Читать книгу Ben on the Job - J. Farjeon Jefferson - Страница 7

Well? Now what?

That was Ben’s perplexing question when he found himself once more alone—because of course you don’t count a corpse as company—and for a few moments he could not find the answer. Then all at once the answer occurred to him with such simplicity and force that he wondered why there had ever been any doubt about it. It was to follow Bushy Brows’ example and to clear out!

But after he had cleared out, and by zigzagging through foggy thoroughfares had put three or four blocks between himself and the block he had started from, the question, ‘Now what?’ reverted to him in an even more perplexing form. He had dealt with the problem of his own immediate danger. The problems of the corpse, of the woman in the photograph—funny how that photograph stuck in his mind—and of Bushy Brows remained.

Corpse. Woman. Bushy Brows. He considered them in that order. Fust, the corpse. You couldn’t leave even a dead man to himself once you’d found him. Well, could yer? I mean ter say! Especially when he was in an empty house and mightn’t be found by anybody else for days and days. There’d be people worrying. That woman, for instance. P’r’aps an old muvver. And then the police. The longer they didn’t know, the longer the murderer would have to get away. Maybe he was getting away at that moment—up north! But somehow, though he could not explain why, Ben did not think the murderer was Bushy Brows. Though, mind yer, he might be. And setting aside all else, if you left a corpse too long in an empty house, the mice might get at it!

All right, then. The police must be reported to. And a nice job that was going to be! A bloke who is being chased by one constable goes up to another and says, ‘Oi, there’s been a murder!’ No, thanks!

How about sending a telegram?

But another solution was right at hand, and suddenly Ben realised what he was leaning against while he cogitated. A telephone booth!

‘Lummy! That’s the idea!’ he muttered. ‘Give ’em a ring!’

He did not put the idea into practice at once. Two women came out of a house nearly opposite, and he wanted them out of the way before he entered the box. A movement might attract their attention. Fortunately, they turned in a direction which took them away from the booth, and soon they had dissolved into the mist. Nobody else was in sight.

Quickly he slipped inside, and quickly he lifted the receiver to get it over. But nothing happened. ‘Oi!’ he called hoarsely. ‘’Allo! Oi!’ Then he remembered that nothing would happen until he did something himself. Lummy, where was two pennies?

He recalled that the change he had received from his last shilling had been lost through a hole in his pocket, and a pound note was no good in a ’phone box. ‘I’m sunk!’ he thought dismally. Then he suddenly remembered something else. The old lady who had given him twopence for helping her across the road. Hadn’t he put those pennies in another pocket? To his relief he found that he had, and that by a miracle this pocket was intact. Extracting them carefully and holding them tight in case they jumped away, he prepared to part with them for the doubtful benefit of a conversation with the police, when yet another snag came into his mind. He didn’t know the name of the street or the number of the house in which lay the body he was about to report!

There was only one thing for it. He would have to go back.

The prospect was so unpleasant that he nearly weakened and gave up the whole affair. Why not drop it, and keep the twopence? Arter orl, ’e ’adn’t done nothink! Why not remove himself as far as possible from this unhealthy district, and end the day in serenity and peace? But he had a pound note as well as twopence, and the pound note had been less innocently earned. There was only one way to square that account! And wouldn’t the eyes of that woman haunt him? Not to mention the less attractive eyes of the late George Wilby, of 18, Drewet Road, SW3?

With a grunt of misery he left the booth and unwound his way back to the danger zone, and now he blessed the fog which, when you wish to avoid publicity, is so preferable to sunlight. It made the unwinding process a little more difficult, but Ben was good at groping, and when he came to the turning down which he had dived to escape the constable he immediately recognised it. Ah, there was the name! Norgate Road. Now he only had to go down it as far as the gate-posts without a gate. Not this ’un. Not this ’un. Not—yus, this ’un. Nummer Fifteen. Nummer Fifteen, Norgate Road …

As he peered through the gate-posts at the side-path along which he and Bushy Brows had gone round to the back, it seemed that it had happened years ago instead of only a few minutes! But there was the pail on its side, just as Bushy Brows had kicked it … And down in the cellar was the corpse … Or was it?

Suddenly assailed by the itch of doubt, Ben paused in the act of leaving. Suppose—it wasn’t there? It wouldn’t be the first corpse to walk off while his back was turned, and in that case there would be no object in reporting it! He hesitated between fear and curiosity, and the curiosity won, drawing him against his will along the side-path, past the overturned pail, round the corner of the building to the back yard, and in through the back door—still wide as he had left it. Or had he left it as wide as this? He couldn’t remember.

