Warrant for X

by Philip MacDonald

  “Oh!” said the gentle voice suddenly, itself on a new note. “Don’t talk like that! I—I—I didn’t say I wouldn’t. I was just saying that I was——”

  “Frightened! I know. Well, forget it and don’t be a silly fool. Think of that money. God knows, you must want money or you’d never——”

  “You don’t understand! Of course I want the money!” The gentle voice was lower now; but still, by leaning a little forward, Sheldon Garrett could catch its words. “And I know I shan’t get into trouble—at least if everything is as you and he said it would be . . . but it isn’t that at all! It’s—it’s—well, I might get fond . . .” Here the gentle voice dropped so low that for the first time Garrett could not hear its words; only a little murmur reached his ear as the end of this sentence.

  “You make me tired!” The deep voice was contemptuous. “Nobody’s going to hurt it.”

  The note of sneering ire seemed to sting the owner of the gentle voice into some loss of temper herself. She said with a rather astonishing acerbity in her soft tones:

  “Well, suppose they don’t. It’s still . . . not right! And anyhow, what about him!” The gentle voice paused on an upward and, as it were, temporarily triumphant inflection.

  “Eh?” said the harsh voice quickly, and even in the tone of this one ejaculation Garrett could detect a sudden and intense interest. “What you talking about?”

  “You know very well what I’m talking about. Suppose I was willing to take the position and then do what I’m told and then get the money. That’s all right. But it doesn’t mean that on top of that I’m willing to be mixed up in what’s nothing more nor less than——”

  Garrett did not hear the end of this sentence for the excellent reason that it was never finished. Instead of words there came a sudden violent creaking of the settle; a soft thud as something struck the edge of the table; a rattling of overturned crockery.

  And then a whispered little scream of protest—from the gentle voice. It said:

  “Oh, don’t! You’re hurting!”

  Another creaking as someone resumed a seat. Then the deep voice again. It said in a tone much lower than it had used before and with a slowness which gave to it—at least to Garrett’s ear—a quality of increased menace:

  “You must be crazy!”

  A little stifled sound which might be a sob. And then: “You’re rough! You hurt my wrist.”

  “Damn your wrist!”

  Two stifled sounds, definitely sobs.

  “You’re—you’re—horrible today!”

  “You’re mad today. . . . Will you tell me, now, what crazy bee’s buzzing round in your bonnet?”

  “I—I—I didn’t mean anything. . . .”

  “You don’t say!”

  “Don’t look at me like that! You know I—I—why, you know I wouldn’t ever—ever say anything.”

  The deep voice said: “You might not get the chance! . . . And don’t sit there and snivel! Tell me, now, what crazy idea you’ve got in your head. And where you got it from. Come on, now!”

  “I—I—oh dear! . . . I didn’t mean anything. . . . It was something I heard the other——”

  The deep voice interrupted in a savage half whisper. “Something you heard?” said the deep voice on a note of restrained fury. “Where did you hear it? When? What was it? Come on, tell me now or we’ll go straight round and see Evans.” The words came very fast and the voice was so low that Garrett only just caught them.

  “The last time I was at the house. I was in the parlour there; and you and——”

  “Keyhole work, eh!” said the deep voice. There was a muffled note to its clearness now, as if the words had been said without the speaker opening her teeth.

  “No! No! I wasn’t listening. Really I wasn’t! I mean, not on purpose. I went over to that corner table there by the door to get a paper and the other man was talking very loud. I couldn’t help hearing. I——”

  “What—did—you—hear?”

  “Please don’t look at me like that. I didn’t hear anything, really. I mean it wasn’t—wasn’t sort of definite. It only gave me a sort of idea and then when I was thinking . . . I suppose I’m really very stupid. . . .”

  “You are! Go on.”

  “Well, I—I—when you got angry at me just now I was very silly and got sort of angry too. And then—well, I suppose I said more than I really meant. But I didn’t say anything really. Did I?”

  The harsh voice said: “You should be good for the job. You’re just like a kid yourself. But sometimes kids get silly ideas. And very often kids wag their tongues a lot too much.”

  “I didn’t mean to say anything, really I didn’t. It was just that I got angry a little because I thought you were angry at me.”

  “Hmm! It doesn’t matter what you meant to say. What does matter is what you think.”

  “I don’t think anything. Really I don’t. . . . I—I was just being silly.” There was a dreadful note of eagerness in the soft voice.

  The deep voice said less harshly: “That’s all right, then—if you’re on.”

  “You mean if I——”

  “If you take the job. And do exactly as you’re told. And remember, for your own damn fool sake, that nobody—is—going—to—get—hurt.”

  Pause.

  The gentle voice said then with a tremulous but definite decision: “I’ll do it.”

  The deep voice laughed; a musical and paradoxical sound at once genial and humourless. “You may seem a fool but you’re a sensible girl really. That amount of money, and a possible extra cut, isn’t bad for a few months work. Especially when the work’s what they’d call a cinch.”

  The gentle voice said: “How long will it be?”

  “You know enough not to ask silly questions like that. I can tell you how long it won’t be. It won’t be longer than six months.”

