Читать книгу Murderer’s Trail - J. Farjeon Jefferson - Страница 6

‘Oi! Git orf me!’

Ben sat up abruptly, with a clammy sensation that a nightmare had pattered over him. Then fear of death was succeeded by indignation against life. Why had life, as momentarily represented by a black and shadowy dockyard, nothing better to offer a weary man than the horrible spot on which he lay?

Ben did not often sleep between clean sheets, but he had his standards. A bit of a carpet, with a footstool under your head—the corner of an empty attic, particularly if the attic were triangular to improve the wedge-like snugness of the angle, and if the peeling wall-paper kept off your nose—a couple of chairs with a minimum of seven legs—even a table, either on it or under it, according to which least reminded you of granite—these were supportable and permitted you to retain the one per cent of self-respect unfeeling life had left you. But cold and slippery stone, an equally cold and slippery post that vanished from behind you every time you moved your head half an inch to scratch it, leaving you outstretched, and rats!—these were conditions that even a worm might turn at, destroying its faith in the god that looks so inadequately after the Lesser Things!

Yes, the rats in particular. Ben hated rats. Nasty, slimy creatures, with evil eyes and bodies four sizes too large. Mice, now—they were different. You could chum up with a mouse when you knew how, and give them little bits of cheese. But rats took the cheese without waiting to ask. They just watched you from a dark corner or a crack, then darted forward with a swift swish, clambered heavily over you like giant slugs fitted with feet, used your face as a floor, and left their foot-marks on your soul.

‘Next rat I see,’ thought Ben, ‘I’ll wring its neck!’

A large dock rodent accepted the challenge, leapt at his cheek, and bounced away again into the blackness. Ben’s eyebrows only escaped contact through being raised out of the rat’s route in terror. A month previously an Asiatic’s eyebrows had been less fortunate in Smyrna.

‘Blimy, wot a life!’ muttered Ben, wiping his forehead with a red handkerchief. The handkerchief was already four weeks late for its annual laundering, but, even so, handkerchief was preferable to rat, and he wiped hard to make certain that no trace of rat remained. ‘I ’opes I’m born somethink dif’rent nex’ time!’ He carried the thought a stage farther. ‘I ’opes there ain’t no nex’ time!’

Indeed, it was a life! Why did one hang on to it? Not far away dark water oozed and sucked around big, stationary ships. All one had to do was to get up, feel one’s way over the damp ground, avoiding posts and chains and ropes—there wasn’t any need to hurt yourself on the way, was there?—until there wasn’t any wet ground, but only the dark water. ‘Couple o’ gurgles, and yer’ve done with knocks,’ he reflected. Then he chided himself. Wot, ’im a swizzicide? ’Im wot ’ad been in the Merchant Service and ’ad once asked a captain for a rise? ‘Ben, yer potty!’ he announced to his weaker nature. ‘Come orf it!’ And so, instead of seeking the dark water, he sought the post again, with the more temporary sleep it offered, discovered too late that the post wasn’t there, and found himself flat.

He gave a yelp. The yelp was echoed. Now Ben was no longer flat. He was on his feet, shaking like a struck tuning-fork. For if the second yelp had really been an echo of the first, its character had changed uncannily in the tiny space of time between!

Ben’s yelp had been the yelp of one in sudden pain. The other seemed to have come from one in sudden panic.

‘Well, I’m in a panic, ain’t I?’ chattered Ben, struggling for comfort in the thought.

He stood, listening—for thirteen years. The echo was not repeated. Then, deciding that any place was better than where he was, a condition which possibly explains the source of most human energy, he groped his way through darkest dockland in search of a happier spot. He did not know in what direction he was walking saving that, if the second cry had come from the north, he was unerringly walking south.

