VISITORS TO THE CRESENT

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘Now drink this.’ It was sweet to be gentle, now that she was broken. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. But I really had to do it. You’re so out of touch with things.’

  He went on talking, stroking her shoulders. At last, she sat up and took the brandy from him. He was rather startled by her pallor; he hoped he had not driven her too far.

  ‘I know someone who can get you a ticket on a ’plane at short notice,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I’ll see that you’re all right for money.’

  She sipped the brandy slowly. There was a film of sweat on her forehead. Over the rim of the glass her eyes sought his, beseeching, like a person about to be punished, begging for mercy.

  ‘Will it really be like that, Jeremy?’

  ‘When they have finished with you,’ he said, ‘it will be as though you had been stripped naked’.

  He looked at the face with its fine, white skin, the faint, veined blue in the hollows beneath the eyes; he looked at the long, fastidious fingers curled round the stem of the glass, the fine-boned, brittle wrists; his eyes travelled down her body, noting the subtle modelling of the breasts, the slenderness of the waist, the long, tenuous curve of the hips.

  ‘You weren’t made for the hurly-burly of life, Jessica.’

  She turned away as though she were ashamed. He sensed that this was the moment to leave her. As he went to the door, she said in a low voice:

  ‘Suppose there is something else?’

  ‘Something else?’

  ‘Another piece of information.’

  He paused, his hand on the door. ‘In a day, two days at the most, this will all be over. Can your small piece of information matter so very much?’

  She shook her head and said, half to herself:

  ‘No. I don’t suppose it matters much.’

  It was the least important thing, she thought, as she listened to his footsteps going down the stairs.

  After a while she got up and walked around the room; she stopped at the mirror over the mantelshelf; she examined her features as though she were looking into the face of a stranger. Behind her in the room, other people moved in the shadows; voices whispered, insistent, demanding. She wanted to escape from them, to be herself again, owing no allegiance. It seemed a long time ago that she had stood here at night thinking, with a fascinated dread that yet retained something of innocence, that the pieces of the puzzle could be made to fit. She had thought then that the safest course might be to sweep the pieces to the floor. There had been no one to stop her, no one . . .

  ‘No!’ she said suddenly. ‘No, no, no!’

  She began to pace up and down the room. Her mind sought an avenue of escape. ‘It would not be fair to Edward,’ she argued. ‘It would be monstrous.’ Yet, as she thought of him, Edward seemed to assert himself as he could on occasions when his pride was touched: he rejected her attempt to use him in this way. ‘You belong with Harper,’ Edward said.

  But he was wrong. She did not belong with Harper; she did not belong in that searing, brutal world which Jeremy had brought to life so vividly. To submit would be to submit utterly, to give herself as she had never given herself before. No one could demand such total subjection. She stood in the centre of the room, her hands clenched, and she said defiantly:

  ‘I could never submit myself to such humiliation. Never!’

  She did not belong in that jungle which was surely no better than the darkness of Vickers. She did not belong to either world: she would renounce them both.

  IV

  It was late that evening when Harper left his office. During the day he had had a long, tiring, but not entirely unsuccessful discussion with Mr. Desmond Ames; he was still working on the fruits of that discussion. The lights were out in most of the other rooms and he walked slowly down the stairs wondering whether to go to his flat and snatch a few hours’ sleep, or whether to have a quick meal and get back to work.

  He had had no news of MacLeish and this worried him. He had nothing in common with MacLeish and he knew that as a result he handled him badly. MacLeish needed guidance and Harper was aware that he gave it in a way that was not acceptable. He was too impatient and domineering with the young man because he lacked sympathy with him. Now, looking back over their last talk, he was uneasy.

