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2
Two in a Taxi
If you had found yourself in Ben’s position, you would very soon have ended it. You would not have submitted to the will of a strange young man who, however fair his promises, lugged you rapidly round corners, thrust you into a taxi-cab, invested the simple operation of buying a cap with queer significance, and burst, for no apparent reason, into sudden perspiration. You would have required some explanation of these things, or you would have contrived some means of leaving him.
But, after all, you could not have found yourself in Ben’s position. As Ben himself would have told you, ‘The kind o’ persishuns I gits in ain’t mide fer nobody helse!’ And in this argument lies the reason of Ben’s inactivity.
Things always happened to him. They always had, and they always would. If you tried to stop one thing, you’d only walk into another, so why waste energy? And, so far, Ben’s present position was mild compared with others that lay behind him, and others that lay ahead of him.
Wherefore he did not comment upon his companion’s perspiration. He did not comment upon the speed with which they drove away from the hat-shop (the driver had clearly received an instruction to hurry), or upon the number of other hat-shops that were passed without pausing. And when, at last, the taxi made its second halt, he did not protest on receiving, once more, the injunction to stay where he was while fresh headgear was being obtained.
‘I ain’t payin’ fer the cap,’ he reflected, philosophically, ‘so if I looks like a pea-nut hunder it, it ain’t fer me ter compline!’
But he did wonder, when he saw the young man emerge from the shop with a small parcel, why the young man did not return immediately to the taxi-cab.
‘’E was in a ’urry afore,’ thought Ben, as the young man walked leisurely round a corner, ‘but time don’t seem nothink ter ’im now!’
A minute went by. Two. Three. An unpleasant theory began to develop in Ben’s brain. Was this the catch? Had the young man gone off, leaving Ben to pay the fare?
Apparently this theory was being developed also on the driver’s seat. The taximan descended, and poked his head through the window.
‘Where’s he gone?’ inquired the taximan.
‘I dunno,’ replied Ben.
‘But you’re with him,’ objected the taximan.
‘Then ’e carn’t be gorn,’ Ben pointed out.
This was beyond the taximan, who returned with a grunt to his seat. But after another three minutes had gone by, he descended again, and once more poked his head through the window.
‘I suppose he is coming back?’ he frowned.
‘I s’pose ’e is,’ replied Ben.
‘Suppose he don’t?’ said the taximan.
‘Then ’e won’t,’ answered Ben.
The taximan’s frown grew, and focused itself directly on Ben.
‘I’m going to get my fare,’ he declared, with a hint of a threat.
‘That’s orl right,’ nodded Ben. ‘I’ll sendjer a cheque.’
During the next three minutes the young man returned, and a crisis was averted. He gave an instruction to the driver, entered the taxi, and the journey was resumed.
‘We thort we’d lorst yer,’ said Ben.
‘I had to go to another shop,’ explained the young man, with no trace of apology, ‘and while I was there I met a friend.’
‘I see. And ’ad one,’ replied Ben. ‘And where are we goin’ now?’
‘To the station.’
Ben opened his eyes wide.
‘Wot for?’ he demanded.
‘For the job,’ answered the young man. ‘There’s a train at 6.22, and you can just catch it.’
‘Me?’
‘You!’
‘Yus, but—’ Ben paused. There was a rather disturbing sense in all this of being shoved about. ‘Ain’t you goin’, too?’
‘Never mind about me. Now, listen. The train goes at 6.22, and gets into London in a couple of hours. Waterloo. Do you know Waterloo? Your peculiarly pleasant accent suggests a knowledge of London. I hope you know your way about?’
‘Wot! Lunnon?’
‘Even so. Lunnon.’
‘Without me,’ said Ben, ‘Lunnon ain’t Lunnon.’
‘Really! One of the sights?’
‘Didn’t yer know? When them Americans come hover, if I ain’t there they turns rahnd and goes back agine.’
‘Upon my soul, I’m honoured to have met you!’ laughed the young man, and Ben found himself counting his teeth. ‘I hope, in the circumstances, you won’t feel above travelling third-class?’
