'Oh dear, oh dear. I told Troop Leader Lance. You see, I thought if one or two Scouts, in plain clothes, of course, brought up autograph books, it would please Miss Maydew, seem to show we appreciated... the time and trouble.' He said miserably, 'The St Luke's troop is always the least trustworthy...'

       A grey-haired man with a carpet bag put his head in at the door. He said,' Mrs 'Arris said as there was something wrong with the toilet.'

       'Ah, Mr Bacon,' the vicar said, 'so kind of you. Step into the hall. You'll find Mrs Harris there. A little stoppage, so I understand.'

       Mather looked at his watch. He said, 'I must speak to Miss Maydew directly—' A young man entered at a rush; he said to the vicar, 'Excuse me, Mr Harris, but will Miss Maydew be speaking?'

       'I hope not. I profoundly hope not,' the vicar said. 'It's hard enough as it is to keep the women from the stalls till after I've said a prayer. Where's my prayer book? Who's seen my prayer book?'

       'Because I'm covering it for the Journal, and if she's not, you see, I can get away—'

       Mather wanted to say: Listen to me. Your damned jumble is of no importance. My girl's in danger. She may be dead. He wanted to do things to people, but he stood there heavy, immobile, patient, even his private passion and fear subdued by his training. One didn't give way to anger, one plodded on calmly, adding fact to fact; if one's girl was killed, one had the satisfaction of knowing one had done one's best according to the standards of the best police force in the world. He wondered bitterly, as he watched the vicar search for his prayer book, whether that would be any comfort.

       Mr Bacon came back and said, 'She'll pull now,' and disappeared with a clank of metal. A boisterous voice said, 'Upstage a little, upstage, Miss Maydew,' and the curate entered. He wore suede shoes, he had a shiny face and plastered hair and he carried an umbrella under his arm like a cricket bat; he might have been returning to the pavilion after scoring a duck in a friendly, taking his failure noisily as a good sportsman should. 'Here is my C. O., Miss Maydew, on the O. P. side.' He said to the vicar, 'I've been telling Miss Maydew about our dramatics.'

       Mather said,' May I speak to you a moment privately, Miss Maydew?'

       But the vicar swept her away. 'A moment, a moment, first our little ceremony. Constance! Constance!' and almost immediately the ante-room was empty except for Mather and the journalist, who sat on the table swinging his legs, biting his nails. An extraordinary noise came from the next room: it was like the trampling of a herd of animals, a trampling suddenly brought to a standstill at a fence; in the sudden silence one could hear the vicar hastily finishing off the Lord's Prayer, and then Miss Maydew's clear immature principal boy's voice saying, 'I declare this jumble well and truly—' and then the trampling again. She had got her words wrong—it had always been foundation stones her mother laid; but no one noticed. Everyone was relieved because she hadn't made a speech. Mather went to the door; half a dozen boys were queued up in front of Miss Maydew with autograph albums; the St Luke's troop hadn't failed after all. A hard astute woman in a toque said to Mather, 'This stall will interest you. It's a Man's Stall,' and Mather looked down at a dingy array of pen-wipers and pipe-cleaners and hand-embroidered tobacco pouches. Somebody had even presented a lot of old pipes. He lied quickly, 'I don't smoke.'

       The astute woman said, 'You've come here to spend money, haven't you, as a duty? You may as well take something that will be of use. You won't find anything on any of the other stalls,' and between the women's shoulders, as he craned to follow the movements of Miss Maydew and the St Luke's troop, he caught a few grim glimpses of discarded vases, chipped fruit stands, yellowing piles of babies' napkins. 'I've got several pairs of braces. You may just as well take a pair of braces.'

       Mather, to his own astonishment and distress, said, 'She may be dead.'

       The woman said, 'Who dead?' and bristled over a pair of mauve suspenders.

       'I'm sorry,' Mather said. 'I wasn't thinking.' He was horrified with himself for losing grip. He thought: I ought to have let them exchange me. It's going to be too much. He said, 'Excuse me,' seeing the last Scout shut his album.

       He led Miss Maydew into the ante-room. The journalist had gone. He said, 'I'm trying to trace a girl in your company called Anne Crowder.'

       'Don't know her,' Miss Maydew said.

       'She only joined the cast yesterday.'

       'They all look alike,' Miss Maydew said, 'like Chinamen. I never can learn their names.'

       'This one's fair. Green eyes. She has a good voice.'

       'Not in this company,' Miss Maydew said, 'not in this company. I can't listen to them. It sets my teeth on edge.'

       'You don't remember her going out last night with a man, at the end of rehearsal?'

       'Why should I? Don't be so sordid.'

       'He invited you out too.'

       'The fat fool,' Miss Maydew said.

       'Who was he?'

       'I don't know. Davenant, I think Collier said, or did he say Davis? Never saw him before. I suppose he's the man Cohen quarrelled with. Though somebody said something about Callitrope.'

       'This is important, Miss Maydew. The girl's disappeared.'

       'It's always happening on these tours. If you go into their dressing-rooms it's always Men they are talking about. How can they ever hope to act? So sordid.'

       'You can't help me at all? You've no idea where I can find this man Davenant?'

       'Collier will know. He'll be back tonight. Or perhaps he won't. I don't think he knew him from Adam. It's coming back to me now. Collier called him Davis and he said, No, he was Davenant. He'd bought out Davis.'

       Mather went sadly away. Some instinct that always made him go where people were, because clues were more likely to be found among a crowd of strangers than in empty rooms or deserted streets, drove him through the hall. You wouldn't have known among these avid women that England was on the edge of war. 'I said to Mrs 'Opkinson, if you are addressing me, I said.'

       'That'll look tasty on Dora.' A very old woman said across a pile of artificial silk knickers, "E lay for five hours with 'is knees drawn up.' A girl giggled and said in a hoarse whisper, 'Awful. I'd say so. 'E put 'is fingers right down.' Why should these people worry about war? They moved from stall to stall in an air thick with their own deaths and sicknesses and loves. A woman with a hard driven face touched Mather's arm; she must have been about sixty years old; she had a way of ducking her head when she spoke as if she expected a blow, but up her head would come again with a sour unconquerable malice. He had watched her, without really knowing it, as he walked down the stalls. Now she plucked at him; he could smell fish on her fingers. 'Reach me that bit of stuff, dear,' she said. 'You've got long arms. No, not that. The pink,' and began to fumble for money—in Anne's bag.

 

 

 

 

 

4

 

 

Mather's brother had committed suicide. More than Mather he had needed to be part of an organization, to be trained and disciplined and given orders, but unlike Mather he hadn't found his organization. When things went wrong he killed himself, and Mather was called to the mortuary to identify the body. He had hoped it was a stranger until they had exposed the pale drowned lost face. All day he had been trying to find his brother, hurrying from address to address, and the first feeling he had when he saw him there was not grief. He thought: I needn't hurry, I can sit down. He went out to an A. B. C. and ordered a pot of tea. He only began to feel his grief after the second cup.

       It was the same now. He thought: I needn't have hurried, I needn't have made a fool of myself before that woman with the braces. She must be dead. I needn't have felt so rushed.

       The old woman said, 'Thank you, dear,' and thrust the little piece of pink material away. He couldn't feel any doubt whatever about the bag. He had given it her himself; it was an expensive bag, not a kind you would expect to find in Nottwich, and to make it quite conclusive, you could still see, within a little circle of twisted glass, the place where two initials had been removed. It was all over for ever; he hadn't got to hurry any more; a pain was on its way worse than he had felt in the A. B. C. (a man at the next table had been eating fried plaice and now, he didn't know why, he associated a certain kind of pain with the smell of fish). But first it was a perfectly cold calculating satisfaction he felt, that he had the devils in his hands already. Someone was going to die for this. The old woman had picked up a small bra and was testing the elastic with a malicious grin because it was meant for someone young and pretty with breasts worth preserving. 'The silly things they wear,' she said.

       He could have arrested her at once, but already he had decided that wouldn't do; there were more in it than the old woman; he'd get them all, and the longer the chase lasted the better; he wouldn't have to begin thinking of the future till it was over. He was thankful now that Raven was armed because he himself was forced to carry a gun, and who could say whether chance might not allow him to use it?

       He looked up and there on the other side of the stall, with his eyes fixed on Anne's bag, was the dark bitter figure he had been seeking, the hare-lip imperfectly hidden by a few days' growth of moustache.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

 

1

 

 

RAVEN had been on his feet all the morning. He had to keep moving; he couldn't use the little change he had on food, because he did not dare to stay still, to give anyone the chance to study his face. He bought a paper outside the post office and saw his own description there, printed in black type inside a frame. He was angry because it was on a back page: the situation in Europe filled the front page. By midday, moving here and moving there with his eyes always open for Cholmondeley, he was dog-tired. He stood for a moment and stared at his own face in a barber's window; ever since his flight from the café he had remained unshaven; a moustache would hide his scar, but he knew from experience how his hair grew in patches, strong on the chin, weak on the lip, and not at all on either side of the red deformity. Now the scrubby growth on his chin was making him conspicuous and he didn't dare go into the barber's for a shave. He passed a chocolate machine, but it would take only sixpenny or shilling pieces, and his pocket held nothing but half-crowns, florins, halfpennies. If it had not been for his bitter hatred he would have given himself up; they couldn't give him more than five years, but the death of the old minister lay, now that he was so tired and harried, like an albatross round his neck. It was hard to realize that he was wanted only for theft.

       He was afraid to haunt alleys, to linger in culs-de-sac because if a policeman passed and he was the only man in sight he felt conspicuous; the man might give him a second glance, and so he walked all the time in the most crowded streets and took the risk of innumerable recognitions. It was a dull cold day, but at least it wasn't raining. The shops were full of Christmas gifts, all the absurd useless junk which had lain on back shelves all the year was brought out to fill the windows; foxhead brooches, book-rests in the shape of the Cenotaph, woollen cosies for boiled eggs, innumerable games with counters and dice and absurd patent variations on darts or bagatelle,' Cats on a Wall', the old shooting game, and' Fishing for Gold Fish'. In a religious shop by the Catholic Cathedral he found himself facing again the images that angered him in the Soho café; the plaster mother and child, the wise men and the shepherds. They were arranged in a cavern of brown paper among the books of devotion, the little pious scraps of St Theresa. 'The Holy Family': he pressed his face against the glass with a kind of horrified anger that that tale still went on. 'Because there was no room for them in the inn'; he remembered how they had sat in rows on the benches waiting for Christmas dinner, while the thin precise voice read on about Caesar Augustus and how everyone went up to his own city to be taxed. Nobody was beaten on Christmas Day: all punishments were saved for Boxing Day. Love, Charity, Patience, Humility—he was educated; he knew all about those virtues; he'd seen what they were worth. They twisted everything; even that story in there, it was historical, it had happened, but they twisted it to their own purposes. They made him a God because they could feel fine about it all, they didn't have to consider themselves responsible for the raw deal they'd given him. He'd consented, hadn't he? That was the argument, because he could have called down 'a legion of angels' if he'd wanted to escape hanging there. On your life he could, he thought with bitter lack of faith, just as easily as his own father taking the drop at Wandsworth could have saved himself when the trap opened. He stood there with his face against the glass waiting for somebody to deny that reasoning, staring at the swaddled child with a horrified tenderness, 'the little bastard', because he was educated and knew what the child was in for, the double-crossing Judas and only one man to draw a knife on his side when the Roman soldiers came for him in the garden.

       A policeman came up the street, as Raven stared into the window, and passed without a glance. It occurred to him to wonder how much they knew. Had the girl told them her story? He supposed she had by this time. It would be in the paper, and he looked. There was not a word about her there.

       It shook him. He'd nearly killed her and she hadn't gone to them: that meant she had believed what he'd told her. He was momentarily back in the garage again beside the Weevil in the rain and dark with the dreadful sense of desolation, of having missed something valuable, of having made an irretrievable mistake, but he could no longer comfort himself with any conviction with his old phrase: 'give her time... it always happens with a skirt'. He wanted to find her, but he thought: what a chance, I can't even find Cholmondeley. He said bitterly to the tiny scrap of plaster in the plaster cradle: 'If you were a God, you'd know I wouldn't harm her: you'd give me a break, you'd let me turn and see her on the pavement,' and he turned with half a hope, but of course there was nothing there.

       As he moved away he saw a sixpence in the gutter. He picked it up and went back the way he had come to the last chocolate slot machine he had passed. It was outside a sweet shop and next a church hall, where a queue of women waited along the pavement for some kind of sale to open. They were getting noisy and impatient; it was after the hour when the doors should have opened, and he thought what fine game they would be for a really expert bag-picker. They were pressed against each other and would never notice a little pressure on the clasp. There was nothing personal in the thought; he had never fallen quite so low, he believed, as picking women's bags. But it made him idly pay attention to them, as he walked along the line. One stood out from the others, carried by an old rather dirty woman, new, expensive, sophisticated, of a kind he had seen before; he remembered at once the occasion, the little bathroom, the raised pistol, the compact she had taken from the bag.

       The door was opened and the women pushed in; almost at once he was alone on the pavement beside the slot machine and the jumble-sale poster: 'Entrance 6d.' It couldn't be her bag, he told himself, there must be hundreds like it, but nevertheless he pursued it through the pitch-pine door. 'And lead us not into temptation,' the vicar was saying from a dais at one end of the hall above the old hats and the chipped vases and the stacks of women's underwear. When the prayer was finished he was flung by the pressure of the crowd against a stall of fancy goods: little framed amateur water-colours of lakeland scenery, gaudy cigarette boxes from Italian holidays, brass ashtrays and a row of discarded novels. Then the crowd lifted him and pushed on towards the favourite stall. There was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't seek for any individual in the crowd, but that didn't matter, for he found himself pressed against a stall, on the other side of which the old woman stood. He leant across and stared at the bag; he remembered how the girl had said, 'My name's Anne,' and there, impressed on the leather, was a faint initial A, where a chromium letter had been removed. He looked up, he didn't notice that there was another man beside the stall, his eyes were rilled with the image of a dusty wicked face.

       He was shocked by it just as he had been shocked by Mr Cholmondeley's duplicity. He felt no guilt about the old War Minister, he was one of the great ones of the world, one of those who 'sat', he knew all the right words, he was educated, 'in the chief seats at the synagogues', and if he was sometimes a little worried by the memory of the secretary's whisper through the imperfectly shut door, he could always tell himself that he had shot her in self-defence. But this was evil: that people of the same class should prey on each other. He thrust himself along the edge of the stall until he was by her side. He bent down. He whispered, 'How did you get that bag?' but an arrowhead of predatory women forced themselves between; she couldn't even have seen who had whispered to her. As far as she knew it might have been a woman mistaking it for a bargain on one of the stalls, but nevertheless the question had scared her. He saw her elbowing her way to the door and he fought to follow her.

       When he got out of the hall she was just in sight, trailing her long old-fashioned skirt round a corner. He walked fast. He didn't notice in his hurry that he in his turn was followed by a man whose clothes he would immediately have recognized, the soft hat and overcoat worn like a uniform. Very soon he began to remember the road they took; he had been this way with the girl. It was like retracing in mind an old experience. A newspaper shop would come in sight next moment, a policeman had stood just there, he had intended to kill her, to take her out somewhere beyond the houses and shoot her quite painlessly in the back. The wrinkled deep malice in the face he had seen across the stall seemed to nod at him: 'You needn't worry, we have seen to all that for you.'

       It was incredible how quickly the old woman scuttled. She held the bag in one hand, lifted the absurd long skirt with the other; she was like a female Rip Van Winkle who had emerged from her sleep in the clothes of fifty years ago. He thought: they've done something to her, but who are 'they'? She hadn't been to the police; she'd believed his story; it was only to Cholmondeley's advantage that she should disappear. For the first time since his mother died he was afraid for someone else, because he knew too well that Cholmondeley had no scruples.

       Past the station she turned to the left up Khyber Avenue, a line of dingy apartment houses. Coarse grey lace quite hid the interior of little rooms save when a plant in a jardiniere pressed glossy green palms against the glass between the lace. There were no bright geraniums lapping up the air behind closed panes: those scarlet flowers belong to a poorer class than the occupants of Khyber Avenue, to the exploited. In Khyber Avenue they had progressed to the aspidistra of the small exploiters. They were all Cholmondeleys on a tiny scale. Outside No .61 the old woman had to wait and fumble for her key; it gave Raven time to catch her up. He put his foot against the closing door and said, 'I want to ask you some questions.'