  He was still thinking about MacLeish when he came into Parliament Street. The night was still, sultry, and a bank of cloud hung heavy over the roof of the Treasury. He strolled round to the Embankment; the river was at low tide and a sour, dank smell came up from it. He decided to walk to one of the coffee houses at Charing Cross. The gates leading from Scotland Yard to the Embankment were closed; but there was someone standing beside them, gazing inwards, like a prisoner staring longingly at the security of his cell. Harper stood quite still, hardly daring to breathe. The man turned. In the blue gleam of a street lamp, Harper could see his face quite clearly; he knew that Saneck had recognized him. Yet the man made no movement, instead he stared back at Harper expectantly, as though some half-prayed for vision had materialized. Further down the Embankment there was a car parked. Near by, the wall of Scotland Yard was high, shadowed by the plane trees on the Embankment; something moved slightly in the shadow of one tree. Harper must have registered these things mechanically, for afterwards he brought them to mind; but at this moment he thought of nothing but Saneck. He began to walk forward. He did not feel surprised or elated, but as though something had happened for which they had both been waiting. Only a few yards separated them now. Harper reached the edge of the curb and began to cross in front of the gates; he was almost beside Saneck when he sensed danger. At the same moment, Saneck’s arm jerked up in a warning gesture. Harper stepped to one side, but he was too late to protect himself. The lights on the Embankment flickered and went out.

  Chapter Ten

  I

  In the distance, as the car moved away towards Charing Cross, they could hear the urgent sound of a police whistle.

  ‘You have probably killed him,’ Edward said.

  Vickers wiped the blood from the gun and put it in his pocket.

  ‘He can count himself fortunate I used the butt-end. But a revolver shot would have brought the police down on us in a swarm.’

  He was angry, and if he had not promised that Edward would be with him when he made his getaway, he would probably have killed him now. He wondered whether this little flirtation with the police was the limit to which Edward was prepared to go.

  ‘I’m sending you to a safe place to wait for me,’ he said. He jerked his head in the direction of the man who was driving the car. ‘He will take you there. I advise you not to try that game again.’

  Edward said in a rather disinterested way: ‘I wasn’t going to give myself up. I was just walking around and I stopped because the place seems to have a fascination for me. It’s strange, isn’t it?’

  The strange thing, Vickers thought, was Edward’s indifference to the danger of his position. He glanced at him, curiosity momentarily replacing anger. Edward’s face was thinner, the features sharpened so that the prominent cheek bones seemed to thrust through the frail, waxen covering of skin. The once indefinite face had become memorable, branded with the ravages of the years as though a mask had at last been removed. And yet, it seemed to Vickers that fear had receded; at least in so far as capture was concerned, Edward had become remarkably philosophical. Why? The longing of the man on the run to give in, to call a halt to the chase? It had been that suspicion that had finally driven Vickers to hunt for Saneck in the vicinity of the Yard. He congratulated himself on the sharpness of his perception. At the same time, he wondered what incentive would be needed to keep the man going now that the dread of the police no longer haunted him. Vickers fancied he knew the answer.

  ‘I have something very important to tell you,’ he said. ‘But it must wait until I can join you.’

  Edward was staring out of the window at the narrow streets around the Temple through which the car was now making its way.

  ‘It concerns your
wife,’ Vickers said.

  He felt Edward’s body stiffen, but the face was in shadow.

  ‘My wife?’

  ‘It must wait.’

  Edward said nothing for a time, but Vickers sensed his uneasiness. He was grateful for this chance not only to make sure of Edward’s allegiance, but to indulge in a little subtle torture. Edward would have plenty to keep him occupied now; his imagination would torment him and effectively paralyse any wavering tendency to head for the nearest police station.

  ‘Why can’t you come with me now?’ The old anxiety had returned to Edward’s voice.

  ‘Paddy Brett has contacted someone for me, and she will be bringing one or two documents that I need to the place where I am staying.’

  The car was turning back on its tracks, heading for the west.

  ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Can you see a way out that isn’t dangerous?’

  Edward peered out of the window.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You are going somewhere safe. The place is rather isolated. Also, there is a hue and cry for a child murderer and every policeman in that district will be on the look-out for the man. It will be a very effective shield for you.’

