Somebody at the Door

by Raymond Postgate

  “I didn say I would do it. I said that’s the way I’d do it if I was in the muck you’re in.

  “Nothing to do with me and no reason I should stick my neck out. My duty’s to go and tell the manager just what I know, and have him check the stock to-morrow. Or I could tell Grayling. It’d be a pleasure to him, I daresay.” Harry looked at Charlie very closely; the reaction was all he could wish.

  “Harry, you musn’t; Harry, you can’t; it’d ruin me. It’s only a little thing to do. And, Christ, I didn’t mean the girl any harm; it was only to oblige her I got it. Harry, be a decent fellow.”

  Harry looked squarely at the foolish-handsome face in front of him—the manly pipe stuck back again in the white teeth, and the Nordic blue eyes imploring. Then he let him have it.

  “Make it worth my while,” he said, not casually at all now; and walked on. Charlie followed him.

  “How much?” he said, after a few seconds.

  “I can use a hundred pounds,” said Harry.

  The answer was what he expected. “A hundred pounds! You’re crazy. I’ve never even seen that amount of money. I’ve got ten pounds in the bank, and that’s all. I’ll pass you five to keep quiet and back me up.”

  Now was the time to be firm. Charlie Evetts was rattled and would come across in due course. This clamour was nothing but a try to get out.

  “You heard what I said. I can use a hundred pounds. Else I’m not interested, and things’ll just take their course. I don’t want to screw you down of course. I realize you maybe can’t arrange to pay it all right away. You got to get it together. You can pay me by instalments, see. Just you make a proposition and I’ll be reasonable. But don’t try and cut it down below a hundred, that’s all.”

  “I tell you I haven’t got so much money, or anything like it.”

  “I’ll give you a week to think it over,” answered Harry, “and that’s my last word. A hundred, mind.”

  He turned abruptly and crossed the road. From over the other side he watched Charlie dejectedly walking on towards Euston. He found to his surprise that he enjoyed a greater pleasure than the simple prospect of gain which he had expected. Something about the humiliation of Charlie’s stance pleased him. A bedraggled peacock. So often he had cut Harry out; he had not only talked about his conquests—Harry could do that—but he had actually made those conquests. He had always been the informed victor; he could look at almost any personable girl of their common acquaintance and say if she would or she wouldn’t, or how far she’d go, with a marked precision of detail and almost unvarying accuracy; he would even at times pass on the information condescendingly to Harry himself (“not that it’s likely to be of use to you, twerpie”). Now look at him. No patronizing now. The sight made Harry feel a fuller and rounder person. As he thought it over, he decided he too might be a success with the girls. Show them money, show them a good time, and you could do what you liked. They’re the same as everyone else. When he got that hundred he could take his pick of Charlie-boy’s skirts.

  6

  For six days Charlie Evetts thought. Connected thought, except on one subject, had been unusual for him since the days when he ceased worrying about exams at school. But that did not mean that he was a fool, as many of his acquaintances assumed. What are flatteringly called Don Juans are not fools. The siege of female virtue—even if the strongholds are less firmly defended than once—is an art, perhaps a science; certainly it cannot be successfully practised without skill and intelligence. Sexual attractiveness alone is not sufficient: the beautiful young man, at whose head girls throw themselves for years on end, exists mostly in young men’s day-dreams. Certainly, if he is unintelligent, the male beauty’s run is very short. He is very swiftly attached, after a brief and possibly bitter struggle, by the most determined and well-equipped young woman; and once he is married no man without plenty of intelligence can escape the firm bonds she lays on him. Conversely, a man may be very ugly, and yet have the most universal amatory success, as is shown by Jack Wilkes’ portrait. To do this, he has, of course, to be as clever as Wilkes. Charlie was not as clever as Wilkes; he was also not as ugly. But he had spent five years in an earnest study and practice of the art on which the great democrat spent forty-two years. Like Wilkes, he had only to transfer to another sphere the cunning he had already learnt.