       'Get out,' the old woman said. 'We don't 'ave anything to do with your sort.'

       He pressed the door steadily open. 'You'd better listen,' he said. 'It'd be good for you.' She stumbled backwards amongst the crowded litter of the little dark hall: he noted it all with hatred: the glass case with a stuffed pheasant, the moth-eaten head of a stag picked up at a country auction to act as a hat-stand, the black metal umbrella-holder painted with gold stars, the little pink glass shade over the gas-jet. He said, 'Where did you get that bag? Oh,' he said, 'it wouldn't take much to make me squeeze your old neck.'

       'Acky!' the old woman screamed. 'Acky!'

       'What do you do here, eh?' He opened one of the two doors at random off the hall and saw a long cheap couch with the ticking coming through the cover, a large gilt mirror, a picture of a naked girl knee-deep in the sea; the place reeked of scent and stale gas.

       'Acky!' the old woman screamed again. 'Acky!'

       He said, 'So that's it, eh? You old bawd,' and turned back into the hall. But she was supported now. She had Acky with her; he had come through to her side from the back of the house on rubber-soled shoes, making no sound. Tall and bald, with a shifty pious look, he faced Raven. 'What d'you want, my man?' He belonged to a different class altogether: a good school and a theological college had formed his accent; something else had broken his nose.

       'What names!' the old woman said, turning on Raven from under Acky's protecting arm.

       Raven said, 'I'm in a hurry. I don't want to break up this place. Tell me where you got that bag.'

       'If you refer to my wife's reticule,' the bald man said, 'it was given her—was it not, Tiny?—by a lodger.'

       'When?'

       'A few nights ago.'

       'Where is she now?'

       'She only stayed one night.'

       'Why did she give her bag to you?'

       'We only pass this way once,' Acky said, 'and therefore—you know the quotation?'

       'Was she alone?'

       'Of course she wasn't alone,' the old woman said. Acky coughed, put his hand over her face and pushed her gently behind him. 'Her betrothed,' he said, 'was with her.' He advanced towards Raven. 'That face,' he said, 'is somehow familiar. Tiny, my dear, fetch me a copy of the Journal.'

       'No need,' Raven said. 'It's me all right.' He said, 'You've lied about that bag. If the girl was here, it was last night. I'm going to search this bawdy house of yours.'

       'Tiny,' her husband said, 'go out at the back and call the police.' Raven's hand was on his gun, but he didn't move, he didn't draw it, his eyes were on the old woman as she trailed indeterminately through the kitchen door. 'Hurry, Tiny, my dear.'

       Raven said, 'If I thought she was going, I'd shoot you straight, but she's not going to any police. You're more afraid of them than I am. She's in the kitchen now hiding in a corner.' Acky said, 'Oh no, I assure you she's gone; I heard the door; you can see for yourself,' and as Raven passed him he raised his hand and struck with a knuckle-duster at a spot behind Raven's ear.

       But Raven had expected that. He ducked his head and was safely through in the kitchen doorway with his gun out.' Stay put,' he said. 'This gun doesn't make any noise. I'll plug you where you'll feel it if you move.' The old woman was where he had expected her to be, between the dresser and the door squeezed in a corner. She moaned, 'Oh, Acky, you ought to 'ave 'it 'im.'

       Acky began to swear. The obscenity trickled out of his mouth effortlessly like dribble, but the tone, the accent never changed; it was still the good school, the theological college. There were a lot of Latin words Raven didn't understand. He said impatiently, 'Now where's the girl?' But Acky simply didn't hear; he stood there in a kind of nervous seizure with his pupils rolled up almost under the lids; he might have been praying; for all Raven knew some of the Latin words might be prayers: 'Saccus stercoris', 'fauces'. He said again: 'Where's the girl?'

       'Leave 'im alone,' the old woman said. "E can't 'ear you. Acky,' she moaned from her corner by the dresser, 'it's all right, love, you're at 'ome.' She said fiercely to Raven, 'The things they did to 'im.'

       Suddenly the obscenity stopped. He moved and blocked the kitchen door. The hand with the knuckle-duster grasped the lapel of his coat. Acky said softly, 'After all, my Lord Bishop, you too, I am sure—in your day—among the haycocks,' and tittered.

       Raven said, 'Tell him to move. I'm going to search this house.' He kept his eye on both of them. The little stuffy house wore on his nerves, madness and wickedness moved in the kitchen. The old woman watched him with hatred from her corner. Raven said, 'My God, if you've killed her...' He said, 'Do you know what it feels like to have a bullet in your belly? You'll just lie there and bleed...' It seemed to him that it would be like shooting a spider. He suddenly shouted to her husband, 'Get out of my way.'

       Acky said, 'Even St Augustine...' watching him with glazed eyes, barring the door. Raven struck him in the face, then backed out of reach of the nailing arm. He raised his pistol and the woman screamed at him, 'Stop! I'll get 'im out.' She said, 'Don't you dare to touch Acky. They've treated 'im bad enough in 'is day.' She took her husband's arm; she only came half-way to his shoulder, grey and soiled and miserably tender. 'Acky, dear,' she said, 'come into the parlour.' She rubbed her old wicked wrinkled face against his sleeve. 'Acky, there's a letter from the bishop.'

       His pupils moved down again like those of a doll. He was almost himself again. He said, 'Tut-tut! I gave way, I think, to a little temper.' He looked at Raven with half-recognition. 'That fellow's still here, Tiny.'

       'Come into the parlour, Acky dear. I've got to talk to you.' He let her pull him away into the hall and Raven followed them and mounted the stairs. All the way up he heard them talking. They were planning something between them; as like as not when he was out of sight and round the corner they'd slip out and call the police. If the girl was really not here or if they had disposed of her, they had little to fear from the police. On the first-floor landing there was a tall cracked mirror; he came up the stairs into its reflection, unshaven chin, hare-lip and ugliness. His heart beat against his ribs; if he had been called on to fire now, quickly, in self-defence, his hand and eye would have failed him. He thought hopelessly: this is ruin. I'm losing grip, a skirt's got me down. He opened the first door to hand and came into what was obviously the best bedroom, a wide double-bed with a flowery eiderdown, veneered walnut furniture, a little embroidered bag for hair combings, a tumbler of Lysol on the washstand for someone's false teeth. He opened the big wardrobe door and a musty smell of old clothes and camphor balls came out at him. He went to the closed window and looked out at Khyber Avenue, and all the while he looked he could hear the whispers from the parlour: Acky and Tiny plotting together. His eye for a moment noted a large rather clumsy-looking man in a soft hat chatting to a woman at the house opposite; another man came up the road and they strolled together out of sight. He recognized the police at once. They mightn't, of course, have seen him there, they might be engaged on a purely routine inquiry. He went quickly out on to the landing and listened: Acky and Tiny were quite silent now. He thought at first they might have left the house, but when he listened carefully he could hear the faint whistling of the old woman's breath somewhere near the foot of the stairs.

       There was another door on the landing. He tried the handle. It was locked. He wasn't going to waste any more time with the old people downstairs. He shot through the lock and crashed the door open. But there was no one there. The room was empty. It was a tiny room almost filled by its double-bed, its dead fireplace hidden by a smoked brass trap. He looked out of the window and saw nothing but a small stone yard, a dustbin, a high sooty wall keeping out neighbours, the grey waning afternoon light. On the washstand was a wireless set, and the wardrobe was empty. He had no doubt what this room was used for.

       But something made him stay: some sense uneasily remaining in the room of someone's terror. He couldn't leave it, and there was the locked door to be accounted for. Why should they have locked up an empty room unless it held some clue, some danger to themselves? He turned over the pillows of the bed and wondered, his hand loose on the pistol, his brain stirring with another's agony. Oh, to know, to know. He felt the painful weakness of a man who had depended always on his gun. I'm educated, aren't I, the phrase came mockingly into his mind, but he knew that one of the police out there could discover in this room more than he. He knelt down and looked under the bed. Nothing there. The very tidiness of the room seemed unnatural, as if it had been tidied after a crime. Even the mats looked as if they had been shaken.

       He asked himself whether he had been imagining things. Perhaps the girl had really given the old woman her bag? But he couldn't forget that they had lied about the night she'd stayed with them, had picked the initial off the bag. And they had locked this door. But people did lock doors—against burglars, but in that case surely they left the key on the outside. Oh, there was an explanation, he was only too aware of that, for everything; why should you leave another person's initials on a bag? When you had many lodgers, naturally you forgot which night … There were explanations, but he couldn't get over the impression that something had happened here, that something had been tidied away, and it came over him with a sense of great desolation that only he could not call in the police to find this girl. Because he was an outlaw she had to be an outlaw too. Ah, Christ! that it were possible. The rain beating on the Weevil, the plaster child, the afternoon light draining from the little stone yard, the image of his own ugliness fading in the mirror, and from below stairs Tiny's whistling breath. For one short hour to see … He went back on to the landing, but something all the time pulled him back as if he were leaving a place which had been dear to him. It dragged on him as he went upstairs to the second floor and into every room in turn. There was nothing in any of them but beds and wardrobes and the stale smell of scent and toilet things and in one cupboard a broken cane. They were all of them more dusty, less tidy, more used than the room he'd left. He stood up there among the empty rooms listening; there wasn't a sound to be heard now; Tiny and her Acky were quite silent below him waiting for him to come down. He wondered again if he had made a fool of himself and risked everything. But if they had nothing to hide, why hadn't they tried to call the police? He had left them alone, they had nothing to fear while he was upstairs, but something kept them to the house just as something kept him tied to the room on the first floor.

       It took him back to it. He was happier when he had closed the door behind him and stood again in the small cramped space between the big bed and the wall. The drag at his heart ceased. He was able to think again. He began to examine the room thoroughly inch by inch. He even moved the radio on the washstand. Then he heard the stairs creak and leaning his head against the door he listened to someone he supposed was Acky mounting the stairs step by step with clumsy caution; then he was crossing the landing and there he must be, just outside the door waiting and listening. It was impossible to believe that those old people had nothing to fear. Raven went along the walls, squeezing by the bed, touching the glossy flowery paper with his fingers; he had heard of people before now papering over a cavity. He reached the fireplace and unhooked the brass trap.

       Propped up inside the fireplace was a woman's body, the feet in the grate, the head out of sight in the chimney. The first thought he had was of revenge; if it's the girl, if she's dead, I'll shoot them both, I'll shoot them where it hurts most so that they die slow. Then he went down on his knees to ease the body out.

       The hands and feet were roped, an old cotton vest had been tied between her teeth as a gag, the eyes were closed. He cut the gag away first; he couldn't tell whether she was alive or dead; he cursed her, 'Wake up, you bitch, wake up.' He leant over her, imploring her, 'Wake up.' He was afraid to leave her, there was no water in the ewer, he couldn't do a thing; when he had cut away the ropes he just sat on the floor beside her with his eyes on the door and one hand on his pistol and the other on her breast. When he could feel her breathing under his hand it was like beginning life over again.

       She didn't know where she was. She said, 'Please. The sun. It's too strong.' There was no sun in the room; it would soon be too dark to read. He thought: what ages have they had her buried there, and held his hand over her eyes to shield them from the dim winter light of early evening. She said in a tired voice, 'I could go to sleep now. There's air.'

       'No, no,' Raven said, 'we've got to get out of here,' but he wasn't prepared for her simple acquiescence. 'Yes, where to?'

       He said, 'You don't remember who I am. I haven't anywhere. But I'll leave you some place where it's safe.'

       She said, 'I've been finding out things.' He thought she meant things like fear and death, but as her voice strengthened she explained quite clearly, 'It was the man you said. Cholmondeley.'

       'So you know me,' Raven said. But she took no notice. It was as if all the time in the dark she had been rehearsing what she had to say when she was discovered, at once, because there was no time to waste.

       'I made a guess at somewhere where he worked. Some company. It scared him. He must work there. I don't remember the name. I've got to remember.'

       'Don't worry,' Raven said. 'It'll come back. But how is it you aren't crazy … Christ! you've got nerve.'

       She said, 'I remembered till just now. I heard you looking for me in the room, and then you went away and I forgot everything.'

       'Do you think you could walk now?'

       'Of course I could walk. We've got to hurry.'

       'Where to?'

       'I had it all planned. It'll come back. I had plenty of time to think things out.'

       'You sound as if you weren't scared at all.'

       'I knew I'd be found all right. I was in a hurry. We haven't got much time. I thought about the war all the time.'

       He said again admiringly, 'You've got nerve.'

       She began to move her hands and feet up and down quite methodically as if she were following a programme she had drawn up for herself. 'I thought a lot about that war. I read somewhere, but I'd forgotten, about how babies can't wear gas masks because there's not enough air for them.' She knelt up with her hand on his shoulder. 'There wasn't much air there. It made things sort of vivid. I thought, we've got to stop it. It seems silly, doesn't it, us two, but there's nobody else.' She said, 'My feet have got pins and needles bad. That means they are coming alive again.' She tried to stand up, but it wasn't any good.

       Raven watched her. He said, 'What else did you think?'

       She said, 'I thought about you. I wished I hadn't had to go away like that and leave you.'

       'I thought you'd gone to the police.'

       'I wouldn't do that.' She managed to stand up this time with her hand on his shoulder. 'I'm on your side.'

       Raven said, 'We've got to get out of here. Can you walk?'

       'Yes.'

       'Then leave go of me. There's someone outside.' He stood by the door with his gun in his hand listening. They'd had plenty of time, those two, to think up a plan, longer than he. He pulled the door open. It was very nearly dark. He could see no one on the landing. He thought: the old devil's at the side waiting to get a hit at me with the poker. I'll take a run for it, and immediately tripped across the string they had tied across the doorway. He was on his knees with the gun on the floor; he couldn't get up in time and Acky's blow got him on the left shoulder. It staggered him, he couldn't move, he had just time to think: it'll be the head next time, I've gone soft, I ought to have thought of a string, when he heard Anne speak: 'Drop the poker.' He got painfully to his feet; the girl had snatched the gun as it fell and had Acky covered. He said with astonishment, 'You're fine.' At the bottom of the stairs the old woman cried out, 'Acky, where are you?'

       'Give me the gun,' Raven said. 'Get down the stairs, you needn't be afraid of the old bitch.' He backed after her, keeping Acky covered, but the old couple had shot their bolt. He said regretfully, 'If he'd only rush I'd put a bullet in him.'

       'It wouldn't upset me,' Anne said. 'I'd have done it myself.'

       He said again, 'You're fine.' He nearly forgot the detectives he had seen in the street, but with his hand on the door he remembered. He said, 'I may have to make a bolt for it if the police are outside.' He hardly hesitated before he trusted her. 'I've found a hide-out for the night. In the goods yard. A shed they don't use any longer. I'll be waiting by the wall tonight fifty yards down from the station.' He opened the door. Nobody moved in the street; they walked out together and down the middle of the road into a vacant dusk. Anne said, 'Did you see a man in the doorway opposite?'

       'Yes,' Raven said. 'I saw him.'

       'I thought it was like—but how could it—?'

       'There was another at the end of the street. They were police all right, but they didn't know who I was. They'd have tried to get me if they'd known.'

       'And you'd have shot?'

       'I'd have shot all right. But they didn't know it was me.' He laughed with the night damp in his throat. 'I've fooled them properly.' The lights went on in the city beyond the railway bridge, but where they were it was just a grey dusk and the sound of an engine shunting in the yard.

       'I can't walk far,' Anne said. 'I'm sorry. I suppose I'm a bit sick after all.'

       'It's not far now,' Raven said. 'There's a loose plank. I got it all fixed up for myself early this morning. Why, there's even sacks, lots of sacks. It's going to be like home,' he said. 'Like home?' He didn't answer, feeling along the tarred wall of the goods yard, remembering the kitchen in the basement and the first thing very nearly he could remember, his mother bleeding across the table. She hadn't even troubled to lock the door: that was all she cared about him. He'd done some ugly things in his time, he told himself, but he'd never been able to equal that ugliness. Some day he would. It would be like beginning life over again: to have something else to look back to when somebody spoke of death or blood or wounds or home.

