Fear to Tread

by Michael Gilbert

  “Scrumptious,” agreed Sammy.

  “That’s right. Keep cheerful. Your first job, I expect.”

  Sammy nodded.

  “Work hard and you’ll do all right. He don’t pay badly. Not but what he can afford to, the money he makes. Comes rolling in. Rolling.” Mrs. Cameroni held her hands six inches apart to indicate the width of the roll.

  “Seems a pretty good racket to me.”

  “You want to leave those girls alone, though. They’re not quite—you know. You wouldn’t believe it, one of ‘em had a baby just before she came here. It’s not right, you know. A girl like that. She ought to be stabilised.”

  “They’re both barmy, aren’t they?”

  “Lovely stuff. Why, I’m telling you, he gave me a bottle the other day, free and for nothing. Two and ninepence it’d have cost me in the shop. I rubbed it on my leg, and I was soon skipping round, I can tell you. Felt as if I was on fire. You just keep your mind on the job, put the bits in like he tells you, and shake it up well, and you’ll make your fortune too. It’s just what a smart boy like you wants. Get into a profession. Well, I mustn’t stand here gossiping all day. Got my husband’s supper to cook. Works all day at the National Gas Board and the temper he’s in when he comes home in the evening, you wouldn’t credit it. Talk about gas!”

  After Mrs. Cameroni had gone, Sammy took another look into the packing room. The two girls were finishing for the day, too. One was carefully making up her face at a mirror, the other was sitting on a chair, in a startlingly disengaged attitude, as if someone had put her down there and forgotten about her.

  Sammy went back to his room and sat for a few minutes swinging his legs. He heard the clatter of feet and the banging of the door as the two girls left. He was alone in the house. He was in charge. It was part of his job to look after things in the evenings when Mr. Holloman was out.

  It was the part of the job he cared for least. He could stand up to anything his weight on two legs, but silence and loneliness were more insidious enemies.

  Better start doing something, he told himself, or you’ll be getting the heeby-jeebies. Even those girls would have been better than nothing.

  Doing something? It suddenly occurred to Sammy that this was the moment for investigation.

  “Don’t get into trouble,” hadn’t Mr. Wetherall said, “but keep your eyes open. Watch out for letters and packets – particularly any with the W.C. postmark on them. See if you can find out what’s in them. Notice when Mr. Holloman goes out and try and remember if he says where he’s been. Take a note of what visitors come to the house.”

  All right. He would keep out of trouble. But there was no harm in snooping around a bit. The house was empty and he would hear Mr. Holloman’s key in the lock in plenty of time to stop doing whatever he might be doing. His spirits rose.

  There were really only two places for investigation. On the ground floor there was Mr. Holloman’s office and upstairs there was his bedroom. The rest of the house seemed too open for secrets.

  The office was the more promising of the two, but here Sammy suffered a check. The door was locked. And not just an ordinary, old-fashioned mortice lock, he noticed (which any of the downstairs keys might have fitted), but a bright, efficient little lock inset, two thirds of the way up the door; new, and quite outside Sammy’s limited attainments as a burglar.

  He cast his mind back to the short time he had spent in the office when he had first arrived. He seemed to remember that the window was barred. He went out into the scrubby garden at the side and had a look to make sure. It was barred, all right. New-looking bars, and too close together even for a boy. Upstairs, then.

  The house was quiet, and yet, when you really settled down to listen, not entirely quiet. There were very faint creakings and rustlings with occasional rather human gurglings from the old-fashioned water system. Strudwick Road itself was quiet, but distantly from the Holloway Road, came the sound of cars.

  The bedroom door was not locked. In fact, it stood ajar.

  Overcoming a sense of outrage at investigating so private a matter as someone else’s bedroom, Sammy went in.

  It was full of the usual sort of stuff you expect to find in bedrooms. A double bed, a dressing-table, some flowers on the mantleshelf. Signs, Sammy supposed, of the invisible Mrs. Holloman. Now that he stopped to notice it, the room smelt faintly of woman.