  Edward turned his head sharply and Vickers almost laughed aloud to see, for the first time, a flash of genuine anger in the drawn face. What an astonishing man he was, reacting with all the outrage of the truly innocent!

  ‘Come!’ Vickers was in sudden good-humour. ‘You can’t afford to choose your protectors; you have to be thankful for what the gods give you.’

  Edward stared at Vickers as he might have stared at a germ revealed beneath a microscope, fascinated and repelled. The effrontery of the man! Vickers thought; to dare to be so contemptuous.

  ‘Well, well!’ Vickers had to laugh aloud now, he could not contain his enjoyment any longer. ‘So you are still shackled by a sense of decency!’

  Edward flinched.

  ‘I was wrong to stay with you.’ His voice had a hint of tears, but whether it was anger or despair that moved him it was hard to tell.

  ‘You have no alternative now.’ The gun was heavy in Vickers’s pocket: his anger stirred again. ‘Acting as a decoy in an assault on a superintendent is hardly likely to make the police welcome you with open arms. In fact, as you yourself pointed out – I may well have killed him.’

  ‘But I didn’t . . .’

  ‘But who will believe you?’ Vickers was twisting a ring on his finger. ‘In the eyes of the law, we are allies, you might even say brothers in blood.’ Suddenly he slapped Edward hard across the face, slashing his cheek with the edge of the ring; he repeated this treatment three times. ‘I think you had better learn to behave like an ally.’

  Edward made no protest; yet Vickers suspected that he had failed to intimidate the man. Well, that could be remedied soon enough. As he sat back in his seat, he thought that the man was more interesting than he had realized. It was a pity that there was so little time left in which to explore the possibilities of Edward Saneck.

  II

  Harper came to when the constable who was bending over him blew a police whistle right in his ear. The agony was intolerable, as though barbed wire were being dragged through his brain. He tried to sit up but the man put his hands on his chest and pinned him firmly to the ground.

  ‘I shouldn’t do that, sir.’ There was concern in the voice, and Harper sensed, a certain elation: it was not every night that this man stumbled over a superintendent laid out on the pavement in front of the Yard. Harper could feel blood trickling down the side of his face. He put up his hand, but the constable would not allow that either.

  ‘Better not to move until the ambulance comes,’ he advised. ‘You look as though you might have fractured your skull.’

  The blue helmet hovered over Harper’s face; it grew larger and larger, blotting out everything else. ‘Fractured your skull,’ the voice repeated tenderly. ‘Fractured your skull.’ As he passed out. Harper was telling himself that if it was the last thing he did he must see that this man never, never got promotion.

  The doctor at the hospital did not share the constable’s concern. Some time later, he said accusingly:

  ‘You must have an abnormally thick skull. That blow would have seriously injured another man.’

  Harper, who felt himself to be seriously injured, ignored the doctor and tried to concentrate on the uniformed inspector who had been hustled to the scene. The man was saying:

  ‘Do you think it was some kind of a trap for you, sir?’

  This, Harper realized, was an obvious reading of events, and although he answered with vigour, he knew that he was fighting a losing battle.

  ‘I don’t think anything so melodramatic. Saneck didn’t know that Vickers was there; I’m certain of that. And what good would it do to plan a trap for me, with the whole of the Metropolitan Police on the look-out for them?’

  He felt exhausted by this long speech, and he could see that the effort had been wasted. The inspector, a dapper, self-satisfied man, was studying his fingernails in an embarrassed way as though he found it painful to listen to a senior officer putting up such a poor performance.

  ‘What do you think happened then, sir?’

  ‘Saneck must have given Vickers the slip. Perhaps Vickers was afraid he intended to give himself up, so he hung around near the Yard in the hope of putting a stop to any attempt Saneck might make.’

  It sounded incredibly thin.

  ‘I see, sir.’