       'A bit bare for a home,' Anne said. 'You needn't be scared of me,' Raven said. 'I won't keep you. You can sit down a bit and tell me what he did to you, what Cholmondeley did, and then you can be getting along anywhere you want.'

       'I couldn't go any farther if you paid me.' He had to put his hands under her shoulders and hold her up against the tarred wood, while he put more will into her from his own inexhaustible reserve. He said, 'Hold on. We're nearly there.' He shivered in the cold, holding her with all his strength, trying in the dusk to see her face. He said, 'You can rest in the shed. There are plenty of sacks there.' He was like somebody describing with pride some place he lived in, that he'd bought with his own money or built with his own labour stone by stone.

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

Mather stood back in the shadow of the doorway. It was worse in a way than anything he'd feared. He put his hand on his revolver. He had only to go forward and arrest Raven—or stop a bullet in the attempt. He was a policeman; he couldn't shoot first. At the end of the street Saunders was waiting for him to move. Behind, a uniformed constable waited on them both. But he made no move. He let them go off down the road in the belief that they were alone. Then he followed as far as the corner and picked up Saunders. Saunders said, 'The d-d-devil.'

       'Oh no,' Mather said, 'it's only Raven—and Anne.' He struck a match and held it to the cigarette which he had been holding between his lips for the last twenty minutes. They could hardly see the man and woman going off down the dark road by the goods-yard, but beyond them another match was struck. 'We've got them covered,' Mather said. 'They won't be able to get out of our sight now.'

       'W-will you take them b-b-both?'

       'We can't have shooting with a woman there,' Mather said. 'Can't you see what they'd make of it in the papers if a woman got hurt? It's not as if he was wanted for murder.'

       'We've got to be careful of your girl,' Saunders brought out in a breath.

       'Get moving again,' Mather said. 'We don't want to lose touch. I'm not thinking about her any more. I promise you that's over. She's led me up the garden properly. I'm just thinking of what's best with Raven—and any accomplice he's got in Nottwich. If we've got to shoot, we'll shoot.'

       Saunders said, 'They've stopped.' He had sharper eyes than Mather. Mather said, 'Could you pick him off from here, if I rushed him?'

       'No,' Saunders said. He began to move forward quickly. 'He's loosened a plank. They are getting through.'

       'Don't worry,' Mather said. I'll follow. Bring up three more men and post one of them at the gap where I can find him. We've got all the gates into the yard picketed already. Bring the rest inside. But keep it quiet.' He could hear the slight shuffle of cinders where the two were walking; it wasn't so easy to follow them because of the sound his own feet made. They disappeared round a stationary truck and the light failed more and more. He caught a glimpse of their moving shadows and then an engine hooted and belched a grey plume of steam round him; for a moment it was like walking in a mountain fog. A warm dirty spray settled on his face; when he was clear he had lost them. He began to realize the difficulty of finding anyone in the yard at night. There were trucks everywhere; they could slip into one and lie down. He barked his shin and swore softly; then quite distinctly he heard Anne whisper, 'I can't make it.' There were only a few trucks between them; then the movements began again, heavier movements as if someone were carrying a weight. Mather climbed on to the truck and stared across a dark desolate waste of cinders and points, a tangle of lines and sheds and piles of coal and coke. It was like a No Man's Land full of torn iron across which one soldier picked his way with a wounded companion in his arms. Mather watched them with an odd sense of shame, as if he were a spy. The thin limping shadow became a human being who knew the girl he loved. There was a kind of relationship between them. He thought: how many years will he get for that robbery? He no longer wanted to shoot. He thought: poor devil, he must be pretty driven by now, he's probably looking for a place to sit down in, and there the place was, a small wooden workman's shed between the lines. Mather struck a match again and presently Saunders was below him waiting for orders. 'They are in that shed,' Mather said. 'Get the men posted. If they try to get out, nab them quick. Otherwise wait for daylight. We don't want any accidents.'

       'You aren't s-staying?'

       'You'll be easier without me,' Mather said. 'I'll be at the station tonight.' He said gently: 'Don't think about me. Just go ahead. And look after yourself. Got your gun?'

       'Of course.'

       'I'll send the men along to you. It's going to be a cold watch, I'm afraid, but it's no good trying to rush that shed. He might shoot his way clear out.'

       'It's t-t-t-tough on you,' Saunders said. The dark had quite come; it healed the desolation of the yard. Inside the shed there was no sign of life, no glimmer of light; soon Saunders couldn't have told that it existed, sitting there with his back to a truck out of the wind's way, hearing the breathing of the policeman nearest him and saying over to himself to pass the time (his mind's words free from any impediment) the line of a poem he had read at night-school about a dark tower: 'He must be wicked to deserve such pain.' It was a comforting line, he thought; those who followed his profession couldn't be taught a better; that's why he had remembered it.

 

 

 

 

 

3

 

 

'Who's coming to dinner, dear?' the Chief Constable asked, putting his head in at the bedroom door.

       'Never you mind,' Mrs Calkin said, 'you'll change.'

       The Chief Constable said: 'I was thinking, dear, as 'ow—'

       'As how,' Mrs Calkin said firmly.

       'The new maid. You might teach her that I'm Major Calkin.'

       Mrs Calkin said, 'You'd better hurry.'

       'It's not the Mayoress again, is it?' He trailed drearily out towards the bathroom, but on second thoughts nipped quietly downstairs to the dining-room. Must see about the drinks. But if it was the Mayoress there wouldn't be any. Piker never turned up; he didn't blame him. While there he might just as well take a nip; he took it neat for speed and cleaned the glass afterwards with a splash of soda and his handkerchief. He put the glass as an afterthought where the Mayoress would sit. Then he rang up the police station.

       'Any news?' he asked hopelessly. He knew there was no real hope that they'd ask him down for a consultation.

       The inspector's voice said, 'We know where he is. We've got him surrounded. We are just waiting till daylight.'

       'Can I be of any use? Like me to come down, eh, and talk things over?'

       'It's quite unnecessary, sir.'

       He put the receiver down miserably, sniffed the Mayoress's glass (she'd never notice that) and went upstairs. Major Calkin, he thought wistfully, Major Calkin. The trouble is I'm a man's man. Looking out of the window of his dressing-room at the spread lights of Nottwich he remembered for some reason the war, the tribunal, the fun it had all been giving hell to the conchies. His uniform still hung there, next the tails he wore once a year at the Rotarian dinner when he was able to get among the boys. A faint smell of moth-balls came out at him. His spirits suddenly lifted. He thought: my God, in a week's time we may be at it again. Show the devils what we are made of. I wonder if the uniform will fit. He couldn't resist trying on the jacket over his evening trousers. It was a bit tight, he couldn't deny that, but the general effect in the glass was not too bad, a bit pinched; it would have to be let out. With his influence in the county he'd be back in uniform in a fortnight. With any luck he'd be busier than ever in this war. 'Joseph,' his wife said, 'whatever are you doing?' He saw her in the mirror placed statuesquely in the doorway in her new black and sequined evening dress like a shop-window model of an outsize matron. She said, 'Take it off at once. You'll smell of moth-balls now all dinner-time. The Mayoress is taking off her things and any moment Sir Marcus—'

       'You might have told me,' the Chief Constable said. 'If I'd known Sir Marcus was coming... How did you snare the old boy?'

       'He invited himself,' Mrs Calkin said proudly. 'So I rang up the Mayoress.'

       'Isn't old Piker coming?'

       'He hasn't been home all day.'

       The Chief Constable slipped off his uniform jacket and put it away carefully. If the war had gone on another year they'd have made him a colonel: he had been getting on the very best terms with the regimental headquarters, supplying the mess with groceries at very little more than the cost price. In the next war he'd make the grade. The sound of Sir Marcus's car on the gravel brought him downstairs. The Lady Mayoress was looking under the sofa for her Pekinese, which had gone to ground defensively to escape strangers; she was on her knees with her head under the fringe saying, 'Chinky, Chinky,' ingratiatingly. Chinky growled out of sight. 'Well, well,' the Chief Constable said, trying to put a little warmth into his tones, 'and how's Alfred?'

       'Alfred?' the Mayoress said, coming out from under the sofa, 'it's not Alfred, it's Chinky. Oh,' she said, talking very fast, for it was her habit to work towards another person's meaning while she talked, 'you mean how is he? Alfred? He's gone again.'

       'Chinky?'

       'No, Alfred.' One never got much further with the Mayoress.

       Mrs Calkin came in. She said, 'Have you got him, dear?'

       'No, he's gone again,' the Chief Constable said, 'if you mean Alfred.'

       'He's under the sofa,' the Mayoress said. 'He won't come out.'

       Mrs Calkin said, 'I ought to have warned you, dear. I thought of course you would know the story of how Sir Marcus hates the very sight of dogs. Of course, if he stays there quietly...'

       'The poor dear,' Mrs Piker said, 'so sensitive, he could tell at once he wasn't wanted.'

       The Chief Constable suddenly could bear it no longer. He said, 'Alfred Piker's my best friend. I won't have you say he wasn't wanted,' but no one took any notice of him. The maid had announced Sir Marcus.

       Sir Marcus entered on the tips of his toes. He was a very old, sick man with a little wisp of white beard on his chin resembling chicken fluff. He gave the effect of having withered inside his clothes like a kernel in a nut. He spoke with the faintest foreign accent and it was difficult to determine whether he was Jewish or of an ancient English family. He gave the impression that very many cities had rubbed him smooth. If there was a touch of Jerusalem, there was also a touch of St James's, if of some Central European capital, there were also marks of the most exclusive clubs in Cannes.

       'So good of you, Mrs Calkin,' he said, 'to give me this opportunity...' It was difficult to hear what he said; he spoke in a whisper. His old scaley eyes took them all in. 'I have always been hoping to make the acquaintance...'

       'May I introduce the Lady Mayoress, Sir Marcus?' He bowed with the slightly servile grace of a man who might have been pawnbroker to the Pompadour. 'So famous a figure in the city of Nottwich.' There was no sarcasm or patronage in his manner. He was just old. Everyone was alike to him. He didn't trouble to differentiate.

       'I thought you were on the Riviera, Sir Marcus,' the Chief Constable said breezily. 'Have a sherry. It's no good asking the ladies.'

       'I don't drink, I'm afraid,' Sir Marcus whispered. The Chief Constable's face fell. 'I came back two days ago.'

       'Rumours of war, eh? Dogs delight to bark...'

       'Joseph,' Mrs Calkin said sharply, and glanced with meaning at the sofa.

       The old eyes cleared a little. 'Yes. Yes,' Sir Marcus repeated. 'Rumours.'

       'I see you've been taking on more men at Midland Steel, Sir Marcus.'

       'So they tell me,' Sir Marcus whispered. The maid announced dinner; the sound startled Chinky, who growled under the sofa, and there was an agonizing moment while they all watched Sir Marcus. But he had heard nothing, or perhaps the noise had faintly stirred his subconscious mind, for as he took Mrs Calkin in to the dining-room he whispered venomously, 'The dogs drove me away.'

       'Some lemonade for Mrs Piker, Joseph,' Mrs Calkin said. The Chief Constable watched her drink with some nervousness. She seemed a little puzzled by the taste, she sipped and tried again. 'Really,' she said, 'what delicious lemonade. It has quite an aroma.'

       Sir Marcus passed the soup; he passed the fish. When the entree was served, he leant across the large silver-plated flower bowl inscribed 'To Joseph Calkin from the assistants in Calkin and Calkin's on the occasion...' (the inscription ran round the corner out of sight) and whispered, ' Might I have a dry biscuit and a little hot water?' He explained, 'My doctor won't allow me anything else at night.'

       'Well, that's hard luck,' the Chief Constable said. 'Food and drink as a man gets older...' He glared at his empty glass: what a life, oh for a chance to get away for a bit among the boys, throw his weight about and know that he was a man.

       The Lady Mayoress said suddenly, 'How Chinky would love these bones,' and choked.

       'Who is Chinky?' Sir Marcus whispered.

       Mrs Calkin said quickly, 'Mrs Piker has the most lovely cat.'

       'I'm glad it isn't a dog,' Sir Marcus whispered. 'There is something about a dog,' the old hand gestured hopelessly with a piece of cheese biscuit, 'and of all dogs the Pekinese.' He said with extraordinary venom, 'Yap, yap, yap,' and sucked up some hot water. He was a man almost without pleasures; his most vivid emotion was venom, his main object defence: defence of his fortune, of the pale flicker of vitality he gained each year in the Cannes sun, of his life. He was quite content to eat cheese biscuits to the end of them if eating biscuits would extend his days.

       The old boy couldn't have many left, the Chief Constable thought, watching Sir Marcus wash down the last dry crumb and then take a white tablet out of a little flat gold box in his waistcoat pocket. He had a heart; you could tell it in the way he spoke, from the special coaches he travelled in when he went by rail, the Bath chairs which propelled him softly down the long passages in Midland Steel. The Chief Constable had met him several times at civic receptions; after the General Strike Sir Marcus had given a fully equipped gymnasium to the police force in recognition of their services, but never before had Sir Marcus visited him at home.

       Everyone knew a lot about Sir Marcus. The trouble was, all that they knew was contradictory. There were people who, because of his Christian name, believed that he was a Greek; others were quite as certain that he had been born in a ghetto. His business associates said that he was of an old English family; his nose was no evidence either way; you found plenty of noses like that in Cornwall and the west country. His name did not appear at all in Who's Who, and an enterprising journalist who once tried to write his life found extraordinary gaps in registers; it wasn't possible to follow any rumour to its source. There was even a gap in the legal records of Marseilles where one rumour said that Sir Marcus as a youth had been charged with theft from a visitor to a bawdy house. Now he sat there in the heavy Edwardian dining-room brushing biscuit crumbs from his waistcoat, one of the richest men in Europe.

       No one even knew his age, unless perhaps his dentist; the Chief Constable had an idea that you could tell the age of a man by his teeth. But then they probably were not his teeth at his age: another gap in the records.

       'Well, we shan't be leaving them to their drinks, shall we?' Mrs Calkin said in a sprightly way, rising from the table and fixing her husband with a warning glare, 'but I expect they have a lot to talk about together.'

       When the door closed Sir Marcus said, 'I've seen that woman somewhere with a dog. I'm sure of it.'

       'Would you mind if I gave myself a spot of port?' the Chief Constable said. 'I don't believe in lonely drinking, but if you really won't—Have a cigar?'

       'No,' Sir Marcus whispered, 'I don't smoke.' He said, 'I wanted to see you—in confidence—about this fellow Raven. Davis is worried. The trouble is he caught a glimpse of the man. Quite by chance. At the time of the robbery at a friend's office in Victoria Street. This man called on some pretext. He has an idea that the wild fellow wants to put him out of the way. As a witness.'

       'Tell him,' the Chief Constable said proudly, pouring himself out another glass of port, 'that he needn't worry. The man's as good as caught. We know where he is at this very moment. He's surrounded. We are only waiting till daylight, till he shows himself...'

       'Why wait at all? Wouldn't it be better,' Sir Marcus whispered, 'if the silly desperate fellow were taken at once?'

       'He's armed, you see. In the dark anything might happen. He might shoot his way clear. And there's another thing. He has a girl friend with him. It wouldn't do if he escaped and the girl got shot.'

       Sir Marcus bowed his old head above the two hands that lay idly, with no dry biscuit or glass of warm water or white tablet to occupy them, on the table. He said gently, 'I want you to understand. In a way it is our responsibility. Because of Davis. If there were any trouble: if the girl was killed: all our money would be behind the police force. If there had to be an inquiry the best counsel... I have friends too, as you may suppose...'

       'It would be better to wait till daylight, Sir Marcus. Trust me. I know how things stand. I've been a soldier, you know.'

       'Yes, I understand that,' Sir Marcus said.

       'Looks as if the old bulldog will have to bite again, eh? Thank God for a Government with guts.'

       'Yes, yes,' Sir Marcus said. 'I should say it was almost certain now.' The scaley eyes shifted to the decanter. 'Don't let me stop you having your glass of port, Major.'

       'Well, if you say so, Sir Marcus, I'll just have one more glass for a nightcap.'