‘Well—jest fer once, like.’
‘Splendid! Now, listen again. All this is very entertaining, but we mustn’t forget that life’s a serious matter—and especially,’ he added significantly, ‘when we’re job-hunting. The fare to Waterloo is nine-and-tenpence. From Waterloo you will have to get to Wimbledon. Do you know Wimbledon?’
‘That’s right,’ nodded Ben. ‘That’s where Tilden and me ’as our little knock-up.’
A slight frown appeared on the young man’s face.
‘I wonder,’ he mused, gravely, ‘whether, after all, you have too much humour for this job?’
‘Don’t you worry, sir,’ Ben stuck to him. ‘If it’s wanted, I can cry like I got a fly in me eye.’
The young man weighed the information. He did not seem to find it immediately convincing. He studied Ben with a new interest and attention, and Ben felt that his fate was being decided. It was. The toss went against him, and the young man smiled again.
‘Yes—after all, I think you’ll do,’ he said, ‘although I’m afraid there won’t be any tennis for you. The house you’re going to is at Wimbledon Common. Are you good at remembering names?’
‘Yus,’ answered Ben. ‘I can remember ’arf me own.’
‘Yes, by the way, what is it?’
‘Ben.’
‘And you’ve forgotten the other half?’
‘Yus.’
‘Conveniently?’
‘Wotchermean?’
‘Oh, nothing. But sometimes people make a habit of forgetting their names. Well, so you won’t forget this one—’
‘Oo?’
‘—the name of the house you’ve got to go to—’
‘Oh.’
‘Please don’t keep on saying “Oo” and “Oh.” It’s getting a bit on my nerves. So you won’t forget the name of the house you’re going to, I’ll write it down on a piece of paper, and you can stick it in your pocket. I suppose,’ he added, looking at Ben’s ragged suit, ‘you’ve got a pocket?’
‘You can put anythink in me anywhere,’ Ben told him.
‘Well, find a place where this will stay in,’ replied the young man, as he took out a note-book.
He tore out a sheet and scribbled upon it. Then he handed it to Ben and asked whether he could read it.
‘Corse I can!’ retorted Ben, and held the paper hard against his best eye. ‘“Greystones,” ain’t it?’
‘Splendid! Go on.’
‘“Greystones,”’ repeated Ben, to gain time. ‘And the next is “North Lane.” But where’s the Common?’
‘No need to write that,’ responded the young man. ‘You can remember Wimbledon Common, can’t you? And if you lost that little piece of paper with the complete address on it, somebody else might find it and go after your job.’
‘So they might,’ murmured Ben, impressed.
‘Now, I’m going to give you a pound,’ proceeded the young man, ‘and that will cover your expenses all the way.’
It would more than cover them. Ben kept very still, lest his companion should realise it.
‘When you get to the house,’ went on the young man, ‘you will say that—Mr White sent you—’
‘I’m bein’ you, like?’
‘—and you will hand over the piece of paper with the address on.’
‘Yus, but ’oo—’
‘I’m coming to that, now. The gentleman you will ask for, and hand the paper to, is Mr Lovelace—’
‘Go on!’
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘Nothink!’
‘Then what did you say “Go on” for?’
‘Well—Lovelice! I thort you was makin’ the nime hup, like.’
‘Try to think a little less when you get to Wimbledon Common,’ said the young man dryly. ‘If Mr Lovelace can stand your interruption and likes your face, he’ll take you. If he can’t and doesn’t—’ The young man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, in that case you’ll have had your fare to London, with a bob or two over.’
The taxi swung round a corner. A hundred yards ahead loomed the station.
‘And that’s orl?’ murmured Ben.
‘Yes—when I’ve given you your cap,’ answered the young man.
He undid the little parcel. A dark brown cap of rough material bulged out of it.
‘Have I suited your particular style of beauty?’ asked the young man, as he put it on Ben’s head.