  There was a mahogany chest of drawers with comb and brushes and an old leather collar box on top, which was plainly Mr. Holloman’s territory, and Sammy concentrated first on this. The bottom drawers were full of things like flannel shirts and sensible ankle-length pants, all neatly laundered and folded. The smaller drawers looked more interesting. The left-hand one was full of socks. One pair looked unnaturally bulky and Sammy picked it out. It was heavy, too. Which was explained when he unrolled it and a small bright-looking automatic pistol fell out on to the floor.

  Sammy picked it up, remembering to use his handkerchief, rolled it back into the socks, and replaced the socks in the drawer. His confidence had increased. Ordinary people, he argued, did not keep automatic pistols rolled up in their socks.

  In the other drawer under the collars and handkerchiefs, were a lot of papers. They looked quite ordinary – bills and suchlike – and they looked as if they had been in the drawer some time. They were not hidden in any way. Sammy fingered them doubtfully. He hadn’t time to read them, and it would be too dangerous to take them away. Underneath the papers there was a square of photographs. It was the sort of thing you got from a photographer who took a lot of small pictures and you picked out the ones you wanted and had them enlarged. What was in the drawer was not the whole sheet. It was a piece torn out of it. Sixteen snapshots of a woman, in early middle age. Not bad looking, in a hard way. Mrs. Holloman, Sammy guessed. She looked the sort of woman who would smell the way that room smelt.

  Sammy hesitated again. If he cut off one of the portraits it was bound to be noticed. Equally so if he took the lot. Compromise. There was a pair of scissors on the dressing-table. He picked them up and snipped off one complete row of four portraits.

  As he put the scissors down, he thought he heard a faint sound in the passage outside.

  In a flurry he crammed the photographs into his pocket, shut the open drawer, and tiptoed to the door.

  All he could hear was the steady slam, slam of his own heart.

  There was still one more place to search, and he might never have such a chance again. The hanging cupboard.

  He edged over and tried the handle. The door was stuck, but not locked. He gave it a jerk, and as it came open his heart somersaulted up into the back of his throat. There was a very tall man standing there. At least it looked like a man. Really it was only a freak of arrangement. The hat on the shelf, the dark coat and trousers hanging from the hook, and the shoes sticking out under the trousers. Sammy had had enough.

  He slammed the cupboard door and bolted out of the room.

  There was no one in the corridor, and no one downstairs. He went to the front door and opened it. In the short time he had been upstairs dusk had crept over North London, bringing up with it a light haze from the river. Each of the street lamps looked out through a gauzy veil of mist.

  He came to the conclusion that he was safer in the street than in the house. He knew that he was not supposed to go out and leave the house empty (or was it empty? He supposed it was empty). Some sort of excuse was wanted. He felt in his pocket the letter he had written earlier in the evening. That would do. No one could blame him for going out to post a letter to his sister.

  He set off down the street.

  In spite of his preoccupation he kept his eyes open, because he could no more help observing than he could help breathing.

  Strudwick Road was not a very interesting road. It was akin to streets he knew in south London, but more elderly, more changed in decay. The gentility which had once reigned was still there, in the houses, with their false fronts like toupés, their ornam
ental urns, their unnecessary porticoes with the high front steps, which had once raised the gentleman in the parlour above the slavey in the basement.

  Had he known it, it was in that district, and in just such a house, that another famous purveyor of patent medicines had lived; and Pentonville Prison, in which Dr. Crippen had died, was not many hundred yards from the end of Strudwick Road.

  “Wotter dump,” said Sammy. He dragged his feet round the complete block, up Strudwick Road, turned right into Austerberry Road, and right again into Mutlow Terrace. Here he was momentarily cheered by the sight of the entrance gate and turnstiles of the Elephants Football Club. He had never got around to watching them play, but they were his league favourites. It gave the place a feeling of home.

  At the end of Mutlow Terrace, running at an angle into the Holloway Road, was a short street of shops, small grocers, stationers, tobacconists and the like. They kept no exact hours, and most of them were still open.