Inside the doorway he stopped for a moment to listen. Reassured by the silence, he crossed the dim space to the top of the basement stairs and descended to the cellar. Narsty sahnd yer boots mike on stone—there don’t seem no way ter stop it.

Something darted towards him as he reached the bottom. He struck out wildly, and just missed a large cat. Swearing at it as it vanished, he advanced a step farther and turned his head towards the shadowed spot where the body had been, uncertain whether he wanted it still to be there or not. He could not see it, but this was not conclusive, because he found he had closed his eyes to shut out the unpleasant sight.

He opened his eyes … Ah! Yus—there it was! Lyin’ near the wall, with its feet sort of crumpled like, and with its arms … with its arms … His heart missed a beat. Several beats. Both arms had been outstretched before. Now only one was!… And the chair had been righted … And where was the rope?

‘I’m goin’ ter tell yer somethink,’ Ben informed himself. ‘You ain’t stoppin’!’

The information was correct. Ben was out in the street again almost before he had given himself the news. He had no recollection of the journey from the cellar to the street. Nor, when he found himself back in the telephone booth, did he remember much about that. He must have come back here, because here he was back here. Funny ’ow sometimes wot yer did seemed to of been done by somebody else!

All right! Now, then! Get it over! But, first, a little check up. Nobody visible outside through the glass. Good! Two-pence—out it comes. Good! Address—address—lummy, what was the address? Sweat increased on a brow already wet. ’Ad ’e fergot it? His dizzy brain strove to recall the name of the street and the number. ‘If I can’t, this is the blinkin’ finish!’ he decided. ‘I ain’t goin’ back, not fer nobody!’ Ah—of course! 18, Drewet Road. No, was it? Yus. No! That was the address on the deader’s visitin’ card! Blarst. Then what—ah—of course! 46, Jewel Street. No, was it? Yus. No! That was the address of Ma Kenton where he was supposed to go and stay till Bushy Brows let him know. Lummy, what was this other? Like some seaside, wasn’t it? Brighton—Eastbourne—Ramsgate? Ramsgate—that seemed a bit closer. Ramsgate—Margate. Ah! From Margate it was an easy jump, and all at once he saw the black letters against a misty white oblong—Norgate Road. That was it—Norgate Road. Nummer 15.

Even at the best of times Ben was not ‘telephone minded’, and this was by no means the best of times, but he must have done all the right things, because after he had parted with his two precious pennies he found himself being invited by an unmistakably official voice to inform the speaker what he wanted.

‘’Allo,’ replied Ben.

‘You’ve said that before,’ came the reminder, patiently.

‘Tha’s right,’ agreed Ben.

‘Who is it speaking?’ asked the official voice, not quite so patiently.

‘’Allo,’ said Ben, and just saved an outburst at the other end by adding, ‘Oi! Do yer know Norgate Road?’

‘What about it?’

‘Yer do? Well, see, there’s a dead body on the floor of the cellar at Nummer 15.’

Then he slammed down the receiver.

The next five minutes were devoted to separating himself as widely as could be done in the time, and in the fog, from both the telephone booth and Norgate Road. His next stop was a pillar-box. He liked things to lean against. Indeed, this afternoon he needed them.

Well? Next?

The corpse had, so to speak, been ticked off, and second on his list was the woman in the photograph. Bushy Brows came third—a matter perhaps for longer consideration. But rather to Ben’s surprise the woman in the photograph did not seem to require any consideration at all. He had to know a little more about her, and as the only place where he had any chance of this was the address of the murdered man—sayin’, mind yer, ’e ’ad been murdered and ’adn’t committed suissicide—well, there he would have to go. But the finger with which Drewet Road beckoned to Ben was a very sinister one! Was Drewet Road, as a health resort, likely to prove any more salubrious to Ben than Norgate Road?

Perhaps none of us are complete fatalists. We rebel against the idea, even if we cannot disprove it, that we are mere movements in a flow that started before the world was born—that never started at all, in fact, since Time is limitless, with neither beginning nor end. It is humiliating to feel one is merely the ephemeral shape of a wave in a permanent sea.