  The inspector was soothing, as though the blow must have dulled Harper’s mental capacity. He pressed his thumb-nail exploringly into the cuticle of one finger and said:

  ‘It would have been quite a simple matter for Saneck to have given himself up if he had wanted to, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I have known people to hesitate,’ Harper retorted.

  He was not much bothered about the inspector, but he knew that he would have the same difficulty with his chief with whose opinions he could not deal in such a cavalier manner. The inspector was saying:

  ‘And rather risky for Vickers to hover about like that.’

  Attack, Harper decided, was the best form of defence.

  ‘Very risky,’ he agreed grimly. ‘Why no one picked him up, I can’t imagine. Your men must go about with blinkers on.’

  The inspector went pink, and Harper turned his attention to the doctor, who was regarding him with growing dislike.

  ‘Could you say what the weapon was?’

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders. Harper persisted:

  ‘Could it have been the butt of a gun?’

  ‘It could have been. It could also have been . . .’

  ‘And if he’s armed, he won’t have any qualms about shooting if it suits his purpose.’

  Harper heaved himself unsteadily to his feet and announced his intention of getting back to his office. The doctor protested mechanically but in the end Harper had his way. At the Yard, he was handed a radio message that had been sent out. He managed, with difficulty, to make his eyes focus on it.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘But what description did they send out of the Brett girl?’

  He read that through, too, and paused when he came to the words ‘bright red hair’. That hair was too bright to be natural; there was a possibility that she might decide to dye it again, it was the sort of gesture she would enjoy. He told them to contact hairdressers. Later he was informed that it would not be possible to spare too many men for the job; there was a big search on for a child murderer in the south-west Middlesex area.

  III

  Paddy had had her hair dyed. It was this that drew MacLeish’s attention to her as he walked past the main entrance to Paddington Station just after ten o’clock the next morning. ‘Silly bitch!’ he thought. ‘If she had chosen some dowdy colour I might not have picked her out in this crowd. But green!’ He began to follow her.

  He had decided the night before that he w
ould concentrate on Paddy Brett. The supervisor of the telephone exchange where she worked had been anxious to help but had known very little; most of the girls on duty either could not, or would not, give information. But there had been one girl, exquisitely refined, who did not approve of the way that Paddy Brett carried on. It was from her that MacLeish had discovered that Paddy had a friend who owned a hairdresser’s shop. Even so, it was a chance in a hundred that he should be walking along the road a few minutes after Paddy left the shop.

  MacLeish, however, was in no mood to admit the existence of chance. In his present frame of mind he saw all circumstances as part of a design of which he was the centre-piece; thus his finding of Paddy was pre-ordained.

  Once past the station, the crowd thinned out and he had no difficulty in keeping the bright green head in sight. He gave very little thought to concealing himself; although he himself would not have seen it in that way, at this moment he was like a gambler who is convinced that his run of luck will not change and that any caution would be an offence to the gods of the game. Paddy turned into a side-street. At the cross-roads a little ahead, there was a constable on point duty and another constable was standing aimlessly sunning himself outside a bank. MacLeish could have had a quick word with, either of these men and started a well- ordered machine in motion. But he shied away from the familiar uniform with the reflex action of the habitual criminal. These men merely reminded him that he had been rejected by his own kind. He, too, turned into the side-street.

  The street was narrow, hemmed in on either side by dilapidated tenement buildings. The sultry weather had not broken and although it was still early the heat in the drab street was stifling. MacLeish looked up at the sky, the colour of steel above the grimy rooftops. Sweat bathed his body, breaking out with every movement that he made. MacLeish knew this street; the police were frequent visitors here although they seldom came alone. The place had always oppressed his spirits; the first time that he had walked here he had thought that it reeked of death. Now, as exhaustion began to take its toll, some of the exhilaration faded. Ahead of him, he saw that Paddy had stopped in front of the last house. She seemed to have as little regard for concealment as had MacLeish himself, as though with her changed appearance she felt that she had become another person. She did not look round as she went up the steps.