Читать книгу No. 17 - J. Farjeon Jefferson - Страница 11

The fog did not lift through the night. London awoke to another day of yellowness, the optimists rubbing their eyes, the pessimists croaking. More blind groping, more wheezing and coughing, and more traffic strangulation. Only the companies that profited by artificial illumination, and the children who profited by the absence of their governess, smiled as they greeted the opaque morning. The rest of the world saw small joy in the adventure.

All day long, the ineffective lamp-post outside the house of strange happenings flickered intermittently upon the number, ‘17,’ Often, the number could not be read at all, despite the nearness of the light, but sometimes the fog thinned a little, and then the number grew out and vaguely beckoned. But few of the few people who passed along that unfrequented road troubled to notice it. Why should they? And, certainly, no one thought of answering its grim invitation.

A fog is bad enough. Who wants an empty house thrown in?

Between three and four in the afternoon, however, a passer-by might have paused. The house was dark and silent, saving for a very faint flicker in the top room. This flicker suddenly disappeared, to reappear a few seconds afterwards behind a window on the lower floor. Then, again, it vanished, and then again it appeared on the ground floor. After that, it vanished completely.

And then a passer-by did indeed come along, and appear to respond to the house’s grim invitation. He was a man with a crooked shoulder, and he paused outside the house and looked at it. As though to ensure his interest, the fog thinned momentarily, allowing the street lamp to shine more clearly on the number ‘17,’ and even revealing, for an instant, the front door.

The front door was ajar.

The man with the crooked shoulder looked at the door; then, turning his head, he glanced up and down the street. His eyes, of course, met nothing, since another man could have been standing five feet off without being seen. When he turned his head back to the front door, the fog had thickened again and he could no longer see the door. But he knew the door was ajar, and the knowledge fascinated him.

He stood there, perhaps, twenty seconds. Then, suddenly, he slipped into the house, and the door closed behind him.

And now it really seemed as though that silent street of ghosts and whisperings began to wake up and enter the arena of more normal, commonplace matters. A new figure groped its way along the pavement, a figure, this time unsinister and fashionable.

‘Hey! W-where are you?’ it stammered. ‘Where the d-dickens—’

It turned, and looked back—or tried to look back—along the way it had come. A well-dressed young man, with a good-natured, pleasant face, was revealed by the lamp-light. The lamp-post itself was revealed to the young man only when he backed into it.

‘Hallo! So there you are!’ he cried, in a voice of relief. ‘Where the devil did you g-get to, old chap? I—’

He stopped abruptly, as he turned to the lamp-post. Good-humoured annoyance shone on his features.

‘Oh! It’s you, is it?’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, h-haven’t you got something b-better to do than to stand there pretending to be a h-h-human being?’

He brushed himself, then raised his voice and called into the callous mist.

‘Fordyce! FORDYCE! Where the devil are you?’ He strained his ears for a reply, but none came. ‘Oh, all right—I don’t care!’ he ran on. ‘But just tell me this. W-what’s the b-bally use of a f-feller who meets a f-feller and can’t stick to a f-feller in a f-fog?’

No one answered the question. He veered round, shook his fist at the lamp-post, and then leaned against it. In his depressing circumstances, no little bit of comfort the street offered could be neglected.

‘What weather!’ he muttered. ‘Lovely! Sunshine in L-London, thirteen hours decimal eight. I don’t think. Je ne pense pas. Ich glaube nicht. And in all the other b-bally languages!… I s’pose this is London? Upon my soul, it m-might be Timbuctoo for all one can s-see of it.’

He waited a minute, then raised his voice and called again.

‘Fordyce! Fordyce! Gilbert Fordyce! Fordyce Gilbert! B-biggest ass that ever was, is, or w-will be, where are you?’ He began to cough suddenly. ‘There, that’s done it! Broken my beastly larynx now. Well, I’ll say this for you, old m-man. You may be a damned fool and s-stutter—yes, some p-people say you d-do stutter—but you’ve got the temper of a bally saint. H-haven’t I, my long friend?’ He gave the lamp-post a friendly, familiar slap. ‘I say, you don’t mind my talking to you, do you, old chap? Thanks, very much. Most awfully obliged. Even a lamp-post’s company—when there ain’t n-nobody else.’

As though in response, and to show what good company it could be, the light made an extra effort, and illuminated the number on the door-post. The young man stared at the number, and blinked. ‘No. 17, eh? Sweet seventeen! Made a lot of m-money on you once at dear old Monte Carlo. Good old seventeen—hallo! W-who …’

The front door swung open suddenly, and a figure hurried out. It was the figure of a man with a crooked shoulder. He seemed in a considerable hurry, for he blundered down the steps and was into the young man before he knew it. The young man fell back against the lamp-post.

‘What the hell—!’ muttered the blunderer.

‘Eh? Oh, don’t mention!’ replied the young man. ‘I like it!’

The next moment he was alone again. The other had vanished. The young man stared into the void.

‘Hi! W-wait a minute!’ he cried, waking up. suddenly. ‘W-what’s the hurry? I’m not c-contagious! Hi!’

He ran after him, and the road was empty once more. And, almost as though it had waited until there were no observers, the light in the house which had descended from the top now reappeared, and began to ascend again. It flickered dimly behind windows of the ground floor and first floor. Soon, it reached the top floor. Then, all at once, it went out …

‘Eddie!’ called a voice, along the street. ‘Eddie! Where are you?’

A tall, strong-limbed young man felt his way up to the lamp-post. He had come from the same direction as the stutterer, and was in the same predicament. But he did not expend his emotion upon the unresponsive lamp-post. Instead, he paused when he came to it, muttered, ‘Damn!’ and lit a cigarette.

And as he did so, the door of ‘No. 17’ burst open, and a terrified figure came flying out.

‘Hello—what’s all the excitement?’ exclaimed Gilbert Fordyce, catching hold of the flying man’s collar.

‘Gawd!’ choked the terrified figure, and hung limp in his captor’s grasp.