  “But it might be shorter. Do say it might be shorter.”

  The harsh voice chuckled again. “It not only might be shorter, it probably will be. And a damn sight shorter. . . . Here, let’s get out of this.”

  Sheldon Garrett stiffened in his corner. Instinctively he drew his body back, pressing it against the wall and the back of his settle as if he would merge himself into the wood and plaster. To his strained ears the sound of a teaspoon rattling against a cup in traditional demand for attention sounded loud as gunfire. He started. Behind his right shoulder the deal boards creaked. He sat motionless, holding his breath and expecting every moment sounds from the other side of the far partition which would tell that his presence had been heard.

  But it had not. The teacup was rattled again, furiously. In answer to it came first the creaking of the service door and then, more languid than ever, the genteel servitor. For a moment she crossed Garrett’s line of vision again but again she did not look at him. He heard her beside the next booth; heard the harsh voice ask the amount owing and heard the mincing tones which answered her. . . .

  And here Garrett made a mistake. He sat where he was. From behind the thin partition he could hear the chinking of money. Then came the inevitable “Thenk yew” of all Olde Tea Shoppes and the scraping bustle of departure.

  Ancilla drifted once more away. Feminine heels clattered on the boards as his two neighbours went towards the door. Careful to be silent, Garrett leaned swiftly forward, propping his body on a hand placed at the very outside edge of his settle. He caught one glimpse of them as they opened the door. Their backs were as unlike as their voices—one short and solid and square, very erect, with a subtle suggestion of unperverted masculinity about it; the other tall, slender and with that charm which makes a man want to see the face.

  They looked, somehow, just as he had imagined they would look. The short thick one—Deep Voice evidently—was clad in some dark, “respectable” clothing (the strange words sub fuse flooded into Garrett’s mind). But the tall slim Gentle Voice had subdued touches of colour about her. Her hat, certainly, was red; and the fur about her neck was o
f a delightful blue-y grey. And he thought there had been a coloured belt to the dark overcoat.

  He jerked himself back into hiding as they reached the door and one of them set fingers to its handle.

  The bell clinked dismally as the door opened and then was silent as it shut behind the outgoers. Its opening brought with it, for a flash of time, a ghostly eddy of cold, dank air.

  Garrett jumped to his feet, knocking the table with his knee so that cup and saucer and teapot rattled violently in the dusty silence. He was out of the booth and reaching for his coat and struggling into it in one continuous movement. He became aware, without time for surprise, that his heart was thudding as if he had been running. It is to be believed—though he is not quite sure upon the point himself—that in this dim sanctuary of the drear he even shouted for his bill. But no answer came and the service door did not creak and already the two women whose course he knew he must follow had been gone for many seconds.

  He rammed on his hat, fumbled in his pocket, remembered that he had no change and in two bounds was at the door. He wrenched it open and plunged into outer air.

  3

  For a moment, with a most curious mixture of relief and disappointment, he thought he had lost them. And then, by the grace of God and a street lamp under which they passed, he saw them. They were to his right as he stood with his back to the door. They were some thirty yards away. There was no mistaking the backs.

  He set off in pursuit. He wanted to run but restrained himself, for the sound of running feet in this brick solitude might well make his quarry turn to look. By dint of long and furious strides he was soon at a reasonable distance. The night was very still and he could hear the murmur of the women’s voices as they talked ahead of him. He crossed the road lest they should have any feeling of pursuit. He walked along upon the far pavement only a few yards behind them.

  But by having crossed the road he very nearly lost them again. For suddenly they went into a narrow, dark-mouthed turning to their right; a turning which, from his far side of the street, he had neither seen nor suspected. He plunged after them, again barely restraining himself from running.

  It was an alleyway between two houses into which they had gone—probably, Garrett thought with dim memories of the peculiarities of English law, some ancient right of way which must be preserved. It was a dark narrow place with high walls and the tapping of their heels was flung back to him twentyfold by dismal, long-drawn echoes. He walked like Agag. He had lost way and was now some fifteen yards behind. He would have liked to shorten this distance but with the necessity here for tiptoed progress he could not.

  The gloom lessened. At the far end of the alleyway there were lights and from the direction of the lights a steadily increasing rumble of traffic.

  Garrett diagnosed a main road. Fearful lest once in a busy thoroughfare he should lose the quarry, he threw part of discretion to the winds and ran with loping but still tiptoed strides until he was only some twenty-five feet behind them.

  They did not look round. He could hear their voices plainly now; could even catch some of the words. It was the deep voice which was speaking. He caught a mumble and then one or two half words and then, quite clearly:

  “. . . if he can see you tomorrow. Then we can go ahead. You should be there in under a fortnight.”

  The end of this sentence brought the women to the end of the alleyway. They turned to their right and were, therefore, for a few seconds hidden from Garrett’s eyes. He covered the last yards that he had to travel in leaping strides.

  He emerged from the mouth of the alleyway like a halfback getting away from the scrum. His right shoulder caught a man’s chest and his left arm a woman’s ribs. Even as he recovered himself he glared wildly to his right; then breathed relief. Not only were they in sight, but they were stationary.

