Читать книгу Ben Sees It Through - J. Farjeon Jefferson - Страница 8

If you can move, move quickly. If you can’t, keep quite still. Such was Ben’s motto in the horrible moments of life. This was a horrible moment, and he kept quite still.

The owner of the hand that was pressing on his shoulder with fingers that felt like hot sharp knives also kept quite still. Utter immobility seemed to be a mutual need while the police whistles sounded fainter and fainter in the distance, and until they finally died away. But when silence reigned again, the owner of the hand moved; and, to his surprise, Ben found himself moving, too.

The hot sharp knives were propelling him and directing him. They propelled and directed him into the long shadow of the wall, and they kept him in the long shadow until the wall took an unexpected, narrow turn. Now Ben was between two walls, and there was nothing whatever but shadow. He felt as though he were being marched along a black plank, with a drop into further blackness at the end of it.

Then, suddenly, the unpleasant journey concluded, and he was jerked into a halt. Behind him, in a low fierce whisper, sounded the voice of his captor.

‘Now, say!’ the voice commanded. ‘Who are you?’

‘Wotcher mean, ’oo am I?’ muttered Ben. ‘That won’t ’elp yer!’

‘Answer!’

‘Well, tike yer ’and orf me neck—’

‘Sst!’

‘And don’t spit!’

‘Diablo!’ hissed the man behind him, and Ben’s heart gave a jump. Diablo! He’d heard that before! Diablo was Spanish for ‘Bother!’ … ‘Answer, as I say!’

‘Corse, it’s heasy ter tork when yer ’avin’ yer gullet choked,’ retorted Ben. ‘But if yer want it, me nime’s Ben, and me At ’Ome Day’s fust Fridays.’

‘Ben, eh?’

‘Yus.’

‘Si!’

‘That’s right. Jest come orf it.’

‘No more that!’ The voice grew more menacing. ‘Now say again. Say why you run?’

‘’Cos yer was arter me.’

‘Arter?’

‘Arter. Chise. Try ter catch.’

‘Oh! So I try to catch you?’

‘Yus.’

‘And so—you run?’

‘Yus.’

‘But before I try to catch you?’

‘Eh?’

‘You still run? Say, now! Why you run before I try to catch you?’

Ben thought he would try to run again, but as he gave a lurch the fingers tightened on his neck and his breath began to go. ‘Oi! Stow that!’ he gulped. ‘I won’t be no good to yer flabby!’

‘Dios meo!’ rasped his captor. ‘Speak what I say, and no more! Why you run away?’

‘Gawd, yer worse’n a cop!’ murmured Ben. ‘Why was I runnin’ away? Well, I reckon you knows that as well as I do … Orl right, orl right! I was runnin’ away ’cos—’cos a chap wot I was with died sudden, like.’

‘Died?’

‘Ain’t I tellin’ yer? If you don’t comprennez the langwidge you orter’ve stayed at ’ome—’

‘Who is it that die?’

‘I’ve toljer!’

‘Who?’

‘Chap I was with.’

‘Diablo!’

‘That’s right.’

‘But who were you with?’

‘Chap wot died. Eh? Well, ’ow do I know. I on’y jest met ’im.’

‘Si, si! You meet him and you say “Buenos dias,” and he die!’

‘I never tole ’im ter dias—’

Then the whole Spanish dictionary descended upon Ben, and he felt something prick his back. He recognised that prick. It was a part of the Spanish Constitution, and in a panic he poured out particulars.

‘’Is nime was White. Leastwise, that’s wot ’e sed. ’E got torkin’ ter me when we was on the boat, see, and then ’e got torkin’ ter me when we got ashore, see, and then—’ere, stoppit, I’m goin’ as quick as I can, ain’t I?—and then ’e got torkin’ when we was in the cab, and so, well, we got torkin’—’

‘But what you talk about?’ interrupted the Spaniard.

‘Eh? Orl sorts o’ things,’ replied Ben. ‘Weather. Price o’ bernarners. You know.’

‘I do not know! But I get to know! You tell me! Quick! Yes?’

The prick was reborn in Ben’s back.

‘Lummy, wotcher want me ter tell yer?’ yelped Ben. ‘Me bloomin’ ige? He tells me abart a job, see—’

‘Job?’

‘Yus. Persishun. Tells me if I goes along I can ’ave it—’

‘Where?’

‘’Oo?’

‘Where, where?’

‘Oh! Where did ’e tell me ter go?’

‘Si!’

‘’E tells me ter go ter the plice where the job is.’

The Spaniard swore. Ben swore back. The Spaniard swore again, and won.

‘Wimbledon,’ muttered Ben. ‘Wimbledon Common.’

‘But the house?’ pressed the Spaniard.

‘I’ve fergot it.’

‘Then how you go there?’

‘It’s on a bit o’ piper.’

‘Piper?’

‘Yus. ’E wrote it.’

The Spaniard’s eyes gleamed, but Ben did not see as the eyes were behind him.

‘Show me,’ ordered the Spaniard.

‘Yus, and ’ave ’im follerin’ me,’ thought Ben. ‘No blinkin’ fear!’

‘Show me!’ repeated the Spaniard, and his voice grew more tense.

‘Carn’t,’ replied Ben. ‘I lorst it.’

‘You lie!’ threatened the Spaniard.

‘Wot, me lie? There’s a thing ter say!’ protested Ben, and then suddenly jumped. ‘’Ere, tike yer dirty ’and aht o’ me pocket! I tell yer I lorst it—it ain’t there.’

‘But something else is there, eh?’ retorted the Spaniard, while his bony fingers felt around Ben’s middle. ‘This dead man! This White. He give you something else, eh?’

Something else? Lummy! Was the Spaniard after his pound?

Urged now by the financial aspect, it is possible that Ben would have continued his protest and, by so doing, would have ended his uneasy life in a narrow passageway on the outskirts of Southampton. But the Spaniard suddenly stiffened. A moment later, a policeman came round the corner.

The policeman was a smart fellow. On this occasion, however, he was not quite smart enough. He did not realise that he was face to face with a couple of speed kings. While the Spaniard used his legs, the Briton used his arms, and unfortunately for official prestige the constable’s face was within the circuit of the arms. Caught in the first whirling of the human windmill, the constable fell to the ground; and, when the human windmill stopped whirling, the constable was still trying to come back to earth from a confusion of distant stars.

Ben, of course, had not intended to knock the policeman down. He respected the law even while the law refused to return the compliment. Confronted with a situation that refused to reveal any immediate solution, he had merely obeyed the self-protective instinct of endeavouring to transform himself temporarily into a danger zone, and any man whose arms are revolving at the speed of fifty revolutions per second is a danger zone.

But now, his energy spent, the late human windmill stared down at the policeman’s recumbent form, while the enormity of his offence percolated into his steaming brain.

Previously, Ben had run away from the menace of suspicion. Now he would have to run away from the menace of fact. It is not an offence to be with a man when he is murdered, provided you are not one of the main parties, but it is an offence to knock a bobby down. The only bright spot in the miserable situation was that the Spaniard had gone, and that a yellow hand with a red scar upon it was no longer groping about Ben’s underfed person.

‘Thank Gawd ’e’s ’opped it!’ reflected Ben. ‘And now I’m goin’ ter ’op it!’

Hopping it was fast developing into his normal mode of progress.

But, before Ben hopped it, he took a risk. He paused and stooped over the policeman’s prostrate form to ascertain that he still lived. ‘It’d be jest my bloomin’ luck,’ he thought, ‘if I’d killed ’im.’

Happily for both of them, the policeman was not dead. Indeed, as Ben peered down, the policeman began to show such obvious signs of life that Ben abruptly reared himself erect again, and lost no more time in hopping it.

Once more he sped. He sped in a circle. It was a very large circle and a very fast circle. Possibly an astronomer on Mars spotted it and reported a ring round Southampton, reviving an extinct theory that the earth was inhabited, but Ben himself did not know it was a circle until he had completed it, and found himself once more under a creaking sign.

You or I might not have recognised the creaking of the sign. Ben, however, did. He was a creak expert, having more or less lived with creaks all his life. The creak of the stair, the creak of a ship, the creak of a door, the creak of a boot—he knew them all. He knew the difference between the creak that preceded a sudden rush and the creak that was merely investigatory, between the creak courageous and the creak cautious. Once, during an unusually long sojourn in an empty house, he had learned the creaks so well that, for the sake of convenience, he had numbered them. No. 3 was the back door. No. 6 was the hall window. No. 9 was the boot-cupboard. No. 17 was the loose stair on the way to the attic. He himself performed No. 17 while escaping from No. 9.

After this, inn-signs were child’s-play!

And thus Ben recognised that the sign now creaking above him, almost invisible in the increased gloaming, was the sign that had creaked near by when the Spaniard had laid an unwelcome hand upon his shoulder.

It was a depressing discovery. He had run five miles, and they had got him nowhere! But even more depressing was a discovery that dawned a few moments later, while he stood hesitating and wiping his forehead with his cap.

Voices were sounding from the road along which he had come.

As with creaks, so with voices. Again Ben was an expert, and he did not need to know their words before he knew their temper. These voices, experience told him, were panting voices. Indignant voices. Excited voices. Official voices. Determined voices …

‘Along here?’

‘Quiet, now!’

‘D’you think he stopped?’

‘What about that pub?’

And then a figure suddenly materialised close to him. It materialised in a startling flash. The voices had not sounded so close!

In a flash no less startling, Ben entered the inn. There seemed no alternative. The figure barred the way ahead, and the approaching voices barred the way behind.

He found himself in the public bar. His mind was so confused that he could not have told you at the moment whether the bar were full or empty. His whole being was concentrated on the figure that had sent him diving into this dubious sanctuary, and he stood stock still in the expectation that the figure would follow him.

But the figure didn’t follow him, and all at once his mind switched galvanically back to the voices. They were now much closer. Just outside, in fact. Where the figure would be …

‘Come on!’

‘You think he’s in there, then?’

‘Bet he’s popped in a barrel!’

A reply from the door-step, however, dissolved this picturesque theory.

‘Are you after a run-away? If you are, he’s just gone along that road there towards Southampton,’ came the amazing information. ‘Yes, and the brute knocked me clean down in his hurry, he did, so I hope you catch him!’

The pursuers shouted thanks. Feet turned, and hurried away. But Ben remained motionless. For the voice that had turned the pursuers’ feet was the voice of Molly Smith.