But Ben was as near to a complete fatalist as you could get. In fact, if he could have explained his own position, he would have said that he spent most of his life in a fruitless attempt to avoid doing what he was compelled to do. In his own lingo, ‘Yer tries not ter but yer finds yer ’as ter.’ Take, for instance, the last fifteen minutes. He had tried not to go back to Norgate Road, but he had had to. He had tried not to revisit the cellar, but he had had to. Sometimes, of course, Fate gets caught as well as you, and you’re out of a house before either of you had bargained for it. That had happened after that very nasty shock in the cellar. But after such moments the flow goes on again, and he had tried not to telephone to the police, but he had had to, and now he was trying not to go to Drewet Road, but he knew he would have to. ‘Once yer in it, yer in it!’

But although Ben put it down to Fate, there might be others, with individualistic ideas, who would have argued that Ben had a soft spot inside him that was all his own, and that it was his own self that made him leave the pillar-box, where he could have remained in quite nice comfort, and turn in the direction of SW3.

It was not going to be so easy to get there, for all the workings of destiny. In the first place he had never heard of Drewet Road, although he had heard of SW3. In the second, fog didn’t help. In the third, even if he found the right tube or bus—and his knees felt a bit too wobbly for a long walk—could you pay for your fare with a one-pound note? It was while he was pondering over these snags that he was handed an opportunity for solving all three. A taxi loomed out of the mist, and before he knew it he had hailed it. Ben taking a taxi! Lummy, wot did yer know abart that?

The taxi stopped, and he jumped in quickly before the driver could refuse so unpromising a fare.

‘Drewet Road,’ he called.

As he sank in the seat the driver’s face twisted round and peered at him through the glass window that divided them. Sliding the window aside, the driver called back through the aperture, after a squint at his passenger.

‘Can you pay for it?’

This was a repetition of the coffee-stall keeper’s scepticism that morning. Nobody seemed to think Ben could pay for anything. Quite often they were right.

‘If yer can chinge a one-pahnd note,’ replied Ben.

‘Let’s see the note?’

Ben fished it out and held it up.

‘Oh,’ said the driver. ‘Well, which Drewet Road do you want?’

‘The one in SW3,’ answered Ben.

‘What number?’

‘Eh?’

‘What number Drewet Road?’

Ben hesitated. Taking this taxi was a bit of a risk, and it was a pity the taximan was having such a long look at him, though Ben hoped the corner he was sitting back in was too dark to reveal his features plainly. One of these days the driver might be asked to describe his passenger!

‘There yer’ve got me,’ said Ben. ‘I know the ’ouse but I dunno the nummer. Stick me dahn at one hend, and I’ll find it.’

‘Okay. I hope you ain’t in a hurry?’

‘Tike yer time.’

‘I’ll have to in this fog. You wouldn’t be slipping out on me, would you, at the traffic lights?’

‘Yer can ’old the stakes if yer like,’ retorted Ben, and thrust out his hand with the note.

The driver looked at the note, smiled, and shook his head.

‘That’s all right, chum,’ he said. ‘But we get some funny fares sometimes, and have to be up to their tricks.’

The journey began. Ben closed his eyes, and decided to make his mind a lovely blank. He was so successful, and the blank was so complete, that aided by the soporific comfort of the cab he went to sleep, and did not wake up again until the driver’s voice again called to him through the window.

‘We’re there, chum.’

Ben opened his eyes. Lummy, so they were! The taxi had stopped.

‘Sorry to wake you,’ grinned the driver. ‘You can sleep on, if you like, at five bob an hour.’

‘No, thanks, I wants a bit o’ change aht o’ me pahnd,’ retorted Ben. ‘’Ow much do I tip yer?’

‘Oh, nine bob’ll do.’

‘Mike it pence, and add it ter the bill.’

The change amounted to fourteen and threepence, and as Ben poured it into his pocket it all came out on to the pavement. Most of Ben’s pockets were mere passages. It was a nuisance, because the friendly driver insisted on getting down from his seat and helping to recapture the coins, which further stamped Ben upon his memory. It was unlikely, however, that even without this addition Ben would have been forgotten.

‘All right now?’ inquired the driver. ‘I’ll take you along to your house, if you like?’

‘No, I can manidge,’ answered Ben, the coins now secure in a pocket that functioned. ‘Good ’ealth!’

The driver got back into his seat, gave Ben one more glance to make sure he hadn’t been dreaming, and drove off, Ben filling in the time by inserting a fag-end he had found with the coins between his lips and sucking it. That is all you can do when you have used your last match.

Alone again at last, and trying not to feel anxious and depressed—an impossible effort—Ben began to walk slowly along Drewet Road. He found himself at the low-numbered end, which meant that No. 18 was not far off. He came to it, in fact, in less than a minute, and as he turned his head to the front door it opened, and a lady came out.

It was the lady of the photograph.