       Sir Marcus said, 'I'm very glad that you have such good news for me. It doesn't look well to have an armed ruffian loose in Nottwich. You mustn't risk any of your men's lives, Major. Better that this—waste product—should be dead than one of your fine fellows.' He suddenly leant back in his chair and gasped like a landed fish. He said, 'A tablet. Please. Quick.'

       The Chief Constable picked the gold box from his pocket, but Sir Marcus had already recovered. He took the tablet himself. The Chief Constable said, 'Shall I order your car, Sir Marcus?'

       'No, no,' Sir Marcus whispered, 'there's no danger. It's simply pain.' He stared with dazed old eyes down at the crumbs on his trousers. 'What were we saying? Fine fellows, yes, you mustn't risk their lives. The country will need them.'

       'That's very true.'

       Sir Marcus whispered with venom, 'To me this—ruffian—is a traitor. This is a time when every man is needed. I'd treat him like a traitor.'

       'It's one way of looking at it.'

       'Another glass of port, Major.'

       'Yes, I think I will.'

       'To think of the number of able-bodied men this fellow will take from their country's service even if he shoots no one. Warders. Police guards. Fed and lodged at his country's expense when other men...'

       'Are dying. You're right, Sir Marcus.' The pathos of it all went deeply home. He remembered his uniform jacket in the cupboard: the buttons needed shining: the King's buttons. The smell of moth-balls lingered round him still. He said, 'Somewhere there's a corner of a foreign field that is for ever... Shakespeare knew. Old Gaunt when he said that—'

       'It would be so much better, Major Calkin, if your men take no risks. If they shoot on sight. One must take up weeds—by the roots.'

       'It would be better.'

       'You're the father of your men.'

       'That's what old Piker said to me once. God forgive him, he meant it differently. I wish you'd drink with me, Sir Marcus. You're an understanding man. You know how an officer feels. I was in the army once.'

       'Perhaps in a week you will be in it again.'

       'You know how a man feels. I don't want anything to come between us, Sir Marcus. There's one thing I'd like to tell you. It's on my conscience. There was a dog under the sofa.'

       'A dog?'

       'A Pekinese called Chinky. I didn't know as 'ow...'

       'She said it was a cat.'

       'She didn't want you to know.'

       Sir Marcus said, 'I don't like being deceived. I'll see to Piker at the elections.' He gave a small tired sigh as if there were too many things to be seen to, to be arranged, revenges to be taken, stretching into an endless vista of time, and so much time already covered—since the ghetto, the Marseilles brothel, if there had ever been a ghetto or a brothel. He whispered abruptly, 'So you'll telephone now to the station and tell them to shoot at sight? Say you'll take the responsibility. I'll look after you.'

       'I don't see as 'ow, as how...'

       The old hands moved impatiently: so much to be arranged. 'Listen to me. I never promise anything I can't answer for. There's a training depot ten miles from here. I can arrange for you to have nominal charge of it, with the rank of colonel, directly war's declared.'

       'Colonel Banks?'

       'He'll be shifted.'

       'You mean if I telephone?'

       'No. I mean if you are successful.'

       'And the man's dead?'

       'He's not important. A young scoundrel. There's no reason to hesitate. Take another glass of port.'

       The Chief Constable stretched out his hand for the decanter. He thought, with less relish than he would have expected, 'Colonel Calkin', but he couldn't help remembering other things. He was a sentimental man. He remembered his appointment: it had been 'worked', of course, no less than his appointment to the training depot would be worked, but there came vividly back to him his sense of pride at being head of one of the best police forces in the Midlands. 'I'd better not have any more port,' he said lamely. 'It's bad for my sleep and the wife...'

       Sir Marcus said, 'Well, Colonel,' blinking his old eyes, 'you'll be able to count on me for anything.'

       'I'd like to do it,' the Chief Constable said imploringly. 'I'd like to please you, Sir Marcus. But I don't see as how... The police couldn't do that.'

       'It would never be known.'

       'I don't suppose they'd take my orders. Not on a thing like that.'

       Sir Marcus whispered, 'Do you mean in your position—you haven't any hold?' He spoke with the astonishment of a man who had always been careful to secure his hold on the most junior of his subordinates.

       'I'd like to please you.'

       'There's the telephone,' Sir Marcus said. 'At any rate, you can use your influence. I never ask a man for more than he can do.'

       The Chief Constable said: 'They are a good lot of boys. I've been down often to the station of an evening and had a drink or two. They're keen. You couldn't have keener men. They'll get him. You needn't be afraid, Sir Marcus.'

       'You mean dead?'

       'Alive or dead. They won't let him escape. They are good boys.'

       'But he has got to be dead,' Sir Marcus said. He sneezed. The intake of breath seemed to have exhausted him. He lay back again, panting gently.

       'I couldn't ask them, Sir Marcus, not like that. Why, it's like murder.'

       'Nonsense.'

       'Those evenings with the boys mean a lot to me. I wouldn't even be able to go down there again after doing that. I'd rather stay what I am. They'll give me a tribunal. As long as there's wars there'll be conchies.'

       'There'd be no commission of any kind for you,' Sir Marcus said. 'I could see to that.' The smell of moth-balls came up from Calkin's evening shirt to mock him. 'I can arrange too that you shan't be Chief Constable much longer. You and Piker.' He gave a queer little whistle through the nose. He was too old to laugh, to use his lungs wastefully. 'Come. Have another glass.'

       'No. I don't think I'd better. Listen, Sir Marcus, I'll put detectives at your office. I'll have Davis guarded.'

       ' I don't much mind about Davis,' Sir Marcus said.' Will you get my chauffeur?'

       'I'd like to do what you want, Sir Marcus. Won't you come back and see the ladies?'

       'No, no,' Sir Marcus whispered, 'not with that dog there. ' He had to be helped to his feet and handed his stick; a few dry crumbs lay in his beard. He said, 'If you change your mind tonight, you can ring me up. I shall be awake. ' A man at his age, the Chief Constable thought charitably, would obviously think differently of death; it threatened him every moment on the slippery pavement, in a piece of soap at the bottom of a bath. It must seem quite a natural thing he was asking; great age was an abnormal condition: you had to make allowances. But watching Sir Marcus helped down the drive and into his deep wide car, he couldn't help saying over to himself, 'Colonel Calkin. Colonel Calkin. ' After a moment he added, 'C. B.'.

       The dog was yapping in the drawing-room. They must have lured it out. It was highly bred and nervous, and if a stranger spoke to it too suddenly or sharply, it would rush around in circles, foaming at the mouth, crying out in a horribly human way, its low fur sweeping the carpet like a vacuum cleaner. I might slip down, the Chief Constable thought, and have a drink with the boys. But the idea brought no lightening of his gloom and indecision. Was it possible that Sir Marcus could rob him of even that? But he had robbed him of it already. He couldn't face the superintendent or the inspector with this on his mind. He went into his study and sat down by the telephone. In five minutes Sir Marcus would be home. So much stolen from him already, surely there was little more he could lose by acquiescence. But he sat there doing nothing, a small plump bullying henpecked profiteer.

       His wife put her head in at the door. 'Whatever are you doing, Joseph?' she said. 'Come at once and talk to Mrs Piker.'

 

 

 

 

 

4

 

 

Sir Marcus lived with his valet who was also a trained nurse at the top of the big building in the Tanneries. It was his only home. In London he stayed at Claridge's, in Cannes at the Carlton. His valet met him at the door of the building with his Bath chair and pushed him into the lift, then out along the passage to his study. The heat of the room had been turned up to the right degree, the tape-machine was gently ticking beside his desk. The curtains were not drawn and through the wide double-panes the night sky spread out over Nottwich striped by the searchlights from Hanlow aerodrome. 'You can go to bed, Mollison. I shan't be sleeping.' Sir Marcus slept very little these days. In the little time left him to live a few hours of sleep made a distinct impression. And he didn't really need the sleep. No physical exertion demanded it. Now with the telephone within his reach he began to read first the memorandum on his desk, then the strips of tape. He read the arrangements for the gas drill in the morning. All the clerks on the ground floor who might happen to be needed for outside work were already supplied with gas masks. The sirens were expected to go almost immediately the rush hour was over and work in the offices had begun. Members of the transport staff, lorry drivers and special messengers would wear their masks immediately they started work. It was the only way to ensure that they wouldn't leave them behind somewhere and be caught unprotected during the hours of the practice and so waste in hospital the valuable hours of Midland Steel.

       More valuable than they had ever been since November, 1918. Sir Marcus read the tape prices. Armament shares continued to rise, and with them steel. It made no difference at all that the British Government had stopped all export licences; the country itself was now absorbing more armaments than it had ever done since the peak year of Haig's assaults on the Hindenburg Line. Sir Marcus had many friends, in many countries; he wintered with them regularly at Cannes or in Soppelsa's yacht off Rhodes; he was the intimate friend of Mrs Cranbeim. It was impossible now to export arms, but it was still possible to export nickel and most of the other metals which were necessary to the arming of nations. Even when war was declared, Mrs Cranbeim had been able to say quite definitely, that evening when the yacht pitched a little and Rosen was so distressingly sick over Mrs Ziffo's black satin, the British Government would not forbid the export of nickel to Switzerland or other neutral countries so long as the British requirements were first met. The future was very rosy indeed, for you could trust Mrs Cranbeim's word. She spoke directly from the horse's mouth, if you could so describe the elder statesman whose confidence she shared.

       It seemed quite certain now; Sir Marcus read, in the tape messages, that the two governments chiefly concerned would not either amend or accept the terms of the ultimatum. Probably within five days, at least four countries would be at war and the consumption of munitions have risen to several million pounds a day.

       And yet Sir Marcus was not quite happy. Davis had bungled things. When he had told Davis that a murderer ought not to be allowed to benefit from his crime, he had never expected all this silly business of the stolen notes. Now he must wait up all night for the telephone to ring. The old thin body made itself as comfortable as it could on the air-blown cushions: Sir Marcus was as painfully aware of his bones as a skeleton must be, wearing itself away against the leaden lining of its last suit. A clock struck midnight; he had lived one more whole day.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 5

 

 

1

 

 

RAVEN groped through the dark of the small shed till he had found the sacks. He piled them up, shaking them as one shakes a pillow. He whispered anxiously: 'You'll be able to rest there a bit?' Anne let his hand guide her to the corner. She said, 'It's freezing.'

       'Lie down and I'll find more sacks.' He struck a match and the tiny flame went wandering through the close cold darkness. He brought the sacks and spread them over her, dropping the match.

       'Can't we have a little light?' Anne asked. 'It's not safe. Anyway,' he said, 'it's a break for me. You can't see me in the dark. You can't see this.' He touched his lip secretly. He was listening at the door; he heard feet stumble on the tangle of metal and cinders and after a time a low voice spoke. He said, 'I've got to think. They know I'm here. Perhaps you'd better go. They've got nothing on you. If they come there's going to be shooting.'

       'Do you think they know I'm here?'

       'They must have followed us all the way.'

       'Then I'll stay,' Anne said. 'There won't be any shooting while I'm here. They'll wait till morning, till you come out.'

       'That's friendly of you,' he said with sour incredulity, all his suspicion of friendliness coming back. 'I've told you. I'm on your side.'

       'I've got to think of a way,' he said. 'You may as well rest now. You've all the night to think in.'

       'It is sort of—good in here,' Raven said, 'out of the way of the whole damned world of them. In the dark.' He wouldn't come near her, but sat down in the opposite corner with his automatic in his lap. He said suspiciously, 'What are you thinking about?' He was astonished and shocked by the sound of a laugh. 'Kind of homey,' Anne said.

       'I don't take any stock in homes,' Raven said. 'I've been in one.'

       'Tell me about it. What's your name?'

       'You know my name. You've seen it in the papers.'

       'I mean your Christian name.'

       'Christian. That's a good joke, that one. Do you think anyone ever turns the other cheek these days?' He tapped the barrel of the automatic resentfully on the cinder floor. 'Not a chance.' He could hear her breathing there in the opposite corner, out of sight, out of reach, and he was afflicted by the odd sense that he had missed something. He said, 'I'm not saying you aren't fine. I dare say you're Christian all right.'

       'Search me,' Anne said.

       'I took you out to that house to kill you...'

       'To kill me?'

       'What did you think it was for? I'm not a lover, am I? Girl's dream? Handsome as the day?'

       'Why didn't you?'

       'Those men turned up. That's all. I didn't fall for you. I don't fall for girls. I'm saved that. You won't find me ever going soft on a skirt.' He went desperately on, 'Why didn't you tell the police about me? Why don't you shout to them now?'

       'Well,' she said, 'you've got a gun, haven't you?'

       'I wouldn't shoot.'

       'Why not?'

       'I'm not all that crazy,' he said. 'If people go straight with me, I'll go straight with them. Go on. Shout. I won't do a thing.'

       'Well,' Anne said, 'I don't have to ask your leave to be grateful, do I? You saved me tonight.'

       'That lot wouldn't have killed you. They haven't the nerve to kill. It takes a man to kill.'

       'Well, your friend Cholmondeley came pretty near it. He nearly throttled me when he guessed I was in with you.'

       'In with me?'

       'To rind the man you're after.'

       'The double-crossing bastard.' He brooded over his pistol, but his thoughts always disturbingly came back from hate to this dark safe corner; he wasn't used to that. He said,'You've got sense all right. I like you.'

       'Thanks for the compliment.'

       'It's no compliment. You don't have to tell me. I've got something I'd like to trust you with, but I can't.'

       'What's the dark secret?'

       'It's not a secret. It's a cat I left back in my lodgings in London when they chased me out. You'd have looked after it.'

       'You disappoint me, Mr Raven. I thought it was going to be a few murders at least.' She exclaimed with sudden seriousness, 'I've got it. The place where Davis works.'

       'Davis?'

       'The man you call Cholmondeley. I'm sure of it. Midland Steel. In a street near the Metropole. A big palace of a place.'

       I've got to get out of here,' Raven said, beating the automatic on the freezing ground.

       'Can't you go to the police?'

       'Me?' Raven said. 'Me go to the police?' He laughed. 'That'd be fine, wouldn't it? Hold out my hands for the cuffs...'

       'I'll think of a way,' Anne said. When her voice ceased it was as if she had gone. He said sharply, 'Are you there?'

       'Of course I'm here,' she said. 'What's worrying you?'

       'It feels odd not to be alone.' The sour incredulity surged back. He struck a couple of matches and held them to his face, close to his disfigured mouth. 'Look,' he said, 'take a long look.' The small flames burnt steadily down. 'You aren't going to help me, are you? Me?'

       'You are all right,' she said. The flames touched his skin, but he held the two matches rigidly up and they burnt out against his fingers; the pain was like joy. But he rejected it; it had come too late; he sat in the dark feeling tears like heavy weights behind his eyes, but he couldn't weep. He had never known the particular trick that opened the right ducts at the right time. He crept a little way out of his corner towards her, feeling his way along the floor with the automatic. He said, 'Are you cold?'

       'I've been in warmer places,' Anne said.

       There were only his own sacks left. He pushed them over to her. 'Wrap 'em round,' he said.

       'Have you got enough?'

       'Of course I have. I can look after myself,' he said sharply, as if he hated her. His hands were so cold that he would have found it hard to use the automatic. 'I've got to get out of here.'

       'We'll think of a way. Better have a sleep.'

       'I can't sleep,' he said, 'I've been dreaming bad dreams lately.'

       'We might tell each other stories? It's about the children's hour.'

       'I don't know any stories.'

       'Well, I'll tell you one. What kind? A funny one?'

       'They never seem funny to me.'

       'The three bears might be suitable.'

       'I don't want anything financial. I don't want to hear anything about money.'

       She could just see him now that he had come closer, a dark hunched shape that couldn't understand a word she was saying. She mocked him gently, secure in the knowledge that he would never realize she was mocking him. She said:' I'll tell you about the fox and the cat. Well, this cat met a fox in a forest, and she'd always heard the fox cracked up for being wise. So she passed him the time of day politely and asked how he was getting along. But the fox was proud. He said, "How dare you ask me how I get along, you hungry mouse-hunter? What do you know about the world?"