  “Reely!” said the woman he had struck. But she sniffed and passed on. Garrett raised his hat to a departing back. He began to say:

  “You must pardon me, mad . . .” but was cut short by his other victim.

  This was a burly person in neckerchief and corduroy. He said, catching Garrett by the shoulder and swinging him round:

  “ ’Ere, ’ere! Wot’s the bleedin’ ’urry?”

  “So sorry! So sorry!” Garrett said feverishly. He stared anxiously over his victim’s shoulder. . . . Yes: they were still there. They were pretending to look into a shop window but probably they were still talking. If only he could be behind them, listening. Then he might . . .

  “I said, wot’s the bloody ’urry?” The hoarse voice recalled him to himself.

  He said desperately: “I’m very sorry. I was trying to catch a friend of mine.”

  Over the man’s shoulder he saw his quarry moving; and moving away from him! He looked for the first time closely at his interlocutor, gauging the man’s age as ten years more than his and his weight at only a few pounds more. He said briskly:

  “I’ve apologized. I’m busy. Get the hell out of it!” He wrenched his shoulder free from the calloused hand which still held it, put his own right hand flat against the spotted neckerchief—and thrust. The attacked staggered back, to come with a resounding thud against the end of the alley wall. He coughed and gasped and then lurched forward.

  But his adversary was gone. Threading syncopated way across the bus-ridden road were the short, square, swaggering back and the slim, tall, very feminine back, and close behind them, twice narrowly missing death, went Sheldon Garrett.

  The women reached the far curb. A violent hooting and a hoarse cry made Garrett leap back. A vast omnibus surged between him and the pavement. He ran round its tail and reached the curb. There were many people upon the pavement. They were all bent, it seemed to him, upon obstructing him. And they all were surging towards a great arched doorway. He reared himself to the full of his height and looked wildly over as many heads as he could. Ah! There they were. He had caught sight of the red hat. He began to plough his way through the crowd, heedless of glares and objurgation, and found himself in what he had sufficient knowledge of London to know was the booking hall of an underground station.

  Ah! There was the slim back beneath the red hat. It was before a ticket machine. He moved towards it.

  Ah! There was the square back, beside the other one. They moved away, walking towards a corner where showed the grilled gates of four lifts.

  Garrett followed; then remembered that he must have a ticket before he could pass the man at the door of what he called the elevator.

  In his own land he would have chanced the possibility of pushing by a ticket clipper, thrusting a note into the man’s hand, but, rightly or wrongly, he decided that a servant of London Railways was unlikely to permit this. He pulled out his notecase and ran wildly back, bumping oncoming passengers, towards the window of the booking office. Mercifully no one was at it. He slammed down a note, shouted, “Piccadilly Circus,” snatched the yellow pasteboard shot towards him and ran off without his change.

  As he crossed the hall people were still streaming into what he knew was the first liftful. He sighed relief and ran on, reaching the doors of the entrance to the lift behind a last thin rank.

  Over a fat, seal-covered shoulder he peered into the packed interior.

  Thank God! There they were, still with their backs towards him.

  The man before him moved forward, had his ticket clipped and stepped in.

  Garrett moved forward but was held back by a blue official arm. In his ear a hoarse cry sounded. “Next lift, please!” and across his face, barely an inch from it, shot the extending grille of the lift gate as it shut with a roaring clang.

  “God damn the luck to hell!” said Sheldon Garrett.

  With a gargantuan sigh the lift descended. Hopelessly he went to the next and, when it was full, descended to tubular warrens which for a long and entirely fruitless while he searched. . . .

  4

  Despondent, he came up to ground level again and pushed his way out to the street and found
a taxi and gave its driver vague orders. Eventually—perhaps half an hour later—he entered for the second time Ye Willow-Pattern Tea Shoppe. He stood just inside the door and waited. The service door creaked. Ancilla floated drearily towards him. As she drew near a spasm of something like human feeling flitted across her face beneath the pince-nez. But before she could speak Garrett had his notecase out. He said hurriedly:

  “I left without paying my check.”

  A spasm which might have been a smile had crossed the woman’s pale lips at the sight of the notecase, but at Garrett’s speech this was replaced by something like a frown. She said:

  “Cheque? Ay’m afraid we cannot . . .”

  Garrett said: “I beg your pardon. I meant my bill. I had tea here. I rushed out without paying, so I thought I’d . .

  He let his speech tail off but he took from the wallet a ten-shilling note and proffered it.

  It was taken, with an action most genteel, from between his fingers. The woman said:

  “Ay’m mech oblayged, Ay’m sewer.”

  Garrett, though he did not understand a word of this, took it correctly enough to be thanks. He hurried on to his purpose. He said, with a laugh which he meant to be genial but which frightened his own ears by its appalling artificiality: “Very strange thing! Those two ladies who sat in the booth next to mine . . .”

  “Booth?” Ancilla repeated.

  Garrett repressed an urgent desire to take the thin neck between his hands and squeeze. He turned and pointed. He said: “At the next table.”

  “Oh yais. Ay believe Ay remember. Two ladies. Yais.”

  Garrett smiled. He would like to have risked the jovial laugh again but feared it. He said, still smiling: