Читать книгу Detective Ben - J. Farjeon Jefferson - Страница 6

The blackness in Ben’s heart was reflected in the car. The blinds were drawn, and as the car shot forward he found himself travelling in a darkness that seemed to creep right up to him and touch him.

By his side was the beautiful woman. Even in this enveloping darkness that affected both sight and soul he remained conscious of her beauty, just as he had been conscious of it while staring at death. It brushed his ragged sleeve as the car swung abruptly round a corner. It whispered to him through the fragrance of scent. It electrified the black atmosphere. Ben was not impervious to beauty, and he could stare with incoherent appreciation at a sunset, or watch little children dancing to a piano-organ, or pause, futilely desirous, at the photograph of a naughty chorus girl wrapped round a pound of cheese. But he hardened himself against the beauty he was now encountering, for it presided in enemy territory.

Ahead of him, driving, was another figure. A big, smudgy figure in a large overcoat. There was no beauty in this dim outline. It was sinister and forbidding, and reminded Ben of Carnera. He found himself wondering how long, if it came to a fight, he would be able to stand up against that massive frame. He worked it out at five seconds less six.

But the big figure in the large overcoat had another kind of tussle on at the moment. Emerging suddenly from his dazed thoughts, Ben became conscious of it when the car took another violent curve that brought the woman’s shoulder hard against his own. He heard a shout. The car swerved. He heard a shot. The car accelerated dizzily. Another corner. Straight again. Another corner. Straight again. Plop! Ting! Two little holes. One in the small window in the back of the car, one in the windscreen. A straight line between the two holes separated, and cleared by three inches, two heads.

‘All right, Fred?’ inquired the owner of one of the heads, coolly; while the owner of the other head thought, less coolly, ‘Lumme!’

The big figure in the large overcoat nodded. The car flew on.

‘And you?’ asked the woman, turning to Ben.

It was the first time she had addressed Ben since they had entered the car. ‘Now wot I’ve gotter do,’ reflected Ben, ‘is to pertend it ain’t nothink, like ’er!’ Aloud he responded, with elaborate carelessness:

‘Corse! ’Oo minds a little thing like that?’

She smiled. He could not see the smile, but he felt it. It came to you, like her scent.

‘Item, courage,’ were her next words. ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve got that, for you’ll need it.’

‘’Ooray,’ thought Ben.

‘But, after all,’ she went on, ‘one expects courage from those who have been awarded the D.S.O.’

‘’Oo’s that?’ jerked Ben.

‘Distinguished Skull Order.’ She touched his gruesome pin with a slender finger. ‘You must tell me one day what you got it for. I expect you’ve a nice little selection of bedtime stories. But have you ever been shot at twice in five minutes before? You have to thank our driver for saving you the first time.’

‘Eh? When was the fust time?’ blinked Ben.

He couldn’t remember it, and the notion that he was under any obligation to the driver was not one that went to his heart. When had the ugly brute saved him?

‘Don’t play poker-face with me!’ retorted the woman. ‘You know as well as I do!… Oh, but of course—I see what you mean. The detective didn’t actually shoot at you—he was merely going to. Well, Fred was a fool to interfere. If you’d got in a mess, it was your affair to get out of it. However he lost his head, so I hope you’ll prove worth the risk he took by not losing yours!’

Ben’s mind swung back to the instant just before the detective had fallen. The detective had raised his revolver. The driver of the approaching car—this hulking brute a couple of feet ahead—had seen and misinterpreted the action. He had fired. The detective had dropped. And, for this, Ben had to thank him!

‘One day I’ll thank ’im in a way ’e won’t fergit!’ decided Ben.

Meanwhile, he must keep cool, and organise the few wits he possessed. He would have to display a few of those wits, to justify membership of the Distinguished Skull Order!

‘Ah—then it wasn’t you wot fired the gun?’ he murmured. ‘It wasn’t you wot killed ’im?’

‘I never lose my head,’ answered the woman, with a contemptuous glance towards the driver’s back.

‘I didn’t ’ear no bang,’ said Ben.

‘There wasn’t any bang,’ replied the woman.

‘Oh—one o’ them things,’ nodded Ben. ‘That’s the kind wot I uses. Orl bite and no bark!’

The driver shifted impatiently in his seat.

‘Do you suppose you could bark a little less?’ he growled. ‘We aren’t out of the wood yet!’

‘Keep your nerve, Fred,’ observed the woman calmly. ‘We’re keeping ours. I rather like our new recruit’s Oxford accent.’