       "Well, I do know one thing," the cat said. "What's that?" said the fox. "How to get away from the dogs," the cat said. "When they chase me, I jump into a tree." Then the fox went all high and mighty and said, "You've only one trick and I've a hundred. I've got a sack full of tricks. Come along with me and I'll show you." Just then a hunter ran quietly up with four hounds. The cat sprang into the tree and cried, "Open your sack, Mr Fox, open your sack." But the dogs held him with their teeth. So the cat laughed at him saying, "Mr Know-all, if you'd had just this one trick in your sack, you'd be safe up the tree with me now.'" Anne stopped. She whispered to the dark shape beside her, 'Are you asleep?'

       'No,' Raven said, 'I'm not asleep.'

       'It's your turn now.'

       'I don't know any stories,' Raven said, sullenly, miserably.

       'No stories like that? You haven't been brought up properly.'

       'I'm educated all right,' he protested, 'but I've got things on my mind. Plenty of them.'

       'Cheer up. There's someone who's got more.'

       'Who's that?'

       'The fellow who began all this, who killed the old man, you know who I mean. Davis's friend.'

       'What do you say?' he said furiously. 'Davis's friend?' He held his anger in. 'It's not the killing I mind; it's the double-crossing.'

       'Well, of course,' Anne said cheerily, making conversation under the pile of sacks, 'I don't mind a little thing like killing myself.'

       He looked up and tried to see her through the dark, hunting a hope. 'You don't mind that?'

       'But there are killings and killings,' Anne said. 'If I had the man here who killed—what was the old man's name?'

       'I don't remember.'

       'Nor do I. We couldn't pronounce it anyway.'

       'Go on. If he was here...'

       'Why, I'd let you shoot him without raising a ringer. And I'd say "Well done" to you afterwards.' She warmed to the subject. 'You remember what I told you, that they can't invent gas masks for babies to wear? That's the kind of thing he'll have on his mind. The mothers alive in their masks watching the babies cough up their insides.'

       He said stubbornly, 'The poor ones'll be lucky. And what do I care about the rich? This isn't a world I'd bring children into.' She could just see his tense crouching figure. 'It's just their selfishness,' he said. 'They have a good time and what do they mind if someone's born ugly? Three minutes in bed or against a wall, and then a lifetime for the one that's born. Mother love,' he began to laugh, seeing quite clearly the kitchen table, the carving knife on the linoleum, the blood all over his mother's dress. He explained, 'You see I'm educated. In one of His Majesty's own homes. They call them that—homes. What do you think a home means?' But he didn't allow her time to speak. 'You are wrong. You think it means a husband in work, a nice gas cooker and a double-bed, carpet slippers and cradles and the rest. That's not a home. A home's solitary confinement for a kid that's caught talking in the chapel and the birch for almost anything you do. Bread and water. A sergeant knocking you around if you try to lark a bit. That's a home.'

       'Well, he was trying to alter all that, wasn't he? He was poor like we are.'

       'Who are you talking about?'

       'Old what's-his-name. Didn't you read about him in the papers? How he cut down all the army expenses to help clear the slums? There were photographs of him opening new flats, talking to the children. He wasn't one of the rich. He wouldn't have gone to war. That's why they shot him. You bet there are fellows making money now out of him being dead. And he'd done it all himself too, the obituaries said. His father was a thief and his mother committed—'

       'Suicide?' Raven whispered. 'Did you read how she...'

       'She drowned herself.'

       'The things you read,' Raven said. 'It's enough to make a fellow think.'

       'Well, I'd say the fellow who killed old what's-his-name had something to think about.'

       'Maybe,' Raven said, 'he didn't know all the papers know. The men who paid him, they knew. Perhaps if we knew all there was to know, the kind of breaks the fellow had had, we'd, see his point of view.'

       'It'd take a lot of talking to make me see that. Anyway we'd better sleep now.'

       'I've got to think,' Raven said.

       'You'll think better after you've had a nap.'

       But it was far too cold for him to sleep; he had no sacks to cover himself with, and his black tight overcoat was worn almost as thin as cotton. Under the door came a draught which might have travelled down the frosty rails from Scotland, a north-east wind, bringing icy fogs from the sea. He thought to himself: I didn't mean the old man any harm, there was nothing personal... 'I'd let you shoot him, and afterwards I'd say, "Well done".' He had a momentary crazy impulse to get up and go through the door with his automatic in his hand and let them shoot. 'Mr Know-all,' she could say then, 'if you'd only had this one trick in your sack, the dogs wouldn't...' But then it seemed to him that this knowledge he had gained of the old man was only one more count against Chol-mon-deley. Chol-mon-deley had known all this. There'd be one more bullet in his belly for this, and one more for Cholmondeley's master. But how was he to find the other man? He had only the memory of a photograph to guide him, a photograph which the old Minister had somehow connected with the letter of introduction Raven had borne, a young scarred boy's face which was probably an old man's now.

       Anne said, 'Are you asleep?'

       'No,' Raven said. 'What's troubling you?'

       'I thought I heard someone moving.'

       He listened. It was only the wind tapping a loose board outside. He said, 'You go to sleep. You needn't be scared. They won't come till it's light enough to see.' He thought: where would those two have met when they were so young? Surely not in the kind of home he'd known, the cold stone stairs, the cracked commanding bell, the tiny punishment cells. Quite suddenly he fell asleep and the old Minister was coming towards him saying, 'Shoot me. Shoot me in the eyes,' and Raven was a child with a catapult in his hands. He wept and wouldn't shoot and the old Minister said, 'Shoot, dear child. We'll go home together. Shoot.'

       Raven woke again as suddenly. In his sleep his hand had gripped the automatic tight. It was pointed at the corner where Anne slept. He gazed with horror into the dark, hearing a whisper like the one he had heard through the door when the secretary tried to call out. He said, 'Are you asleep? What are you saying?'

       Anne said: 'I'm awake.' She said defensively, 'I was just praying.'

       'Do you believe in God?'

       'I don't know,' Anne said. 'Sometimes maybe. It's a habit, praying. It doesn't do any harm. It's like crossing your ringers when you walk under a ladder. We all need any luck that's going.'

       Raven said, 'We did a lot of praying in the home. Twice a day, and before meals too.'

       'It doesn't prove anything.'

       'No, it doesn't prove anything. Only you get sort of mad when everything reminds you of what's over and done with. Sometimes you want to begin fresh, and then someone praying, or a smell, or something you read in the paper, and it's all back again, the places and the people.' He came a little nearer in the cold shed for company; it made you feel more than usually alone to know that they were waiting for you outside, waiting for daylight so that they could take you without any risk of your escaping or of your firing first. He had a good mind to send her out directly it was day and stick where he was and shoot it out with them. But that meant leaving Chol-mon-deley and his employer free; it was just what would please them most. He said, 'I was reading once—I like reading—I'm educated, something about psicko—psicko—'

       'Leave it at that,' Anne said. 'I know what you mean.'

       'It seems your dreams mean things. I don't mean like tea-leaves or cards.'

       'I knew someone once,' Anne said. 'She was so good with the cards it gave you the creeps. She used to have those cards with queer pictures on them. The Hanged Man...'

       'It wasn't like that,' Raven said. 'It was—Oh, I don't know properly. I couldn't understand it all. But it seems if you told your dreams... It was like you carry a load around you; you are born with some of it because of what your father and mother were and their fathers... seems as if it goes right back, like it says in the Bible about the sins being visited. Then when you're a kid the load gets bigger; all the things you need to do and can't; and then all the things you do. They get you either way.' He leant his sad killer's face on his hands. 'It's like confessing to a priest. Only when you've confessed you go and do it all over again. I mean you tell these doctors everything, every dream you have, and afterwards you don't want to do it. But you have to tell them everything.'

       'Even the flying pigs?' Anne said.

       'Everything. And when you've told everything it's gone.'

       'It sounds phoney to me,' Anne said.

       'I don't suppose I've told it right. But it's what I read. I thought that maybe it might be worth a trial.'

       'Life's full of funny things. Me and you being here. You thinking you wanted to kill me. Me thinking we can stop a war. Your psicko isn't any funnier than that.'

       'You see it's getting rid of it all that counts,' Raven said. 'It's not what the doctor does. That's how it seemed to me. Like when I told you about the home, and the bread and water and the prayers, they didn't seem so important afterwards.' He swore softly and obscenely, under his breath. 'I'd always said I wouldn't go soft on a skirt. I always thought my lip'd save me. It's not safe to go soft. It makes you slow. I've seen it happen to other fellows. They've always landed in gaol or got a razor in their guts. Now I've gone soft, as soft as all the rest.'

       'I like you,' Anne said. 'I'm your friend—'

       'I'm not asking anything,' Raven said. 'I'm ugly and I know it. Only one thing. Be different. Don't go to the police. Most skirts do. I've seen it happen. But maybe you aren't a skirt. You're a girl.'

       'I'm someone's girl.'

       'That's all right with me,' he exclaimed with painful pride in the coldness and the dark. 'I'm not asking anything but that, that you don't grass on me.'

       'I'm not going to the police,' Anne said. 'I promise you I won't I like you as well as any man—except my friend.'

       'I thought as how perhaps I could tell you a thing or two—dreams—just as well as any doctor. You see I know doctors. You can't trust them. I went to one before I came down here. I wanted him to alter this lip. He tried to put me to sleep with gas. He was going to call the police. You can't trust them. But I could trust you.'

       'You can trust me all right,' Anne said. 'I won't go to the police. But you'd better sleep first and tell me your dreams after if you want to. It's a long night.'

       His teeth suddenly chattered uncontrollably with the cold and Anne heard him. She put out a hand and touched his coat. 'You're cold,' she said. 'You've given me all the sacks.'

       'I don't need 'em. I've got a coat.'

       'We're friends, aren't we?' Anne said. 'We are in this together. You take two of these sacks.'

       He said, 'There'll be some more about. I'll look,' and he struck a match and felt his way round the wall. 'Here are two,' he said, sitting down farther away from her, empty-handed, out of reach. He said, 'I can't sleep. Not properly. I had a dream just now. About the old man.'

       'What old man?'

       'The old man that got murdered. I dreamed I was a kid with a catapult and he was saying, "Shoot me through the eyes," and I was crying and he said, "Shoot me through the eyes, dear child."'

       'Search me for a meaning,' Anne said.

       'I just wanted to tell it you.'

       'What did he look like?'

       'Like he did look.' Hastily he added, 'Like I've seen in the photographs.' He brooded over his memories with a low passionate urge towards confession. There had never in his life been anyone he could trust till now. He said, 'You don't mind hearing these things?' and listened with a curious deep happiness to her reply, 'We are friends.' He said, 'This is the best night I've ever had.' But there were things he still couldn't tell her. His happiness was incomplete till she knew everything, till he had shown his trust completely. He didn't want to shock or pain her; he led slowly towards the central revelation. He said, 'I've had other dreams of being a kid. I've dreamed I opened a door, a kitchen door, and there was my mother—she'd cut her throat—she looked ugly—her head nearly off—she sawn at it—with a bread knife—'

       Anne said, 'That wasn't a dream.'

       'No,' he said, 'you're right, that wasn't a dream.' He waited. He could feel her sympathy move silently towards him in the dark. He said, 'That was ugly, wasn't it? You'd think you couldn't beat that for ugliness, wouldn't you? She hadn't even thought enough of me to lock the door so as I shouldn't see. And after that, there was a Home. You know all about that. You'd say that was ugly too, but it wasn't as ugly as that was. And they educated me too properly so as I could understand the things I read in the papers. Like this psicko business. And write a good hand and speak the King's English. I got beaten a lot at the start, solitary confinement, bread and water, all the rest of the homey stuff. But that didn't go on when they'd educated me. I was too clever for them after that. They could never put a thing on me. They suspected all right, but they never had the proof. Once the chaplain tried to frame me. They were right when they told us the day we left about it was like life. Jim and me and a bunch of soft kids.' He said bitterly, 'This is the first time they've had anything on me and I'm innocent.'

       'You'll get away,' Anne said. 'We'll think up something together.'

       'It sounds good your saying "together" like that, but they've got me this time. I wouldn't mind if I could get that Chol-mon-deley and his boss first.' He said with a kind of nervous pride, 'Would you be surprised if I'd told you I'd killed a man?' It was like the first fence; if he cleared that, he would have confidence... 'Who?'

       'Did you ever hear of Battling Kite?'

       'No.'

       He laughed with a sacred pleasure. 'I'm trusting you with my life now. If you'd told me twenty-four hours ago that I'd trust my life to... but of course I haven't given you any proof. I was doing the races then. Kite had a rival gang. There wasn't anything else to do. He'd tried to bump my boss off on the course. Half of us took a fast car back to town. He thought we were on the train with him. But we were on the platform, see, when the train came in. We got round him directly he got outside the carriage. I cut his throat and the others held him up till we were all through the barrier in a bunch. Then we dropped him by the bookstall and did a bolt.' He said, 'You see it was his lot or our lot. They'd had razors out on the course. It was war.'

       After a while Anne said, 'Yes. I can see that. He had his chance.'

       'It sounds ugly,' Raven said, 'Funny thing is, it wasn't ugly. It was natural.'

       'Did you stick to that game?'

       'No. It wasn't good enough. You couldn't trust the others. They either went soft or else they got reckless. They didn't use their brains.' He said, 'I wanted to tell you about Kite. I'm not sorry. I haven't got religion. Only you said about being friendly and I don't want you to get any wrong ideas. It was that mix-up with Kite brought me up against Chol-mon-deley. I can see now, he was only in the racing game so as he could meet people. I thought he was a mug.'

       'We've got a long way from dreams.'

       'I was coming back to them,' Raven said. 'I suppose killing Kite like that made me nervous.' His voice trembled very slightly from fear and hope, hope because she had accepted one killing so quietly and might, after all, take back what she had said: ('Well done', 'I wouldn't raise a finger'); fear because he didn't really believe that you could put such perfect trust in another and not be deceived. But it'd be fine, he thought, to be able to tell everything, to know that another person knew and didn't care; it would be like going to sleep for a long while. He said, 'That spell of sleep I had just now was the first for two—three—I don't know how many nights. It looks as if I'm not tough enough after all.'

       'You seem tough enough to me,' Anne said. 'Don't let's hear any more about Kite.'

       'No one will hear any more about Kite. But if I was to tell you—' he ran away from the revelation.' I've been dreaming a lot lately. It was an old woman I killed, not Kite. I heard her calling out through a door and I tried to open the door, but she held the handle. I shot at her through the wood, but she held the handle tight, I had to kill her to open the door. Then I dreamed she was still alive and I shot her through the eyes. But even that—it wasn't ugly.'

       'You are tough enough in your dreams,' Anne said.

       'I killed an old man too in that dream. Behind his desk. I had a silencer. He fell behind it. I didn't want to hurt him. He didn't mean anything to me. I pumped him full. Then I put a bit of paper in his hand. I didn't have to take anything.'

       'What do you mean—you didn't have to take?' Raven said, 'They hadn't paid me to take anything. Chol-mon-deley and his boss.'

       'It wasn't a dream.'

       'No. It wasn't a dream.' The silence frightened him. He began to talk rapidly to fill it. 'I didn't know the old fellow was one of us. I wouldn't have touched him if I'd known he was like that. All this talk of war. It doesn't mean a thing to me. Why should I care if there's a war? There's always been a war for me. You talk a lot about the kids. Can't you have a bit of pity for the men? It was me or him. Two hundred pounds when I got back and fifty pounds down. It's a lot of money. It was only Kite over again. It was just as easy as it was with Kite.' He said, 'Are you going to leave me now?' and in silence Anne could hear his rasping anxious breath. She said at last, 'No. I'm not going to leave you.'

       He said, 'That's good. Oh, that's good,' putting out his hand, feeling hers cold as ice on the sacking. He put it for a moment against his unshaven cheek; he wouldn't touch it with his malformed lip. He said, 'It feels good to trust someone with everything.'

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

Anne waited for a long time before she spoke again. She wanted her voice to sound right, not to show her repulsion. Then she tried it on him, but all she could think of to say was again, 'I'm not going to leave you.' She remembered very clearly in the dark all she had read of the crime: the old woman secretary shot through the eyes lying in the passage, the brutally smashed skull of the old Socialist. The papers had called it the worst political murder since the day when the King and Queen of Serbia were thrown through the windows of their palace to ensure the succession of the war-time hero king.