He came upon another post. It wasn’t a nice post. It was unnaturally white, and it fluttered. All at once it occurred to Ben that it wasn’t a post at all, and that he had better hit it. The blow proved, painfully, that it was a post, but the fluttering white costume still needed explaining. A match explained it. Matches, at certain moments, are wonderful company. The service performed by the present match, however, might have been improved on. The costume turned out to be a newspaper poster tied round the post with a piece of string, and the poster said:

OLD MAN

MURDERED

AT

HAMMERSMITH

‘Gawd! Ain’t I never goin’ ter git away from it?’ muttered Ben.

For a few seconds the match-light flickered on the gruesome words—words against which the holder of the match might have laid his head. But sleep was no longer in the immediate programme. A rat, an echo, and a placard had combined to demonstrate that dockland—or, at any rate, this particular corner of dockland—was unhealthy, and that the best thing to do was to get right out of it.

The match-light touched his fingers. He dropped it spasmodically, but suppressed the exclamation. He had an idea that ears were listening, and in the darkness that followed the match’s descent the policy of retreat became instantly more appealing. Even in the darkness the horrible placard was still visible. It shivered palely as a little night breeze slithered from the sides of ships, and suddenly Ben turned and darted away. His foot caught in a chain, and he made a croquet-hoop over it.

He remained, croquet-hooped, for nearly half a minute. Only by utter staticism, he felt, did he stand any chance that Fate would lose him and pass him by. He knew for certain by now that Fate was hunting him, and that the invisible fingers were groping to make their catch. It was only when he considered that it would not be dignified to be caught in the shape of a croquet-hoop that he cautiously rose and proceeded on his miserable way.

He trod gingerly. He raised his feet high over many chains that were not there, and failed to raise them over another that was. He didn’t fall this time, however. As the ground rose up towards him, like the deck of a rolling ship, he lurched his left leg forward with a bent knee, recalling a trick of his old sea days. ‘Not this time, cocky!’ He glared at the chain. But a couple of seconds later he looped over some fresh obstacle, and his hands descended on something soft.

‘Wot’s ’appened?’ he wondered. ‘Is the bloomin’ ground meltin’?’

Or was it grass? But what would grass be doing here? Soft. Soft and warmish. Now, what was soft and warmish?

The solution came to him in a sickening flash. Suddenly weakened, the human croquet-hoop went flat, doing a sort of splits north and south from the stomach. Then it bounded up towards the unseen stars. It is doubtful whether anything in dockland had risen so high in the time since the days of bombardments.

Obeying the laws of gravitation, Ben came down on the spot from which he had vertically ascended. In other words, he came down on a dead man. After that, he ran amok.

He ran without knowledge of time or direction. Actually, the time was five minutes, and the direction was a very large circle. He fought imaginary foes all the way, and at every fifth step he leapt high over imaginary corpses. By the time he had completed the circle, his breath was spent. But, as events were soon to prove, that needn’t stop you. You can always borrow a bit of breath from the future if you’re really pressed.

Back at the spot where he had started from, he paused. He knew it was the same spot for various reasons. One was the chain—the chain over which he had nearly tripped just before falling over the dead body. There it was. No mistaking it. Another reason was a shape looming on his left. A bit of a boat. He remembered that too. Another reason—the strongest reason—was instinct. He knew this was the same spot. Couldn’t say why. Just knew it. It was as though he had stepped back into a picture he had temporarily deserted, completing it again … Yes, but one thing wasn’t in the picture. What was it? What was missing?

He stared at the ground ahead of him. His eyes glued themselves to the spot.

‘Lummy!’ he murmured. ‘Where’s ’e got ter?’

A splash answered him.

Several nasty things had happened during the last few minutes, but this splash was among the nastiest. If it had been followed by a cry, or by further splashing, or by any sound denoting movement, it would have seemed less ominous. But it was followed by nothing. Just silence. Whatever had caused the splash had made no protest.

And then, suddenly and without warning, a dark form came vaguely into view, and stopped dead.