  Some payment, he decided, would have to be made to Harry. But it need not be the whole hundred pounds. True, he ruled out any hope of appealing to Harry for a reduction. Harry’s tone had been wholly convincing about the figure of £100. But the reduction might be secured indirectly. This way.

  Blackmailers, Charlie argued, were in nearly as dangerous a position as their victims. Somehow he could use this fact. Once he had got some evidence, he and Harry would be at an equal disadvantage. It wouldn’t be any good asking for a receipt for the money as paid over: Harry would be too fly for that. But what he could do was to tell Harry that he could get money slowly, and piece by piece, from his father. He would pay him first ten pounds and then five, and then perhaps five once again, or maybe twice. Also he would change his account from the Post Office to an ordinary bank. Then, at the proper moment, there would be a conversation which would run like this:

  “Charlie: I’ve been thinking over our little financial arrangement, Harry. I’ve decided not to pay you anything more. Nothing at all.

  “Harry: You’re a fool, then. I’ll go and tell Grayling to-day.

  “Charlie: Oh, no, you won’t; and you know you won’t. Harry’s going to be a good little boy, Harry is. Harry knows when he’s sunk, and Harry’s sunk now.

  “Harry: Whatjer talking about?

  “Charlie: The moment you go to Grayling—the moment you so much as drop a hint, I’m going to the police.

  “Harry: Police! They can’t do anything.

  “Charlie: Oh, can’t they? I shall tell them the exact story of what I did, and how you’ve been blackmailing me. I’ll tell them I’m sick of being bled and decided to make a clean breast of it. And I’ll show them the cancelled cheques I’ve got back from the bank. Pay Harry Kelvin ten pounds. Harry Kelvin five pounds. Harry Kelvin five pounds. And Harry’s signature on the back. Try explaining that away. What’d I be paying you regularly sums like that for?

  “You’ve been too smart. If you talk, I get fired—oh, I know that. But you get what they give blackmailers. That’s five years penal servitude. Or seven if the judge is nasty to you.”

  The conversation varied, but that was its general theme.

  The only point to be settled was: how many payments to Harry would be enough to commit him hopelessly? One wouldn’t do: it could be explained away or even wholly denied. Two? Three? Charlie hesitated between three and four, and decided to leave that question for later decision.

  Meanwhile he wrote a begging letter to his father, and on Thursday told Harry that he would try and scrape the money together.

  “I can get ten pounds from father,” he said, “and after that I’ll maybe be able to get £5 regularly a fortnight. I can’t promise. I’ll do my best.”

  “You’d better had,” said Harry. “I’m not joking, and I’m not standing for any funny business.”

  Charlie shrugged his shoulders.

  That afternoon, Harry standing at the stockroom door, he faked the figures on the Deptford chit. When he had done it he felt an immense relief. He even spared time to be sorry about Ann.

  He drew ten pounds next day from the Post Office— the maximum that can be drawn at a day’s notice—and with it opened an account at the Croxburn branch of the Midland Bank.

  7

  Three days later he handed Harry the cheque. Pay Harry Kelvin, it said, ten pounds.

  “What’s this?” said Harry.

  “Ten pounds. I told you that’s all I could manage,” answered Charlie.

  Harry tore the cheque, very carefully, into small pieces:

  “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” he said. “Ten pounds, I said. In one pound notes.
And, by the way, not new ones. Don’t try this on again, Charlie boy.”

  Harry sneered at him, and the abyss opened before his feet.

  One hundred pounds.

  Chapter III

  1

  Sir James Mackenzie, white-haired, dignified—in full morning dress and with gold-rimmed eyeglasses—had spent but a little time examining the remains of Councillor Grayling. Still, he seemed more than usually interested by his inspection.

  “Well, that is quite remarkable,” he told Inspector Holly and Dr. Campbell, as he came into the Inspector’s office. He actually rubbed his hands. “Most unusual. But quite easy to diagnose,” he added, disregarding Campbell’s feelings to Holly’s pleasure. “Rather unexpected, I suppose. That must be why you missed it. But there’s no doubt. No doubt whatever.”

  “Then what is it?” said Campbell, bellicosely.

  “Why, the man was killed in a gas attack.”

  “What nonsense is this?” snorted Campbell. “Gas attack ! There’s been no gas attack yet in the whole of Britain. Rubbish, man. There was not a single plane over that night at all, anyway.”

  “You question my diagnosis?” asked Sir James with chilly politeness. “Then perhaps you will tell me some other way of explaining the œdema of the lungs, and the inflammation of the throat leading to the sloughing off of tissue sufficient to cause suffocation. I know no other cause adequate to account for the pseudo-membranes. In addition, there are clear markings on the face of the distinctive yperite burns. Perhaps you would like to examine the body again? I can see certain reasons for surprise, but none for doubt. Surprise, because the means of application of the gas do not seem very clear. But there is nothing that would cast doubt on the diagnosis, from the medical end. You yourself informed me that the man was nearly blind; anyway, there are unmistakable evidences of severe inflammation in the eyes.

  “There are the symptoms that I mentioned in the throat and lungs, which your report had led me to expect. There are those highly typical burns and blisters. All of these are consonant with the results of yperite. Some of them are not consonant with anything else—in my opinion at least,” went on Sir James, menacing Dr. Campbell with his eyeglass. “The pulmonary œdema, for example, or the condition of the trachea, which was covered with a thick purulent membrane. You may care to compare the symptoms with the classical case of Gunner B. in the reports of the Chemical Warfare, Medical Research Committee, Number 17, Case 6, page eight,” he continued relentlessly. “The only variation is in the swiftness of death. That is unusual. But I should point out, to begin with, that we are not sure when the attack was made. Though that point is not, perhaps, very valid. Whatever be the date of the attack, the symptoms developed at far higher speed than in the classical cases. The tempo of dissolution, so to speak, was accelerated. This is explicable. It can be due to two things. Firstly, Mr. Grayling was an oldish man—older, I think, by some twenty years than the average soldier who was attacked by poison gas in the cases recorded, and certainly in much worse health. His resistance would be less. Secondly, we have to postulate a higher concentration of gas than was usual in the last war. How that was achieved is another matter, on which I express no opinion.”

  He paused, for dissent or applause, and received neither. He turned to Holly, and said, more urbanely: “In nontechnical terms, Inspector, the man died of mustard gas poisoning. Gas, of course, is in some ways a misleading term. The stuff—dichlorethyl-sulphide it’s called—is really a liquid, giving off lethal vapour. The symptoms are very well known. They have been carefully studied and are theoretically familiar to every A.R.P. worker. In addition, we older men, can remember cases from the last war. Of course, it’s twenty years since there was an instance. But there is no doubt in my mind at all.”

  “Gas!” said the Inspector, groping. “Of course I wouldn’t question your verdict, Sir James. But it does take one aback a bit. Gas. I’ll consult the Civil Defence people, but I don’t expect they will help us. There was no enemy plane signalled that night at all.”

  Dr. Campbell appeared to have nothing to say. He was bright red and looked very embarrassed. Sir James offered some aid:

  “I can’t tell you how it was administered. I can only tell you what it was, and that I’ve done. I can see it’s very perplexing. Is it possible that one of our own planes had some sort of an accident? For example: let’s suppose we are making practice flights, and that by some error a small poison gas bomb—a live one—was being carried on a training plane, and an inexpert or frightened pilot released it. It might have burst more or less in the dead man’s face. That would be compatible with the injuries received.”

  “It’s possible,” said Holly. “Only just possible. I’ll make enquiries at the Air Ministry. I don’t think it’s likely, though. It would be a most extraordinary piece of inefficiency. Besides, we should have found traces of the bomb. The bomb case, for example.”

  “Tck,” said Sir James. “Well, that’s your problem, Inspector. A mustard gas bomb doesn’t have to be dropped from a plane, I suppose. There may be other ways of killing a man with it. I confess I can’t think of a plausible one at the minute, though.”

  2

  Inspector Holly reported this verdict later to the Superintendent.

  “I see,” said the latter. “And that takes us nowhere. Have you got anything else?”