Lumme, she was cool! Ben had to concede her that. But so were snakes. They could stay still for an hour. And then—bing!

A minute later, while a police whistle sounded faintly in the distance, the car turned up a by-street and stopped. The woman opened the door and leapt out with the speed of a cat. Ben followed obediently. The driver remained in his seat.

‘Be with you in five minutes,’ the driver muttered.

The whistle sounded again, not quite so distantly.

‘No, you won’t, Fred,’ said the woman. ‘Five hours, at least!’

‘Oh! What’s the idea?’

‘That you use the wits God is supposed to have given you. If you can’t shake off the police, you’re no good to me.’

‘Well, haven’t I—?’

She held up a hand. The whistle sounded a third time, closer still.

‘Listen, and don’t argue! That car’s been marked, and you’re wanted for murder. Both unhealthy. I’m not recognising you till you’ve left the car in a ditch forty miles away. Have you got that?’

‘Do I leave myself in the ditch with the car?’

‘That’s a question of personal choice.’

‘Suppose I’m caught?’

‘Then I certainly won’t recognise you. But it’s not your habit to be caught.’

‘All right—suppose I’m not caught?’

‘You’ll change your appearance.’

‘And then?’

‘Then you can come home to mother, darling, and she’ll give you a—’

‘What?’

‘A nice new pinafore.’

She smiled, and suddenly the driver grinned. ‘She can twist ’im rahnd ’er finger!’ decided Ben. ‘On’y got to show ’er teeth!’

He wondered what would happen if he gave the sudden shout that was bursting for expression inside him. Would the woman still remain cool and collected? More important, would the chauffeur lose his head a second time and add another capital crime to his sheet?

But it was not fear of these things, though undoubtedly he feared them, that urged Ben to restrain his violent impulse. It was the memory of the detective lying on the bridge. Ben was carrying on for the detective. He was in his official shoes—a detective, now, himself! And he meant to remain one until he had done all his predecessor had set out to do—and a little bit more!

The woman raised her head sharply. A car had turned abruptly into the next street at racing speed.

‘You’ll lose your pinafore,’ said the woman.

‘Will I!’ retorted the chauffeur.

In a flash he had vanished.

‘The cleverest driver and the biggest fool in the kingdom,’ murmured the woman.

Ben felt her magnetic fingers on his sleeve. A queer collaboration, those perfect nails upon his threadbare cloth! Guided by the fingers, he moved into the darkness of a doorway. He was used to doorways. He had sheltered in them, pondered in them, shivered in them, dried in them, eaten cheese in them, slept in them, but he had never learned to love them. There was always a haunting ignorance of what lay on the other side. This doorway, for instance. From what was it separating him? People sleeping? People listening? Rats? Emptiness? Dust?…

The racing car came whizzing round the corner. Thoughts of the doorway melted into a confusing consciousness of speed and scent in conflict. The speed of the car and the scent of the woman. Movement chasing immobility. Immobility out-witting movement. The scent had never seemed more insistent that at this moment. Inside the car it had seemed natural. Out in a chilly street there was something unreal about it. Like sandwiches after the party’s over …

Swish! The police-car whizzed by. The metallic hum rose to a shriek, decreased, and faded out into a memory.

‘And that’s that,’ said the woman.

‘You fer the brines,’ muttered Ben, deeming it the time for a little flattery.

‘What about your brains?’ she asked.

Ben used them, and touched the little skull that adorned his lapel.

‘Would I be wearin’ this ’ere skelington if I ’adn’t none?’ he replied.

‘I don’t expect you would.’

‘Betcher life I wouldn’t!’

‘What have you done to earn it?’

What had he done? Lumme! What was he supposed to have done? In the absence of any knowledge regarding his back history, he decided to generalise.

‘Yer know that bloke wot you called Fred, miss?’ he said.

‘I’ve heard of him,’ agreed the woman.

‘I expeck ’e’s done a bit?’

‘You’ve had some evidence of that.’

‘Eh? Yus! Well, if yer was to tike orl ’e’s done and if yer was to put it alongside o’ wot I’ve done, yer’d lose it!’

‘Really?’ smiled the woman.

‘That’s a fack,’ answered Ben.

‘Then you don’t mind killing people?’

‘Eh?’

‘I said, you don’t mind murder?’

‘It’s me fav’rit ’obby.’

‘Then come inside, and I may show you how to indulge in your hobby,’ said the woman. And, producing a Yale key, she inserted it in the door.