Ben stared at a small mirror fixed in the taxi. The young man stared at Ben. Both were intent.
‘Bit of orl right,’ commented Ben.
‘Good,’ said the young man. He looked pleased. Then all at once he looked less pleased, for a blank expression suddenly replaced the self-conscious grin with which Ben had been regarding his face in the mirror. ‘What’s the trouble this time?’ he demanded, sharply.
‘Jest thort o’ somethink,’ muttered Ben.
‘I advised you not to think,’ retorted the young man.
‘Yus, but—well, this is somethink I fergot, see?’
‘All I see is that you’ll have to go on forgetting it!’
And, as though to clinch matters and to end wavering, the young man whipped out his case and handed Ben the promised pound-note.
Ben clutched the note, but his soul was not soothed. The thing he had forgotten was important. More important, even, than a pound-note.
‘It’s a letter,’ said Ben.
‘Write it from London,’ answered the young man.
‘That might be too late, see,’ replied Ben, doggedly. ‘It might miss the person.’
‘Who is the person?’ asked the young man.
Ben hesitated. He didn’t feel inclined to admit that the person was a girl he had left in Spain, who wouldn’t know where to connect up with him when she got back to England unless she found a note waiting for her at Southampton Post Office. Such an admission, besides treading on sacred ground, would reinforce the young man’s proposal that the note should be sent from London, since it was hardly likely that Molly Smith would reach Southampton hot upon Ben’s heels.
‘Yus, but she might,’ reflected Ben, ‘and I ain’t takin’ no charnces! Lunnon’s a long way orf, and while I’m ’ere I’m ’ere!’
So he told the young man that the person was a bloke wot owed him a fiver and that he wasn’t going to waste no time in getting after it.
This story, coupled with the queer doggedness by which Ben occasionally got his way at unexpected moments, produced a halt of two minutes outside a small stationer’s shop. In these two minutes, while the young man waited in the taxi, Ben bought a sheet of paper and an envelope and a penny-halfpenny stamp, borrowed a pen, wrote: ‘Dere Molly i’m ere graystones north lane wimbledon Common,’ stuffed it in the envelope, addressed it to ‘Miss Molly Smith, Post Orfis, Southamton,’ thumped on the stamp, and posted the lot in a pillar-box.
‘’Ow’s that fer quick?’ he exclaimed, as he got back into the taxi.
The young man made no reply.
‘Oi! I ses ’ow’s that fer quick?’ repeated Ben.
The young man still made no reply. Suddenly, Ben looked at him.
As a rule, Ben moved slowly. His motto was that you never got nowhere, so why ’urry? But, at chosen moments, he moved with a rapidity that baffled logic. He could get down three flights of stairs in two seconds, and round two corners in one. He had never got down stairs or round corners, however, with half the rapidity at which he now got out of the taxi. The driver was still in first gear, driving a dead man to a station, while Ben was legging it four blocks away.
And on Ben’s head was a cap, and in his pocket was a pound-note, which the dead man had given him.
‘Now, you!’ exclaimed a voice in his ear.
A hand grabbed his coat. With a yelp, he wrenched himself free. And, as he did so, he wondered why Fate never gave him a decent deal, and why the hand he had wrenched himself away from was not an ordinary hand, but bore a livid red scar.
3
Flight
Ben did not possess many accomplishments, but he could run away, probably, better than anybody else in the world, and since he spent half his life running away he was never out of practice. This gave him an advantage over the owner of the hand with the livid red scar, and before the hand could make a second grab at him there only remained thin air to grab at.
In the next sixty seconds Ben knocked three people over. Two of them were men and the other was a small boy. The two men had to pick themselves up, but Ben risked life and liberty to replace the small boy in a standing position, and he also made a funny grimace in the hope that this would restore the small boy’s faith in a somewhat violent world. He always had a fellow feeling for small boys because to him, as to them, everything looked so big.
Then followed sixty more successful seconds. He improved his steering, and all he bumped into was a lamppost. Even that proved helpful, in a way, because he bumped into it at such speed that he bounced off round a corner without the trouble of turning.