  “Hardly anything, sir,” replied Holly. “I’ve interviewed the young man who sat next to Grayling. Evetts, not Everitt, his name is; he works in the same firm and lives in Croxburn. There was no difficulty in finding him.”

  “Yes. And then what?”

  “Well, he’s a young man, I should say good-looking, but at present in rather poor physical condition. His eyes were bunged up, and he had a sore throat and a cough so continuous that between the two he could scarcely speak. He works fairly near to Grayling in the office: he’s in the chemicals department and has something to do with sending out the stores—though he made quite a point of telling me that nothing was sent out except under double check. He has a dispenser’s certificate—the thing that you need to have to handle poisons.”

  “That isn’t necessarily ‘hardly anything,’ Holly; maybe you have got hold of something there. Compare the young man’s condition with what Sir James has said. Find if it would fit in with mustard gas poisoning.”

  “I have done so, sir.” There was the faintest shade of rebuke in the Inspector’s tone. “The symptoms are in the A.R.P. Manual, and they are more or less what Evetts has, as far as a layman can see. Supposing Grayling had been without his mask during a severe gas attack, as in the last war, and Evetts had been in the same attack and had got his mask on rather late—that would have produced, I would think, the phenomena that I observed. But of course that is absurd. I do remember noticing that the Vicar, too, seemed to have trouble with his eyes or throat and a skin-rash. But even if that, too, was due to mustard gas, it doesn’t make the whole thing any less preposterous.

  “I suppose it’s possible that young Evetts could have been monkeying with mustard gas, for the purpose of giving it to Grayling, and through carelessness got a snort of it himself. I don’t know how he would do it, though. I don’t think the Vicar would have helped him.”

  “What sort of man is this Evetts? Why isn’t he in the army?” asked the Superintendent.

  “Reserved. As a chemist. I don’t know but what the new call up will catch him, though. As for what he is—well, it’s hard to say exactly. There’s no trace whatever that I can find yet, of any motive against Grayling. He insists he scarcely knew him, except as a rather grumpy old man who sometimes travelled in the same carriage with him. They aren’t neighbours—he lives nearly two miles away. He claims he didn’t even know there was a Mrs. Grayling, which was a line I was going to follow up. You see, all I can find against him is that he has a pretty hot reputation with the girls. A great dancer too. Before the Palais de Danse closed he used to be there two or three times a week. Frequently acted as M.C.; bu
t I understand there had been complaints from some of the girls about his style of petting and he had not been asked to act as M.C. for some time. I’m trying to follow that up: I don’t really know what I can expect from it, though. Unless he was going off the rails with Mrs. Grayling it doesn’t seem to fit in.”

  “Any signs of extravagance? Is he supposed to be in want of money? Girls arn’t always cheap,” said the Superintendent.

  “No rumours yet. I saw him in his room at Halifax Grove: it was plainly furnished. There was a radiogram that looked a bit expensive, but he’s getting four guineas a week and could probably afford it on the never-never. Nothing else. Most of his decorations consisted of a large number of female photographs on the mantelpiece, which he swept off when I came and threw in a drawer. He didn’t say why; but it needn’t necessarily be a grave matter. Girl friends sign their names quite often, and policemen are nosey. He couldn’t take the pictures off the wall, though.”

  “Were they, er, hum?” enquired the Superintendent.

  “Oh, no; not really,” said the Inspector broadly. “Nothing that couldn’t be sold in a shop; semi-nude girls: the sort of thing that in our day was done by Rudolf Kirchner. I don’t know who does it now.”

  “A man called Varga, I think,” the Superintendent informed him, and then looked embarrassed at his own knowledge.

  “The thing which does worry me a little,” said the Inspector finally, “is that I got the impression that the young man was scared stiff of me when I came. I mean that he had something to hide. It may not have been about Grayling—at least he answered everything about him quite readily and said he was very anxious to help. But he seemed very uncomfortable at any general remark—about the pictures, the girls’ photos, and even when I asked him if he liked dancing. It’s a little difficult to be sure, when a man’s voice is almost inaudible, anyway. But I did get the impression that he had got something on his conscience. Something rather serious.”