  Sammy went into the stationers and bought a large envelope. Into it he pushed the letter he had already written to Peggy, together with the folded row of photographs he had taken from Mr. Holloman’s bedroom. Then he stuck down and addressed the large envelope. The post office was shut, but there was a stamp machine which sold halfpenny stamps. Sammy bought what he judged to be sufficient stamps and posted the letter.

  That was one small item off his conscience and he felt the better for it, but he still had no particular wish to go back into the house. The sight of a telephone kiosk gave him an idea. A friend of his who, at the balance of sundry transactions, had owed him ninepence had liquidated the debt by showing him a system by which, with a certain amount of practice, you could ring up from a public telephone without actually putting any money into the machine.

  Sammy rang up the school, but got no answer. He then tried Mrs. Wetherall’s home and learned from Mrs. Wetherall that her husband was out at a meeting of the Save London Committee, and not expected back until much later. Feeling that he had nothing to lose Sammy next tried the office of the Kite, and, after some delay got put on to Mr. Todd. He explained to him what he had been up to.

  “He had a gun in his sock drawer, did he? Was it loaded?”

  “I didn’t look, Mr. Todd.”

  “Just as well. If it was an automatic you’d just as likely have shot yourself. Any chance of getting into that office?”

  “It’s always kept locked, except when Mr. Holloman’s in it.”

  “Keep trying,” said Todd. “The money’s the important thing. Watch what he does with the post in the morning. That should give you a line.” He was about to ring off when another thought struck him. “I think you’d better ring me up every day. When would be best?”

  “I get off about four for a cup of tea.”

  “All right. Ring this extension between four and six every day. If I’m not in there’ll be someone to take a message. And look here – all this ringing up must be costing you something, I don’t see why it should come out of your pocket. Let me know at the end of the week—”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Sammy handsomely.

  When he had finished telephoning he decided to watch the bus stop in the Holloway Road to see if he could spot Mr. Holloman coming back. Luck was with him, and he saw him almost at once, getting off a trolley bus, carrying a small suit case.

  Doubling round the back way Sammy got into the house in plenty of time to be sitting quietly in his own room when Mr. Holloman arrived.

  Shortly afterwards they had supper together. It was cold stuff, which had been prepared and left for them by Mrs. Cameroni. It was an odd, grown-up sort of meal of meat and pickles and brown ale, and Sammy rather enjoyed it. Mr. Holloman had brought back two evening papers, and they read one each, propped against pickle bottles. There was a good deal less of “don’t put your elbows on the table, don’t drink with your mouth full of food” than Sammy was used to at home. He felt he was getting on in the world.

  Everything was left on the table, presumably for Mrs. Cameroni, when she came in the morning to cook their breakfast.

  “You’d better get up to your room now,” said Mr. Holloman. “I’ve got some work to do. Don’t go reading to all hours. And don’t smoke in bed. The last boy nearly set the house on fire.”

  “All right,” said Sammy. He had never smoked in his life.

  He went up to his room. It was after nine o’clock. He decided that the thing to do was to wait until about ten o’clock, then turn the light off, but stay awake. The first part was all right. It was the second bit which caused the difficulty. He had had a long and rather exciting day and as soon as he lay down, fully clothed as he was, boots and all, he felt himself dozing off.

  “This won’t do,” said Sammy. He sat up and wedged his back against the bars of the bed. There was an iron knob, which dug into him half-way up his backbone, and he reckoned this should keep him awake all right.

  At some indefinite time later he woke with a start. The house was quiet, but the street lights were still on and it was not, he guessed, very late. He was still sitting up. His mouth was dry, and there was a bruise in the middle of his back where the knob had failed to keep him awake. He took his boots off, and sat and listened some more. Then he got up, opened his bedroom door, and went out on to the landing.

  The linoleum was cold under his stockinged feet, but blessedly silent.

