion. And though he had seen her more often, it had nearly always been during her periods of unconsciousness, so that he had almost come to regard her in his thoughts as a fellow-creature doomed to perpetual silence and inactivity.
When Sims’s spotlight had played upon her, however, he had suddenly awakened to her vivid reality. She had looked pale and frail. The effects of the drugging were still on her. But her limbs now had movement, her face expression, and her eyes light. The reason for all this upheaval ceased to be a theory; it had become a living fact.
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