The form was tall and shadowy, and the reason of its abrupt halt was obvious. If it had come into Ben’s view, Ben had also come into its view. Each was a dim shadow to the other. Too frozen to move, Ben stared at the spectre, while the spectre stared back. Then, when the silence at last became unbearable, the weaker broke it.

‘’Allo!’ said Ben stupidly.

He heard himself saying it with surprise. He did not recall having instructed his tongue to say it. And, now he came to think of it, had he said it? The spectre made no sign of having heard it.

‘’Allo!’ He tried again.

He was sure he had said it that time. His voice rattled like hollow thunder. But the spectre still made no sign. Slightly encouraged by the astonishing fact that he was still alive, Ben became informative.

‘There was a deader ’ere jest now,’ he said.

The spectre moved a little closer. Ben backed a little farther.

‘’Ere, none o’ that!’ he muttered, and then added, in nervous exasperation, ‘’As somebody cut out yer tongue?’

He closed his eyes tightly the next instant. He was afraid the spectre would answer the question by opening its mouth and revealing that its tongue had been cut out. He couldn’t have stood that. The darkness of closed lids was momentarily consoling, for it not only shut out the spectre, but it induced the theory that perhaps there really wasn’t any spectre at all. The whole thing might be just imagination. There were not many things, come to think of it, Ben had not imagined in his time. Once he had even imagined a transparent tiger with all its victims. ‘Wot you gotter do,’ he told himself soberly, ‘is ter stop bein’ frightened. See?’ Then he felt two arms around him, and forgot the advice.

Ben’s accomplishments were few, but he could carve little statues out of cheese, and he could bite. He bit now, and fortunately what he bit proved vulnerable. The spectre emitted a savage oath—there was no doubt now that it possessed a tongue—and Ben felt a pain somewhere. He didn’t know where. There wasn’t time to find out. But he knew he felt it, and the knowledge was so acute that he was urged to give a second bite. The second bite produced a second oath and a temporary loosening of the tentacles around him. He slid down, dodged left, slid up, dodged right, twisted, turned and ran.

He heard a heavy fall behind him. The chain that had once proved his enemy now proved his friend. His pursuer had tripped over it.

Profiting by this incident, Ben ran as he had never run before. That is to say, his legs moved as they had never moved before. For some reason, born of the nightmare atmosphere, his body seemed to be insisting on slow-motion, and as his legs raced beneath him he had a queer feeling that he was travelling in first gear.

That wasn’t the only trouble. As he ran, everything about him appeared to have increased in size and in height. The posts he sped by had grown four yards. The iron rings in the posts could have encircled Carnera. A wooden partition actually became taller as he passed it. The roof of a vast shed was as distant as the stars. And while his eyes grappled with these grim illusions, his brain grappled with the grim realities that had brought him to this sorry pass. The realities formed themselves into another chain, a chain this time in his mind. It was a chain of six links. Rat—cry—poster—body—splash—spectre. Rat—cry—poster—body—splash—spectre. But wasn’t there something else? Wasn’t there a girl somewhere? A girl who had blundered into his arms? And a man who had hurriedly left a coffee-stall without waiting for his change? Girl—man—rat—cry

Oi! What was this? Another link? The dark world began to swim. The spectre was behind him, twenty feet, or two, but this new apparition was before him. Short, thick-set, and stumpy. And motionless.

Ben, also, became motionless. When you’re the middle of the sandwich, you just wait to see which way you get it from. He expected to get it from the new apparition, and couldn’t understand the delay. Then, all at once, he discovered the reason. The new apparition had his back to him.

Fate was giving him a chance, and he took it. He could not advance, and he could not retreat, and on his right was a brick wall. On his left was another wall, but this was of iron, and in the iron a black hole gaped. It was a short distance from Ben’s feet to the hole. Just the length of a board that spanned a few inches of water.

‘’Ere goes fer Calcutter!’ thought Ben.

And into the hole he shot.