Then he paused. You have to after a hundred and twenty non-stop seconds. You pause to find out whether you are still alive—to discover whether all the pumping and thumping inside you is going on in this world or in the next. If you’re dead you stop and wait for an angel. But, if you’re not, you probe your bursting brain to remember what you are running away from. You see, you’ve been running so fast that you’ve forgotten. And then, when you remember what you are running away from, you start off again for another hundred and twenty seconds.
Ben ran away for considerably longer than he had any immediate need for, and he might have gone on running away indefinitely if it had not suddenly occurred to the remnants of his brain that he did not know in what direction he was running, and that, for all he could say, he might be running back again. Then he sat down on a post to think about it.
For several seconds, however, thought was impossible. He felt sick, felt better, felt sick, was sick, and felt better.
After which sequence of emotional events he wiped his clammy forehead, shoved his new cap back on his head, and endeavoured to work out his geographical and spiritual position.
Fust, where was ’e?
He gathered from the road’s loneliness that he was somewhere in the outskirts of Southampton. That was good! And when he was out of the outskirts, that would be better! Southampton, recently a Mecca, was now an inferno. Ben desired most keenly to shake the dust of the port for ever from his holy boots.
‘Meanin’, o’ corse, with ’oles in,’ he told himself.
Away to the right lay the city he was flying from. Gloaming cloaked, blessedly, the road. There was no sight of Southampton’s activity from this peaceful spot, no throb of its distant sound. The only sounds were immediate sounds—of wind blowing in fitful gusts as it played hide-and-seek with itself round corners, of dead leaves indignantly awakened by the game, of a little dog barking behind a wall, of a sign creaking somewhere. Each of these sounds was capable of striking terror into any soul, for the heart of sound is its association; but, to Ben regaining his breath on his post, the sounds were sweet, because they had nothing to do with dead men in taxi-cabs and hands with livid red scars.
In front of him was the wall beyond which the little dog barked. It divided Ben from a thousand other stories, even the little dog’s, but Ben was only interested in his own. To the left, a faint light glimmered, contending for supremacy against the waning day. The sign creaked above it. That meant a drink.
Well, this was where he was. Now the next question arose. What was he going to do?
Ben worked on this for a long time. Longer than, during the actual inoperative process, he realised. He only began to realise it when he found himself sitting on the ground and wondered how he had got there. Apparently, instead of working on the question, he had worked off the post.
All right. Stay where you find yourself. That was as good a motto as any. Ben did most of his thinking from the bottom level.
But, after another lapse of time, he discovered that his thinking wasn’t leading anywhere. So he cut the question into two—(1) what should he do presently in a general way, and (2) what should he do now in a specific way—threw the former, more difficult half over the wall to the dog, and concentrated on the second, simpler half. The second half was simple because its solution was clearly indicated by the creaking sign.
‘Yer brine’s no good while yer throat’s arskin’ fer it,’ he decided.
Whereupon he rose, and, having removed himself from the road, he proceeded to remove the road from himself. More particularly from the latter portion of himself. He didn’t want no clues on his trousers.
And then he heard a car coming along the road from Southampton. It came in the middle of a big gust of wind, and he did not hear it until the gust had died down. Then his heart began to increase its pace. Not that a car was anything to be afraid of, but his heart was behaving as unreasonably as his brain, and was just as anxious for that drink.
‘Go on! Wot’s a car?’ he chided himself.
As the car approached he adopted an attitude of excessive unconcern and decided to whistle. You can’t whistle when you’re worried, so if he whistled it would prove he wasn’t worried. The only snag in the theory was that he found he couldn’t whistle.
Only one car in ten thousand would have stopped on seeing Ben. This proved to be the one. The brakes were applied sharply, and there was an unRollsroycian squeak. Now Ben did not even try to whistle.
What was the car stopping for? Perhaps the driver wanted a drink, too? Thus Ben clutched at his straw. But the straw slipped away in his hand. The driver wanted Ben.