       Raven said again, 'It's good to be able to trust someone like this,' and suddenly his mouth which had never before struck her as particularly ugly came to mind and she could have retched at the memory. Nevertheless, she thought, I must go on with this, I mustn't let him know, he must find Cholmondeley and Cholmondeley's boss and then... She shrank from him into the dark.

       He said, 'They are out there waiting now. They've got cops down from London.'

       'From London?'

       'It was all in the papers,' he said with pride. 'Detective-Sergeant Mather from the Yard.'

       She could hardly restrain a cry of desolation and horror. 'Here?'

       'He may be outside now.'

       'Why doesn't he come in?'

       'They'd never get me in the dark. And they'll know by now that you are here. They wouldn't be able to shoot.'

       'And you—you would?'

       'There's no one I mind hurting,' Raven said. 'How are you going to get out when it's daylight?'

       'I shan't wait till then. I only want just light enough to see my way. And see to shoot. They won't be able to fire first; they won't be able to shoot to kill. That's what gives me a break. I only want a few clear hours. If I get away, they'll never guess where to find me. Only you'll know I'm at Midland Steel.'

       She felt a desperate hatred. 'You'll just shoot like that in cold blood?'

       'You said you were on my side, didn't you?'

       'Oh yes,' she said warily, 'yes,' trying to think. It was getting too much to have to save the world—and Jimmy. If it came to a show-down the world would have to take second place. And what, she wondered, is Jimmy thinking? She knew his heavy humourless rectitude; it would take more than Raven's head on a platter to make him understand why she had acted as she had with Raven and Cholmondeley. It sounded weak and fanciful even to herself to say that she wanted to stop a war.

       'Let's sleep now,' she said. 'We've got a long, long day ahead.'

       'I think I could sleep now,' Raven said. 'You don't know how good it seems...' It was Anne now who could not sleep. She had too much to think about. It occurred to her that she might steal his pistol before he woke and call the police in. That would save Jimmy from danger, but what was the use? They'd never believe her story; they had no proof that he had killed the old man. And even then he might escape. She needed time and there was no time. She could hear very faintly droning up from the south, where the military aerodrome was, a flight of planes. They passed very high on special patrol, guarding the Nottwich mines and the key industry of Midland Steel, tiny specks of light the size of fireflies travelling fast in formation, over the railway, over the goods yard, over the shed where Anne and Raven lay, over Saunders beating his arms for warmth behind a truck out of the wind's way, over Acky dreaming that he was in the pulpit of St Luke's, over Sir Marcus sleepless beside the tape machine.

       Raven slept heavily for the first time for nearly a week, holding the automatic in his lap. He dreamed that he was building a great bonfire on Guy Fawkes day. He threw in everything he could find: a sawedged knife, a lot of racing cards, the leg of a table. It burnt warmly, deeply, beautifully. A lot of fireworks were going off all round him and again the old War Minister appeared on the other side of the fire. He said, 'It's a good fire,' stepping into it himself. Raven ran to the fire to pull him out, but the old man said, 'Let me be. It's warm here,' and then he sagged like a Guy Fawkes in the flames.

       A clock struck. Anne counted the strokes, as she had counted them all through the night; it must be nearly day and she had no plan. She coughed; her throat was stinging; and suddenly she realized with joy that there was fog outside: not one of the black upper fogs, but a cold damp yellow fog from the river, through which it would be easy, if it was thick enough, for a man to escape. She put out her hand unwillingly, because he was now so repulsive to her, and touched Raven. He woke at once. She said, 'There's a fog coming up.'

       'What a break!' he said, 'what a break!' laughing softly.

       'It makes you believe in Providence, doesn't it?' They could just see each other in the pale earliest light. He was shivering now that he was awake. He said, 'I dreamed of a big fire'. She saw that he had no sacks to cover him, but she felt no pity at all. He was just a wild animal who had to be dealt with carefully and then destroyed. 'Let him freeze,' she thought. He was examining the automatic; she saw him put down the safety catch. He said, 'What about you? You've been straight with me. I don't want you to get into any trouble. I don't want them to think,' he hesitated and went on with questioning humility, 'to know that we are in this together.'

       'I'll think up something,' Anne said.

       'I ought to knock you out. They wouldn't know then. But I've gone soft. I wouldn't hurt you not if I was paid.'

       She couldn't resist saying, 'Not for two hundred and fifty pounds?'

       'He was a stranger,' Raven said. 'It's not the same. I thought he was one of the high and mighties. You're—' he hesitated again, glowering dumbly down at the automatic, 'a friend.'

       'You needn't be afraid,' Anne said. I'll have a tale to tell.'

       He said with admiration, 'You're clever.' He watched the fog coming in under the badly fitting door, filling the small shed with its freezing coils. ' It'll be nearly thick enough now to take a chance.' He held the automatic in his left hand and flexed the fingers of the right. He laughed to keep his courage up. 'They'll never get me now in this fog.'

       'You'll shoot?'

       'Of course I'll shoot.'

       'I've got an idea,' Anne said. 'We don't want to take any risks. Give me your overcoat and hat. I'll put them on and slip out first and give them a run for their money. In this fog they'll never notice till they've caught me. Directly you hear the whistles blow count five slowly and make a bolt. I'll run to the right. You run to the left.'

       'You've got nerve,' Raven said. He shook his head. 'No. They might shoot.'

       'You said yourself they wouldn't shoot first.'

       'That's right. But you'll get a couple of years for this.'

       'Oh,' Anne said, I'll tell them a tale. I'll say you forced me.' She said with a trace of bitterness, 'This'll give me a lift out of the chorus. I'll have a speaking part.'

       Raven said shyly, 'If you made out you were my girl, they wouldn't pin it on you. I'll say that for them. They'd give a man's girl a break.'

       'Got a knife?'

       'Yes.' He felt in all his pockets; it wasn't there; he must have left it on the floor of Acky's best guest-chamber.

       Anne said, 'I wanted to cut up my skirt. I'd be able to run easier.'

       'I'll try and tear it,' Raven said, kneeling in front of her, taking a grip, but it wouldn't tear. Looking down she was astonished at the smallness of his wrists; his hands had no more strength or substance than a delicate boy's. The whole of his strength lay in the mechanical instrument at his feet. She thought of Mather and felt contempt now as well as repulsion for the thin ugly body kneeling at her feet.

       'Never mind,' she said. 'I'll do the best I can. Give me the coat.'

       He shivered, taking it off, and seemed to lose some of his sour assurance without the tight black tube which had hidden a very old, very flamboyant check suit in holes at both the elbows. It hung on him uneasily. He looked under-nourished. He wouldn't have impressed anyone as dangerous now. He pressed his arms to his sides to hide the holes. 'And your hat,' Anne said. He picked it up from the sacks and gave it her. He looked humiliated, and he had never accepted humiliation before without rage. 'Now,' Anne said, 'remember. Wait for the whistles and then count.'

       'I don't like it,' Raven said. He tried hopelessly to express the deep pain it gave him to see her go; it felt too much like the end of everything. He said, I'll see you again—some time,' and when she mechanically reassured him, 'Yes,' he laughed with his aching despair, 'Not likely, after I've killed—' but he didn't even know the man's name.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6

 

 

1

 

 

SAUNDERS had half fallen asleep; a voice at his side woke him. 'The fog's getting thick, sir.'

       It was already dense, with the first light touching it with dusty yellow, and he would have sworn at the policeman for not waking him earlier if his stammer had not made him chary of wasting words. He said, 'Pass the word round to move in.'

       'Are we going to rush the place, sir?'

       'No. There's a girl there. We can't have any sh-sh-shooting. Wait till he comes out.'

       But the policeman hadn't left his side when he noticed, 'The door's opening.' Saunders put his whistle in his mouth and lowered his safety catch. The light was bad and the fog deceptive; but he recognized the dark coat as it slipped to the right into the shelter of the coal trucks. He blew his whistle and was after it. The black coat had half a minute's start and was moving quickly into the fog. It was impossible to see at all more than twenty feet ahead. But Saunders kept doggedly just in sight blowing his whistle continuously. As he hoped, a whistle blew in front; it confused the fugitive; he hesitated for a moment and Saunders gained on him. They had him cornered, and this Saunders knew was the dangerous moment. He blew his whistle urgently three times into the fog to bring the police round in a complete circle and the whistle was taken up in the yellow obscurity, passing in a wide invisible circle.

       But he had lost pace, the fugitive spurted forward and was lost. Saunders blew two blasts: 'Advance slowly and keep in touch.' To the right and in front a single long whistle announced that the man had been seen, and the police converged on the sound. Each kept in touch with a policeman on either hand. It was impossible as long as the circle was kept closed for the man to escape. But the circle drew in and there was no sign of him; the short single exploratory blasts sounded petulant and lost. At last Saunders gazing ahead saw the faint form of a policeman come out of the fog a dozen yards away. He halted them all with a whistled signal: the fugitive must be somewhere just ahead in the tangle of trucks in the centre. Revolver in hand Saunders advanced and a policeman took his place and closed the circle.

       Suddenly Saunders spied his man. He had taken up a strategic position where a pile of coal and an empty truck at his back made a wedge which guarded him from surprise. He was invisible to the police behind him, and he had turned sideways like a duellist and presented only a shoulder to Saunders, while a pile of old sleepers hid him to the knees. It seemed to Saunders that it meant only one thing, that he was going to shoot it out; the man must be mad and desperate. The hat was pulled down over the face; the coat hung in an odd loose way; the hands were in the pockets. Saunders called at him through the yellow coils of fog, 'You'd better come quietly.' He raised his pistol and advanced, his finger ready on the trigger. But the immobility of the figure scared him. It was in shadow half hidden in the swirl of fog. It was he who was exposed, with the east, and the pale penetration of early light, behind him. It was like waiting for execution, for he could not fire first. But all the same, knowing what Mather felt, knowing that this man was mixed up with Mather's girl, he did not want much excuse to fire. Mather would stand by him. A movement would be enough. He said sharply without a stammer, 'Put up your hands!' The figure didn't move. He told himself again with a kindling hatred for the man who had injured Mather: I'll plug him if he doesn't obey: they'll all stand by me: one more chance. 'Put up your hands!' and when the figure stayed as it was with its hands hidden, a hardly discernible menace, he fired.

       But as he pressed the trigger a whistle blew, a long urgent blast which panted and gave out like a rubber animal, from the direction of the wall and the road. There could be no doubt whatever what that meant, and suddenly he saw it all—he had shot at Mather's girl; she'd drawn them off. He screamed at the men behind him, 'Back to the gate!' and ran forward. He had seen her waver at his shot. He said, 'Are you hurt?' and knocked the hat off her head to see her better.

       'You're the third person who's tried to kill me,' Anne said weakly, leaning hard against the truck. 'Come to sunny Nottwich. Well, I've got six lives left.'

       Saunders's stammer came back: 'W-w-w-w.'

       'This is where you hit,' Anne said, 'if that's what you want to know,' showing the long yellow sliver on the edge of the truck. 'It's only an outer. You don't even get a box of chocolates.'

       Saunders said, 'You'll have to c-c-come along with me.'

       'It'll be a pleasure. Do you mind if I take off this coat? I feel kind of silly.'

       At the gate four policeman stood round something on the ground. One of them said, 'We've sent for an ambulance.'

       'Is he dead?'

       'Not yet. He's shot in the stomach. He must have gone on whistling—'

       Saunders had a moment of vicious rage. 'Stand aside, boys,' he said, 'and let the lady see.' They drew back in an embarrassed unwilling way as if they'd been hiding a dirty chalk picture on the wall and showed the white drained face which looked as if it had never been alive, never known the warm circulation of blood. You couldn't call the expression peaceful; it was just nothing at all. The blood was all over the trousers the men had loosened, was caked on the charcoal of the path. Saunders said, 'Two of you take this lady to the station. I'll stay here till the ambulance comes.'

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

Mather said, 'If you want to make a statement I must warn you. Anything you say may be used in evidence.'

       'I haven't got a statement to make,' Anne said. 'I want to talk to you, Jimmy.'

       Mather said, 'If the superintendent had been here, I should have asked him to take the case. I want you to understand that I'm not letting personal—that my not having charged you doesn't mean—'

       'You might give a girl a cup of coffee,' Anne said. 'It's nearly breakfast time.'

       Mather struck the table furiously. 'Where was he going?'

       'Give me time,' Anne said, 'I've got plenty to tell. But you won't believe it.'

       'You saw the man he shot,' Mather said. 'He's got a wife and two children. They've rung up from the hospital. He's bleeding internally.'

       'What's the time?' Anne said.

       'Eight o'clock. It won't make any difference your keeping quiet. He can't escape us now. In an hour the air raid signals go. There won't be a soul on the streets without a mask. He'll be spotted at once. What's he wearing?'

       'If you'd give me something to eat. I haven't had a thing for twenty-four hours. I could think then.'

       Mather said, 'There's only one chance you won't be charged with complicity. If you make a statement.'

       'Is this the third degree?' Anne said.

       'Why do you want to shelter him? Why keep your word to him when you don't—?'

       'Go on,' Anne said. 'Be personal. No one can blame you. I don't. But I don't want you to think I'd keep my word to him. He killed the old man. He told me so.'

       'What old man?'

       'The War Minister.'

       'You've got to think up something better than that,' Mather said.

       'But it's true. He never stole those notes. They double-crossed him. It was what they'd paid him to do the job.'

       'He spun you a fancy yarn,' Mather said. 'But I know where those notes came from.'

       'So do I. I can guess. From somewhere in this town.'

       'He told you wrong. They came from United Rail Makers in Victoria Street.'

       Anne shook her head. 'They didn't start from there. They came from Midland Steel.'

       'So that's where he's going, to Midland Steel—in the Tanneries?'

       'Yes,' Anne said. There was a sound of finality about the word which daunted her. She hated Raven now, the policeman she had seen bleeding on the ground called at her heart for Raven's death, but she couldn't help remembering the hut, the cold, the pile of sacks, his complete and hopeless trust. She sat with bowed head while Mather lifted the receiver and gave his orders. 'We'll wait for him there,' he said. 'Who is it he wants to see?'

       'He doesn't know.'

       'There might be something in it,' Mather said. 'Some connection between the two. He's probably been double-crossed by some clerk.'

       'It wasn't a clerk who paid him all that money, who tried to kill me just because I knew—'

       Mather said, 'Your fairy tale can wait.' He rang a bell and told the constable who came, 'Hold this girl for further inquiries. You can give her a sandwich and a cup of coffee now.'

       'Where are you going?'

       'To bring in your boy friend,' Mather said.

       'He'll shoot. He's quicker than you are. Why can't you let the others—?' She implored him, 'I'll make a full statement. How he killed a man called Kite too.'

       'Take it,' Mather said to the constable. He put on his coat. 'The fog's clearing.'

       She said, 'Don't you see that if it's true—only give him time to find his man and there won't be—war.'

       'He was telling you a fairy story.'

       'He was telling me the truth—but, of course, you weren't there—you didn't hear him. It sounds differently to you. I thought I was saving—everyone.'

       'All you did,' Mather said brutally, 'was get a man killed.'

       'The whole thing sounds so differently in here. Kind of fantastic. But he believed. Maybe,' she said hopelessly, 'he was mad.'

       Mather opened the door. She suddenly cried to him, 'Jimmy, he wasn't mad. They tried to kill me.'

       He said, I'll read your statement when I get back,' and closed the door.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7

 

 

 

1

 

 

THEY were all having the hell of a time at the hospital. It was the biggest rag they'd had since the day of the street collection when they kidnapped old Piker and ran him to the edge of the Weevil and threatened to duck him if he didn't pay a ransom. Good old Fergusson, good old Buddy, was organizing it all. They had three ambulances out in the courtyard and one had a death's-head banner on it for the dead ones. Somebody shrieked that Mike was taking out the petrol with a nasal syringe, so they began to pelt him with flour and soot; they had it ready in great buckets. It was the unofficial part of the programme: all the casualties were going to be rubbed with it, except the dead ones the death's-head ambulance picked up. They were going to be put in the cellar where the refrigerating plant kept the corpses for dissection fresh.