  Suppose that Mr. Holloman came suddenly round the corner and asked him what he was doing? What was he doing? He was going to the lavatory. There was a cloak-room and lavatory just inside the front door. No one could be blamed for going to the lavatory.

  The stairs were carpeted, and Sammy got down them, too, without making a noise. At the turn of the stairs the door of Mr. Holloman’s study came into view and he saw there was a light on. Evidently Mr. Holloman was still at work.

  When, with infinite care and precaution, he reached the study door, he realised that there was more than one person in the room. Two at least, he thought. He could distinguish Mr. Holloman’s dry, conversational tone, and another, much softer; so soft that it was difficult to tell if it was a man or a woman. Also, there was another noise that worried him. It sounded like someone with a heavy cold, snuffling.

  Sometimes words came through.

  He heard Mr. Holloman say: “I’m sorry,” in the tone of voice of someone who was not in the least sorry. And a thin voice saying: “Just a week.”

  Without stopping to think much about it, Sammy decided that he must have a look. There was a chair in the hall and he had discovered, in the course of his explorations earlier in the evening that by standing on it he could just get his eyes to the small fanlight. It was frosted glass, but the frosting was inefficient along the bottom edge and he knew he could see Mr. Holloman’s desk.

  A few moments later he was in position, his fingers hooked on to the dusty lintel. It proved more difficult, this time, probably because he now had no boots on. He strained up on tiptoe, taking his weight on his fingers.

  There were three people in the room, and he could see them all.

  Mr. Holloman was seated behind the desk. Forward of him, in a chair, sat the woman of the photograph.

  The third occupant of the room was a little, grey-haired man, whom Sammy had not seen before. Both Mr. Holloman and the woman were staring at him, and Sammy, unaccountably, felt more frightened than he had ever felt in his life.

  The snuffling was explained. The little man was crying.

  12

  HOW MR. WETHERALL MADE UP HIS MIND AND SUFFERED A DISAPPOINTMENT

  ON that same Tuesday morning Mr. Wetherall arrived at the school in good time.

  Among the letters waiting on his desk was one from Mr. Bertram.He read it, but absentmindedly. It recorded the bare results of Mr. Bertram’s investigations at the companies office, but did not seem to take matters very much further.

  It was evident that Hollomans’ Cures, Ltd. was one of those extremely private companies which are little more t
han the legal projection of the personality of their founders. Mr. Wetherall understood, in a vague way, that it was a device highly thought of in trade to turn yourself into a private company, and that somehow or other it gave you immunity from your debts; which was a desirable thing, come to think of it, in any walk of life.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Peggy. She seemed to have something on her mind.

  “Had that Toup woman round here last night,” she said.

  “Miss Toup,” amended Mr. Wetherall gently.

  “The Dowager Duchess of Toup,” said Peggy unabashed. “Do you know what she wanted?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “She wanted to inspect the classrooms. I told her all the boys had gone home. Balmy. She still wanted to go round. I had to get the keys and unlock all the doors for her. I’d half a mind to lock her in for the night.”

  “What did she seem to want?”

  “She was looking at all the blackboards and notice-boards. You know what she’s like.” Peggy gave a rapid imitation of a short-sighted lady peering up at a notice-board. “There was a frightfully rude drawing left over from Mr. Ems’ biology class. I thought that might choke her off, but she just sniffed. What do you think she wanted?”

  “I imagine,” said Mr. Wetherall, “that she was looking for evidence of left-wing propaganda.”

  “Come again.”

  “She has got it into her head that I am an active member of a subversive group. I expect she thought she would find notices, possibly with small hammers and sickles in the corners, calling on the proletariat to cast off its chains.”

  “Oh, was that all,” said Peggy. She still looked worried. “It’s none of my business, but you wouldn’t perhaps have been—well, annoying someone, would you. Without noticing it perhaps?”

  Mr. Wetherall had known Peggy for most of her life, and it suddenly occurred to him that she was genuinely upset; more than she would have been on account of Miss Toup. They had laughed at Miss Toup often enough.