Читать книгу Ben Sees It Through - J. Farjeon Jefferson - Страница 7

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.