‘Hallo, there!’ he called.
Ben’s stomach turned over with relief. It was the petty officer whose duty on board a ship lately arrived at Southampton had been to look after a man who looked after cows. The future will be simplified if we admit that the officer’s name was Jones.
‘Hallo, there! Not a bad distance for Shanks’s pony,’ cried Jones. ‘Where are you heading for?’
‘Anywhere,’ replied Ben, noncommittally.
‘Well, that’s as good as anywhere else,’ grinned the officer. ‘But you’re not going to tell me you were going to pass that pub?’
‘Eh?’
‘Say, have you ever counted how many “Eh’s” you say per day? It must be somewhere in the thousands. However, I’ve something more int’restin’ to talk about. Have you seen a blood-thirsty Spaniard anywhere about?’
Ben’s heart jumped. On the point of another ‘Eh?’ he altered it to ‘’Oo?’
‘Eh, ’oo, ’ow and oi—that’s about all the bright conversation you’ve got! Spaniard! A murdering Spaniard! He’s around loose somewhere. Have you seen ’im?’
‘Wot for?’ murmured Ben.
‘Well, not for pleasure, I’d imagine! I say, what’s up with you? You look as green as cabbage!’
‘Go on!’ retorted Ben, slowly fighting back. ‘Anybody’d turn green, ’earin’ abart a murderer, wouldn’t they?’
‘Murderer’s right,’ nodded Jones, with a frown. ‘And now you can get ready to turn a bit greener. Who d’you s’pose he’s murdered?’
‘Wot—did ’e do it?’ gasped Ben.
‘Hallo!’ cried Jones, sharply. ‘Do what?’
‘Eh?’
‘Oh, shut that! What do you know about this?’
‘Me?’
‘No, Ramsay MacDonald, of course! Buttons and braces, have you ever been known to answer a question properly? What do you know?’
‘Nothink.’
‘Then what did you say “Did ’e do it?” for?’ pressed Jones. ‘What did you mean by “it”?’
‘That was the murder.’
‘Well, go on?’
‘You sed ’e done a murder, didn’t yer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s the one I’m arskin’ abart,’ said Ben. Jones gave it up.
‘The chap who’s been murdered,’ said Jones, ‘is our supercargo.’
‘Go on!’ muttered Ben. And then suddenly added, ‘Well, if ’e done it, it’d let anybody else aht, wouldn’t it?’
‘Not an accomplice,’ answered Jones, ‘and he’s believed to have had one. It’s a queer business altogether. You see, the fellow was killed in a taxi-cab, and this other bloke seems to have bunked out of the taxi immediately afterwards. However, don’t ask me for details,’ he added. ‘All I know is that the police are after both of ’em, and that I wouldn’t care to be in either of their shoes. Like to jump in and join in the hunt?’
Ben gulped, and shook his head.
‘Why not? Free ride!’ urged Jones. ‘You’ve got no other appointment!’
‘Yus, I ’ave.’
‘Oh! What?’
‘Gotter see a man abart a helefant.’
‘Blamed fool! About a drink, you mean! Hallo, where did you get your new cap from?’ He stared at Ben, and then suddenly swung his head round. ‘By Jove!’ he cried. ‘Hear that? Police whistles!’
In a flash he was turning his car. Not far off, shrill blasts pierced the gloaming. A second or two later, the car vanished back along the road.
Ben stared after it. Had he been a fool? ‘Arter orl, I ain’t done nothink!’ he told himself. But he had been blamed for hundreds of things he hadn’t done. And he had to admit that, in his fright, he had acted suspicious, like. And when you act suspicious, like, people aren’t apt to believe you, like.
So he resisted a momentary impulse to go after Mr Jones, and decided that the best plan was to keep right out of it.
The next instant, however, he was right in it. Someone slipped out of a shadow and laid a hand on his shoulder. He had only seen the hand once before in his life, but he recognised it the moment it touched him. And, this time, he was unable to wriggle away.
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