       One of the senior surgeons passed rapidly and nervously across a corner of the courtyard. He was on the way to a Caesarian operation, but he had no confidence whatever that the students wouldn't pelt him or duck him; only five years ago there had been a scandal and an inquiry because a woman had died on the day of a rag. The surgeon attending her had been kidnapped and carried all over town dressed as Guy Fawkes. Luckily she wasn't a paying patient, and, though her husband had been hysterical at the inquest, the coroner had decided that one must make allowance for youth. The coroner had been a student himself once and remembered with pleasure the day when they had pelted the Vice-Chancellor of the University with soot.

       The senior surgeon had been present that day too. Once safely inside the glass corridor he could smile at the memory. The Vice-Chancellor had been unpopular; he had been a classic which wasn't very suitable for a provincial university. He had translated Lucan's Pharsalia into some complicated metre of his own invention. The senior surgeon remembered something vaguely about stresses. He could still see the little wizened frightened Liberal face trying to smile when his pince-nez broke, trying to be a good sportsman. But anyone could tell that he wasn't really a good sportsman. That was why they pelted him so hard.

       The senior surgeon, quite safe now, smiled tenderly down at the rabble in the courtyard. Their white coats were already black with soot. Somebody had got hold of a stomach pump. Very soon they'd be raiding the shop in the High Street and seizing their mascot, the stuffed and rather moth-eaten tiger. Youth, youth, he thought, laughing gently when he saw Colson, the treasurer, scuttle from door to door with a scared expression: perhaps they'll catch him: no, they've let him by: what a joke it all was, 'trailing clouds of glory', 'turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping'.

       Buddy was having the hell of a time. Everyone was scampering to obey his orders. He was the leader. They'd duck or pelt anyone he told them to. He had an enormous sense of power; it more than atoned for unsatisfactory examination results, for surgeons' sarcasms. Even a surgeon wasn't safe today if he gave an order. The soot and water and flour were his idea; the whole gas practice would have been a dull sober official piece of routine if he hadn't thought of making it a 'rag'. The very word 'rag' was powerful; it conferred complete freedom from control. He'd called a meeting of the brighter students and explained. 'If anyone's on the streets without a gas-mask he's aconchie. There are people who want to crab the practice. So when we get 'em back to the hospital we'll give 'em hell.'

       They boiled round him. 'Good old Buddy.'

       'Look out with that pump.'

       'Who's the bastard who's pinches my stethoscope?'

       'What about Tiger Tim?' They surged round Buddy Fergusson, waiting for orders, and he stood superbly above them on the step of an ambulance, his white coat apart, his ringers in the pockets of his double-breasted waistcoat, his square squat figure swelling with pride, while they shouted, 'Tiger Tim! Tiger Tim! Tiger Tim!'

       'Friends, Romans and Countrymen,' he said and they roared with laughter: Good old Buddy. Buddy always had the right word. He could make any party go. You never knew what Buddy would say next. 'Lend me your—' They shrieked with laughter. He was a dirty dog, old Buddy. Good old Buddy.

       Like a great beast which is in need of exercise, which has fed on too much hay, Buddy Fergusson was aware of his body. He felt his biceps; he strained for action. Too many exams, too many lectures, Buddy Fergusson wanted action. While they surged round him he imagined himself a leader of men. No Red Cross work for him when war broke: Buddy Fergusson, company commander, Buddy Fergusson, the daredevil of the trenches. The only exam he had ever successfully passed was Certificate A in the school O. T. C.

       'Some of our friends seem to be missing,' Buddy Fergusson said. 'Simmons, Aitkin, Mallowes, Watt. They are bloody conchies, every one, grubbing up anatomy while we are serving our country. We'll pick 'em up in town. The flying squad will go to their lodgings.'

       'What about the women, Buddy?' someone screamed, and everyone laughed and began to hit at each other, wrestle and mill. For Buddy had a reputation with the women. He spoke airily to his friends of even the super-barmaid at the Metropole, calling her Juicy Juliet and suggesting to the minds of his hearers amazing scenes of abandonment over high tea at his digs.

       Buddy Fergusson straddled across the ambulance step. 'Deliver 'em to me. In war-time we need more mothers.' He felt strong, coarse, vital, a town bull; he hardly remembered himself that he was a virgin, guilty only of a shame-faced unsuccessful attempt on the old Nottwich tart; he was sustained by his reputation, it bore him magically in imagination into every bed. He knew women, he was a realist.

       'Treat 'em rough,' they shrieked at him, and 'You're telling me,' he said magnificently, keeping well at bay any thought of the future: the small provincial G. P.'s job, the panel patients in dingy consulting rooms, innumerable midwife cases, a lifetime of hard underpaid fidelity to one dull wife. 'Got your gas-masks ready?' he called to them, the undisputed leader, daredevil Buddy. What the hell did examinations matter when you were a leader of men? He could see several of the younger nurses watching him through the panes. He could see the little brunette called Milly. She was coming to tea with him on Saturday. He felt his muscles taut with pride. What scenes, he told himself, this time there would be of disreputable revelry, forgetting the inevitable truth known only to himself and each girl in turn: the long silence over the muffins, the tentative references to League results, the peck at empty air on the doorstep.

       The siren at the glue factory started its long mounting whistle rather like a lap dog with hysteria and everyone stood still for a moment with a vague reminiscence of Armistice Day silences. Then they broke into three milling mobs, climbing on to the ambulance roofs, fixing their gas-masks, and drove out into the cold empty Nottwich streets. The ambulances shed a lot of them at each corner, and small groups formed and wandered down the streets with a predatory disappointed air. The streets were almost empty. Only a few errand boys passed on bicycles, looking in their gas-masks like bears doing a trick cycle act in a circus. They all shrieked at each other because they didn't know how their voices sounded outside. It was as if each of them were enclosed in a separate sound-proof telephone cabinet. They stared hungrily through their big mica eye-pieces into the doorways of shops, wanting a victim. A little group collected round Buddy Fergusson and proposed that they should seize a policeman who, being on point duty, was without a mask. But Buddy vetoed the proposal. He said this wasn't an ordinary rag. What they wanted were people who thought so little about their country that they wouldn't even take the trouble to put on a gas-mask. 'They are the people,' he said, 'who avoid boat-drill. We had great fun with a fellow once in the Mediterranean who didn't turn up to boat-drill.'

       That reminded them of all the fellows who weren't helping, who were probably getting ahead with their anatomy at that moment. 'Watt lives near here,' Buddy Fergusson said, 'let's get Watt and debag him.' A feeling of physical well-being came over him just as if he had drunk a couple of pints of bitter. 'Down the Tanneries,' Buddy said. 'First left. First right. Second left, Number twelve. First floor.' He knew the way, he said, because he'd been to tea several times with Watt their first term before he'd learned what a hound Watt was. The knowledge of his early mistake made him unusually anxious to do something to Watt physically, to mark the severance of their relationship more completely than with sneers.

       They ran down the empty Tanneries, half a dozen masked monstrosities in white coats smutted with soot; it was impossible to tell one from another. Through the great glass door of Midland Steel they saw three men standing by the lift talking to the porter. There were a lot of uniformed police about, and in the square ahead they saw a rival group of fellow-students, who had been luckier than they, carrying a little man (he kicked and squealed) towards an ambulance. The police watched and laughed, and a troop of planes zoomed overhead, diving low over the centre of the town to lend the practice verisimilitude. First left. First right. The centre of Nottwich to a stranger was full of sudden contrasts. Only on the edge of the town to the north, out by the park, were you certain of encountering street after street of well-to-do middle-class houses. Near the market you changed at a corner from modern chromium offices to little cats'-meat shops, from the luxury of the Metropole to seedy lodgings and the smell of cooking greens. There was no excuse in Nottwich for one half of the world being ignorant of how the other half lived.

       Second left. The houses on one side gave way to bare rock and the street dived steeply down below the Castle. It wasn't really a castle any longer; it was a yellow brick municipal museum full of flint arrowheads and pieces of broken brown pottery and a few stags' heads in the zoological section suffering from moths and one mummy brought back from Egypt by the Earl of Nottwich in 1843. The moths left that alone, but the custodian thought he had heard mice inside. Mike, with a nasal douche in his breast pocket, wanted to climb up the rock. He shouted to Buddy Fergusson that the custodian was outside, without a mask, signalling to enemy aircraft. But Buddy and the others ran down the hill to number twelve.

       The landlady opened the door to them. She smiled winningly and said Mr Watt was in; she thought he was working; she buttonholed Buddy Fergusson and said she was sure it would be good for Mr Watt to be taken away from his books for half an hour. Buddy said, 'We'll take him away.'

       'Why, that's Mr Fergusson,' the landlady said. 'I'd know your voice anywhere, but I'd never 'ave known you without you spoke to me, not in them respiratorories. I was just going out when Mr Watt minded me as 'ow it was the gas practice.'

       'Oh, he remembers, does he?' Buddy said. He was blushing inside the mask at having been recognized by the landlady. It made him want to assert himself more than ever.

       'He said I'd be taken to the 'ospital.'

       'Come on, men,' Buddy said and led them up the stairs. But their number was an embarrassment. They couldn't all charge through Watt's door and seize him in a moment from the chair in which he was sitting. They had to go through one at a time after Buddy and then bunch themselves in a shy silence beside the table. This was the moment when an experienced man could have dealt with them, but Watt was aware of his unpopularity. He was afraid of losing dignity. He was a man who worked hard because he liked the work; he hadn't the excuse of poverty. He played no games because he didn't like games, without the excuse of physical weakness. He had a mental arrogance which would ensure his success. If he suffered agony from his unpopularity now as a student it was the price he paid for the baronetcy, the Harley Stiset consulting room, the fashionable practice of the future. There was no reason to pity him; it was the others who were pitiable, living in their vivid vulgar way for five years before the long provincial interment of a lifetime.

       Watt said, 'Close the door, please. There's a draught,' and his scared sarcasm gave them the chance they needed, to resent him.

       Buddy said, 'We've come to ask why you weren't at the hospital this morning?'

       'That's Fergusson, isn't it?' Watt said. 'I don't know why you want to know.'

       'Are you a conchie?'

       'How old-world your slang is,' Watt said. 'No. I'm not a conchie. Now I'm just looking through some old medical books, and as I don't suppose they'd interest you, I'll ask you to show yourselves out.'

       'Working? That's how fellows like you get ahead, working while others are doing a proper job.'

       'It's just a different idea of fun, that's all,' Watt said. 'It's my pleasure to look at these folios, it's yours to go screaming about the streets in that odd costume.'

       That let them loose on him. He was as good as insulting the King's uniform. 'We're going to debag you,' Buddy said.

       'That's fine. It'll save time,' Watt said, 'if I take them off myself,' and he began to undress. He said, 'This action has an interesting psychological significance. A form of castration. My own theory is that sexual jealousy in some form is at the bottom of it.'

       'You dirty tyke,' Buddy said. He took the inkpot and splashed it on the wallpaper. He didn't like the word 'sex'. He believed in barmaids and nurses and tarts, and he believed in love, something rather maternal with deep breasts. The word sex suggested that there was something in common between the two: it outraged him. 'Wreck the room!' he bawled and they were all immediately happy and at ease, exerting themselves physically like young bulls. Because they were happy again they didn't do any real damage, just pulled the books out of the shelves and threw them on the floor; they broke the glass of a picture frame in puritanical zeal because it contained the reproduction of a nude girl. Watt watched them; he was scared, and the more scared he was the more sarcastic he became. Buddy suddenly saw him as he was, standing there in his pants marked from birth for distinction, for success, and hated him. He felt impotent; he hadn't 'class' like Watt, he hadn't the brains, in a very few years nothing he could do or say would affect the fortunes or the happiness of the Harley Street specialist, the woman's physician, the baronet. What was the good of talking about free will? Only war and death could save Buddy from the confinements, the provincial practice, the one dull wife and the bridge parties. It seemed to him that he could be happy if he had the strength to impress himself on Watt's memory. He took the inkpot and poured it over the open title-page of the old folio on the table.

       'Come on, men,' he said. 'This room stinks,' and led his party out and down the stairs. He felt an immense exhilaration; it was as if he had proved his manhood.

       Almost immediately they picked up an old woman. She didn't in the least know what it was all about. She thought it was a street collection and offered them a penny. They told her she had to come along to the hospital; they were very courteous and one offered to carry her basket; they reacted from violence to a more than usual gentility. She laughed at them. She said, 'Well I never, what you boys will think up next!' and when one took her arm and began to lead her gently up the street, she said, 'Which of you's Father Christmas?' Buddy didn't like that: it hurt his dignity: he had suddenly been feeling rather noble: 'women and children first': 'although bombs were falling all round he brought the woman safely...' He stood still and let the others go on up the street with the old woman; she was having the time of her life; she cackled and dug them in the ribs: her voice carried a long distance in the cold air. She kept on telling them to ' take off them things and play fair', and just before they turned a corner out of sight she was calling them Mormons. She meant Mohammedans, because she had an idea that Mohammedans went about with their faces covered up and had a lot of wives. An aeroplane zoomed overhead and Buddy was alone in the street with the dead and dying until Mike appeared. Mike said he had a good idea. Why not pinch the mummy in the Castle and take it to the hospital for not wearing a gas-mask? The fellows with the death's-head ambulance had already got Tiger Tim and were driving round the town crying out for old Piker.

       'No,' Buddy said, 'this isn't an ordinary rag. This is serious,' and suddenly at the entrance to a side street he saw a man without a mask double back at the sight of him.' Quick. Hunt him down,' Buddy cried, 'Tallyho,' and they pelted up the street in pursuit. Mike was the faster runner: Buddy was already a little inclined to fatness, and Mike was soon leading by ten yards. The man had a start, he was round one corner and out of sight. 'Go on,' Buddy shouted, 'hold him till I come.' Mike was out of sight too when a voice from a doorway spoke as he passed. 'Hi,' it said, 'you. What's the hurry?'

       Buddy stopped. The man stood there with his back pressed to a house door. He had simply stepped back and Mike in his hurry had gone by. There was something serious and planned and venomous about his behaviour. The street of little Gothic villas was quite empty.

       'You were looking for me, weren't you?' the man said.

       Buddy demanded sharply, 'Where's your gas-mask?'

       'Is this a game?' the man asked angrily.

       'Of course it's not a game,' Buddy said. 'You're a casualty. You'll have to come along to the hospital with me.'

       'I will, will I?' the man said, pressed back against the door, thin and undersized and out-at-elbows.

       'You'd better,' Buddy said. He inflated his chest and made his biceps swell. Discipline, he thought, discipline. The little brute didn't recognize an officer when he saw one. He felt the satisfaction of superior physical strength. He'd punch his nose for him if he didn't come quietly.

       'All right,' the man said, 'I'll come.' He emerged from the dark doorway, mean vicious face, hare-lip, a crude check suit, ominous and aggressive in his submission. 'Not that way,' Buddy said, 'to the left.'

       'Keep moving,' the small man said, covering Buddy through his pocket, pressing the pistol against his side. 'Me a casualty,' he said, 'that's a good one,' laughing without mirth. 'Get in through that gate or you'll be the casualty—' (they were opposite a small garage; it was empty; the owner had driven to his office, and the little bare box stood open at the end of a few feet of drive).

       Buddy blustered,' What the hell!' but he had recognized the face of which the description had appeared in both the local papers, and there was a control in the man's action which horribly convinced Buddy that he wouldn't hesitate to shoot. It was a moment in his life that he never forgot; he was not allowed to forget it by friends who saw nothing wrong in what he did. All through his life the tale cropped up in print in the most unlikely places: serious histories, symposiums of famous crimes: it followed him from obscure practice to obscure practice. Nobody saw anything important in what he did: nobody doubted that he would have done the same: walked into the garage, closed the gates at Raven's orders. But friends didn't realize the crushing nature of the blow: they hadn't just been standing in the street under a hail of bombs, they had not looked forward with pleasure and excitement to war, they hadn't been Buddy, the daredevil of the trenches one minute, before genuine war in the shape of an automatic in a thin desperate hand pressed on him.

       'Strip!' Raven said, and obediently Buddy stripped. But he was stripped of more than his gas-mask, his white coat, his green tweed suit. When it was over he hadn't a hope left. It was no good hoping for a war to prove him a leader of men. He was just a stout flushed frightened young man shivering in his pants in the cold garage. There was a hole in the seat of his pants and his knees were pink and clean-shaven. You could tell that he was strong, but you could tell too in the curve of his stomach, the thickness of his neck, that he was beginning to run to seed. Like a mastiff he needed more exercise than the city could afford him, even though several times a week undeterred by the frost he would put on shorts and a singlet and run slowly and obstinately round the park, a little red in the face but undeterred by the grins of nursemaids and the shrill veracious comments of unbearable children in prams. He was keeping fit, but it was a dreadful thought that he had been keeping fit for this: to stand shivering and silent in a pair of holed pants, while the mean thin undernourished city rat, whose arm he could have snapped with a single twist, put on his clothes, his white coat and last of all his gas-mask.

       'Turn round,' Raven said, and Buddy Fergusson obeyed. He was so miserable now that he would have missed a chance even if Raven had given him one, miserable and scared as well. He hadn't much imagination; he had never really visualized danger as it gleamed at him under the garage globe in a long grey wicked-looking piece of metal charged with pain and death. 'Put your hands behind you.' Raven tied together the pink strong ham-like wrists with Buddy's tie: the striped chocolate-and-yellow old boys' tie of one of the obscurer public schools. 'Lie down,' and meekly Buddy Fergusson obeyed and Raven tied his feet together with a handkerchief and gagged him with another. It wasn't very secure, but it would have to do. He'd got to work quickly. He left the garage and pulled the doors softly to behind him. He could hope for several hours' start now, but he couldn't count on as many minutes.

       He came quietly and cautiously up under the Castle rock, keeping his eye open for students. But the gangs had moved on; some were picketing the station for train arrivals, and the others were sweeping the streets which led out northwards towards the mines. The chief danger now was that at any moment the sirens might blow the 'All Clear'. There were a lot of police about: he knew why, but he moved unhesitatingly past them and on towards the Tanneries. His plan carried him no further than the big glass doors of Midland Steel. He had a kind of blind faith in destiny, in a poetic justice; somehow when he was inside the building he would find the way to the man who had double-crossed him. He came safely round into the Tanneries and moved across the narrow roadway, where there was only room for a single stream of traffic, towards the great functional building of black glass and steel. He hugged the automatic to his hip with a sense of achievement and exhilaration. There was a kind of lightheartedness now about his malice and hatred he had never known before; he had lost his sourness and bitterness; he was less personal in his revenge. It was almost as if he were acting for someone else.

       Behind the door of Midland Steel a man peered out at the parked cars and the deserted street. He looked like a clerk.

       Raven crossed the pavement. He peered back through the panes of the mask at the man behind the door. Something made him hesitate: the memory of a face he had seen for a moment outside the Soho café where he lodged. He suddenly started away again from the door, walking in a rapid scared way down the Tanneries. The police were there before him.

       It meant nothing, Raven told himself, coming out into a silent High Street empty except for a telegraph boy in a gasmask getting on to a bicycle by the Post Office. It merely meant that the police too had noted a connection between the office in Victoria Street and Midland Steel. It didn't mean that the girl was just another skirt who had betrayed him.' Only the faintest shadow of the old sourness and isolation touched his spirits. She's straight, he swore with almost perfect conviction, she wouldn't grass, we are together in this, and he remembered with a sense of doubtful safety how she had said,' We are friends.'

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

The producer had called a rehearsal early. He wasn't going to add to the expenses by buying everyone gas-masks. They would be in the theatre by the time the practice started and they wouldn't leave until the 'All Clear' had sounded. Mr Davis had said he wanted to see the new number, and so the producer had sent him notice of the rehearsal. He had it stuck under the edge of his shaving mirror next a card with the telephone numbers of all his girls.

       It was bitterly cold in the modern central-heated bachelor's flat. Something, as usual, had gone wrong with the oil engines, and the constant hot water was barely warm. Mr Davis cut himself shaving several times and stuck little tufts of cottonwool all over his chin. His eye caught Mayfair 632 and Museum 798. Those were Coral and Lucy. Dark and fair, nubile and thin. His fair and dark angel. A little early fog still yellowed the panes, and the sound of a car back-firing made him think of Raven safely isolated in the railway yard surrounded by armed police. He knew that Sir Marcus was arranging everything and he wondered how it felt to be waking to your last day. 'We know not the hour,' Mr Davis thought happily, plying his styptic pencil, sticking the cotton-wool on the larger wounds, but if one knew, as Raven must know, would one still feel irritation at the failure of central heating, at a blunt blade? Mr Davis's mind was full of great dignified abstractions, and it seemed to him a rather grotesque idea that a man condemned to death should be aware of something so trivial as a shaving cut. But then, of course, Raven would not be shaving in his shed.

       Mr Davis made a hasty breakfast—two pieces of toast, two cups of coffee, four kidneys and a piece of bacon sent up by lift from the restaurant, some sweet 'Silver Shred' marmalade. It gave him a good deal of pleasure to think that Raven would not be eating such a breakfast—a condemned man in prison, possibly, but not Raven. Mr Davis did not believe in wasting anything; he had paid for the breakfast, so on the second piece of toast he piled up all the remains of the butter and the marmalade. A little of the marmalade fell off on to his tie.

       There was really only one worry left, apart from Sir Marcus's displeasure, and that was the girl. He had lost his head badly: first in trying to kill her and then in not killing her. It had all been Sir Marcus's fault. He had been afraid of what Sir Marcus would do to him if he learnt of the girl's existence. But now everything would be all right. The girl had come out into the open as an accomplice; no court would take a criminal's story against Sir Marcus's. He forgot about the gas practice, as he hurried down to the theatre for a little relaxation now that everything really seemed to have been tidied up. On the way he got a sixpenny packet of toffee out of a slot machine.

       He found Mr Collier worried. They'd already had one rehearsal of the new number and Miss Maydew, who was sitting at the front of the stalls in a fur coat, had said it was vulgar. She said she didn't mind sex, but this wasn't in the right class. It was music-hall; it wasn't revue. Mr Collier didn't care a damn what Miss Maydew thought, but it might mean that Mr Cohen … He said, 'If you'd tell me what's vulgar... I just don't see...'

       Mr Davis said, 'I'll tell you if it's vulgar. Have it again,' and he sat back in the stalls just behind Miss Maydew with the warm smell of her fur and her rather expensive scent in his nostrils, sucking a toffee. It seemed to him that life could offer nothing better than this. And the show was his. At any rate forty per cent of it was his. He picked out his forty per cent as the girls came on again in blue shorts with a red stripe and bras and postmen's caps, carrying cornucopias: the dark girl with the oriental eyebrows on the right, the fair girl with the rather plump legs and the big mouth (a big mouth was a good sign in a girl). They danced between two pillar-boxes, wriggling their little neat hips, and Mr Davis sucked his toffee.

       'It's called "Christmas for Two",' Mr Collier said.

       'Why?'

       'Well, you see, those cornucops are meant to be Christmas presents made sort of classical. And "For Two" just gives it a little sex. Any number with "For Two" in it goes.'

       'We've already got "An Apartment for Two",' Miss May-dew said, 'and "Two Make a Dream".'

       'You can't have too much of "For Two",' Mr Collier said. He appealed pitiably, 'Can't you tell me what's vulgar?'

       'Those cornucopias, for one thing.'

       'But they are classical,' Mr Collier said. 'Greek.'

       'And the pillar-boxes, for another.'

       'The pillar-boxes,' Mr Collier exclaimed hysterically. 'What's wrong with the pillar-boxes?'

       'My dear man,' Miss Maydew said, 'if you don't know what's wrong with the pillar-boxes, I'm not going to tell you. If you like to get a committee of matrons I wouldn't mind telling them. But if you must have them, paint them blue and let them be air mail.'

       Mr Collier said, 'Is this a game or what is it?' He asked bitterly, 'What a time you must have when you write a letter.' The girls went patiently on behind his back to the jingle of the piano, offering the cornucopias, offering their collar-stud bottoms. He turned on them fiercely. 'Stop that, can't you? and let me think.'

       Mr Davis said, 'It's fine. We'll have it in the show.' It made him feel good to contradict Miss Maydew, whose perfume he was now luxuriously taking in. It gave him in a modified form the pleasure of beating her or sleeping with her: the pleasure of mastery over a woman of superior birth. It was the kind of dream he had indulged in adolescence, while he carved his name on the desk and seat in a grim Midland board school.

       'You really think that, Mr Davenant?'

       'My name's Davis.'

       'I'm sorry, Mr Davis.' Horror on horror, Mr Collier thought; he was alienating the new backer now.

       'I think it's lousy,' Miss Maydew said. Mr Davis took another piece of toffee. 'Go ahead, old man,' he said. 'Go ahead.' They went ahead: the songs and dances floated agreeably through Mr Davis's consciousness, sometimes wistful, sometimes sweet and sad, sometimes catchy. Mr Davis liked the sweet ones best. When they sang, 'You have my mother's way', he really did think of his mother: he was the ideal audience. Somebody came out of the wings and bellowed at Mr Collier. Mr Collier screamed, 'What do you say?' and a young man in a pale blue jumper went on mechanically singing: 'Your photograph Is just the sweetest half...'

       'Did you say Christmas tree?' Mr Collier yelled.

       'In your December I shall remember...'

       Mr Collier screamed, 'Take it away.' The song came abruptly to an end with the words 'Another mother'. The young man said, 'You took it too fast,' and began to argue with the pianist.

       'I can't take it away,' the man in the wings said. 'It was ordered.' He wore an apron and a cloth cap. He said, 'It took a van and two horses. You'd better come and have a look.' Mr Collier disappeared and returned immediately.' My God!' he said,' it's fifteen feet high. Who can have played this fool trick?' Mr Davis was in a happy dream: his slippers had been warmed by a log fire in a big baronial hall, a little exclusive perfume like Miss Maydew's was hovering in the air, and he was just going to go to bed with a good but aristocratic girl to whom he had been properly married that morning by a bishop. She reminded him a little of his mother. 'In your December...'

       He was suddenly aware that Mr Collier was paying, 'And there's a crate of glass balls and candles.'

       'Why,' Mr Davis said, 'has my little gift arrived?'

       'Your—little—?'

       'I thought we'd have a Christmas party on the stage,' Mr Davis said. 'I like to get to know all you artistes in a friendly homey way. A little dancing, a song or two,' there seemed to be a visible lack of enthusiasm, 'plenty of pop.' A pale smile lit Mr Collier's face. 'Well,' he said, 'it's very kind of you, Mr Davis. We shall certainly appreciate it.'

       'Is the tree all right?'

       'Yes, Mr Daven—Davis, it's a magnificent tree.' The young man in the blue jumper looked as if he was going to laugh and Mr Collier scowled at him.' We all thank you very much, Mr Davis, don't we, girls?' Everybody said in refined and perfect chorus as if the words had been rehearsed, 'Rather, Mr Collier,' except Miss Maydew, and a dark girl with a roving eye who was two seconds late and said, 'You bet.'

       That attracted Mr Davis's notice. Independent, he thought approvingly, stands out from the crowd. He said,' I think I'll step behind and look at the tree. Don't let me be in the way, old man. Just you carry on,' and made his way into the wings where the tree stood blocking the way to the changing rooms. An electrician had hung some of the baubles on for fun and among the litter of properties under the bare globes it sparkled with icy dignity. Mr Davis rubbed his hands, a buried childish delight came alive. He said, 'It looks lovely.' A kind of Christmas peace lay over his spirit: the occasional memory of Raven was only like the darkness pressing round the little lighted crib.

       'That's a tree all right,' a voice said. It was the dark girl. She had followed him into the wings; she wasn't wanted on the stage for the number they were rehearsing. She was short and plump and not very pretty; she sat on a case and watched Mr Davis with gloomy friendliness.

       'Gives a Christmas feeling,' Mr Davis said.

       'So will a bottle of pop,' the girl said.

       'What's your name?'

       'Ruby.'

       'What about meeting me for a spot of lunch after the rehearsal's over?'

       'Your girls sort of disappear, don't they?' Ruby said. 'I could do with a steak and onions, but I don't want any conjuring. I'm not a detective's girl.'

       'What's that?' Mr Davis said sharply.

       ' She's the Yard man's girl. He was round here yesterday.'

       'That's all right,' Mr Davis said crossly, thinking hard, 'you're safe with me.'

       'You see, I'm unlucky.'

       Mr Davis, in spite of his new anxiety, felt alive, vital: this wasn't his last day. The kidneys and bacon he had had for breakfast returned a little in his breath. The music came softly through to them: 'Your photograph is just the sweetest half...' He licked a little grain of toffee on a back tooth and said, 'You're in luck now. You couldn't have a better mascot than me.'

       'You'll have to do,' the girl said with her habitual gloomy stare.

       'The Metropole? At one sharp?'

       'I'll be there. Unless I'm run over. I'm the kind of girl who would get run over before a free feed.'

       'It'll be fun.'

       'It depends what you call fun,' the girl said and made room for him on the packing case. They sat side by side staring at the tree. 'In your December, I shall remember.' Mr Davis put his hand on her bare knee. He was a little awed by the tune, the Christmas atmosphere. His hand fell flatly, reverently, like a bishop's hand on a choirboy's head.

       'Sinbad,' the girl said.

       'Sinbad?'

       'I mean Bluebeard. These pantos get one all mixed up.'

       'You aren't frightened of me?' Mr Davis protested, leaning his head against the postman's cap.

       'If any girl's going to disappear, it'll be me for sure.'

       'She shouldn't have left me,' Mr Davis said softly, 'so soon after dinner. Made me go home alone. She'd have been safe with me.' He put his arm tentatively round Ruby's waist and squeezed her, then loosed her hastily as an electrician came along. 'You're a clever girl,' Mr Davis said, 'you ought to have a part. I bet you've got a good voice.'

       'Me a voice? I've got as much voice as a peahen.'

       'Give me a little kiss?'

       'Of course I will.' They kissed rather wetly. 'What do I call you?' Ruby asked. 'It sounds silly to me to call a man who's standing me a free feed Mister.'

       Mr Davis said, 'You could call me—Willie?'

       'Well,' Ruby said, sighing gloomily, 'I hope I'll be seeing you, Willie. At the Metropole. At one. I'll be there. I only hope you'll be there or bang'll go a good steak and onions.' She drifted back towards the stage. She was needed. What did Aladdin say... She said to the girl next her. 'He fed out of my hand.' When he came to Pekin? 'The trouble is,' Ruby said, 'I can't keep them. There's too much of this love-and-ride-away business. But it looks as if I'll get a good lunch, anyway.' She said, 'There I go again. Saying that and forgetting to cross my fingers.'

       Mr Davis had seen enough; he had got what he'd come for; all that had to be done now was to shed a little light and comradeship among the electricians and other employees. He made his way slowly out by way of the dressing-rooms exchanging a word here and there, offering his gold cigarette-case. One never knew. He was fresh to this backstage theatre and it occurred to him that even among the dressers he might find—well, youth and talent, something to be encouraged, and fed too, of course, at the Metropole. He soon learnt better; all the dressers were old; they couldn't understand what he was after and one followed him round everywhere to make sure that he didn't hide in any of the girls' rooms. Mr Davis was offended, but he was always polite. He departed through the stage door into the cold tainted street waving his hand. It was about time anyway that he looked in at Midland Steel and saw Sir Marcus.

       The High Street was curiously empty except that there were more police about than was usual; he had quite forgotten the gas practice. No one attempted to interfere with Mr Davis, his face was well known to all the force, though none of them could have said what Mr Davis's occupation was. They would have said, without a smile at the thin hair, the heavy paunch, the plump and wrinkled hands, that he was one of Sir Marcus's young men. With an employer so old you could hardly avoid being one of the young men by comparison. Mr Davis waved gaily to a sergeant on the other pavement and took a toffee. It was not the job of the police to take casualties to hospital and no one would willingly have obstructed Mr Davis. There was something about his fat good nature which easily turned to malevolence. They watched him with covert amusement and hope sail down the pavement towards the Tanneries, rather as one watches a man of some dignity approach an icy slide. Up the street from the Tanneries a medical student in a gas-mask was approaching.