Now the chimney, as has been said, was large, while Ben, as has been shown, was small. This convenient reversal of the usual state of things was another argument in favour of the chimney. Squinting up the shaft, Ben spotted further arguments, in the dim form of vague irregularities and protuberances. These would assist ascent towards the spot from which the cry had come—and the spot from which the cry had come was, of course, the biggest of all the arguments.
Still, it takes a good deal to make a man shinny up the inside of a chimney, and the final argument was supplied a moment later. A sudden sound in the hall implied that Mr Lovelace was now returning ‘for keeps.’ That settled the matter.
As the key turned, Ben leapt upwards.
Then followed some of the most uncomfortable moments of Ben’s uncomfortable life. He was fortunate in finding that one of the protuberances was a bit of iron to which he could cling, and he clung to it with all his soul, but it was not high enough to elevate his legs to the desired point of invisibility and to destroy a view from the doorway resembling a comic Christmas card unless he curled his legs up under him like a spider when touched. Therefore, as he leapt, he also curled. His rapidly rising knees made many contacts as they rose—direct, unclothed contacts with bricks that selected his holes and enlarged them—but, just as Fortune had given him something to cling on to with his hand, so it now gave him in his new crisis a cleft to wedge into with his boot.
The position Ben found himself in was not fit for heroes to sleep in, but he knew he was out of sight, though not out of mind, and he was grateful for the smallest crumbs. All he had to do now was to stay still, stop breathing, and pretend that a little bit of soot had not descended on his nose with the express object of tickling it.
When you are intensely interested in a scene, you can visualise it even while you cannot see it. Thus, in the utter blackness of sooty walls, Ben visualised Mr Lovelace standing in the doorway and discovering an empty room. He visualised him turning towards the window and discovering it intact. He visualised him gazing round the room, and resting his eyes on the fireplace.
He visualised him beginning to move, softly and silently, towards the fireplace.
Now Mr Lovelace would be half-way across the room. Now three-quarters. Now by the chair in which Ben had sat. Now pausing for the last little lap, and regarding the poker—the poker that had been designed to poke fires, but that was quite capable of poking other things.
Then, in a sudden flash, the picture vanished. Something tore it to bits, dissecting it and rearranging it in the form of a Cubist abortion, where vases and sofa-legs establish strange unions and eyes peer out of sleeves. Somebody was knocking on the front-door.
Now it may be possible to convey some sad idea or diseased philosophy in a dissected and distorted picture, but it is not possible to carry on a coherent story by such means, and since we are following the present story through Ben’s eyes there is nothing to relate of the next few seconds beyond the agony of a jig-saw. But by the end of these few seconds two definite things had happened. Mr Lovelace had reached the front-door; and Ben, without any recollection of it, had ascended a couple of feet farther up the chimney. His chin now rested on what appeared in the darkness to be a sort of wooden ledge … Though what would a wooden ledge be doing up a chimney?
From below came Mr Lovelace’s voice, as he called from the hall,
‘Who’s there?’
Apparently his voice was not heard outside, for the knock was repeated, this time more loudly.
‘Bet it’s that bobby!’ thought Ben suddenly, and wondered whether he wanted it to be.
‘Who is there?’ called Mr Lovelace again. Also more loudly.
‘’E’s takin’ no charnces!’ reflected Ben.
‘Please let me in!’ came the faint response. ‘I’ve lost my way.’
Bobby? That wasn’t no Bobby! That was a gal! One above him, and now one outside. Two of ’em!
The front-door opened. Ben could hear it distinctly, even though it was opened cautiously. Mr Lovelace had not closed the intervening door.
‘Where do you want to get to?’ inquired the old man’s voice, none too kindly.
‘Where am I?’ replied the girl’s.
It was what Ben described as a high-class voice. Rich and refined. The kind you said ‘Miss’ to immediately, without having to think about it.
Then something happened that beat Ben’s capacity to interpret. It was muffled and indeterminate, and seemed to increase in his direction. He did not know that the girl had swayed forward, had tottered towards the open doorway, and, apparently by the sheer volition of weariness, had entered the room. But in a few moments he learned that she was in the room, even though he did not know how she had got there, for her voice soon sounded below him again in apology. It was now considerably closer.
‘I’m—I’m sorry,’ murmured the girl. ‘I thought I was going off that time.’
‘Are you ill?’ asked Mr Lovelace.
He had followed her in. His voice had not increased notably in kindliness.
‘No—just a little faint,’ she answered.
‘Just faint, eh?’
‘Yes. I thought I’d better get near a chair. May I sit down for a moment?’
‘Eh? Of course. And, while you’re resting, I’ll tell you the way to wherever you want to go.’
‘Thank you. You’re very good. I wonder if I could have a glass of water?’
‘Water? Certainly. Just wait a minute.’
He darted out of the room. Ben heard the door close after him.
Then Ben heard other sounds. He heard the little slither of a chair that has suddenly been left. He heard quick, soft footsteps. He heard a girl who was supposed to be half-fainting moving swiftly around the room. He heard a faint noise as of a desk-flap being opened and then closed again. He heard a drawer pulled out. He heard a sharp exclamation, a rustle of paper, and the quick return of the drawer.
Then silence, broken in a few moments by the return of Mr Lovelace.
‘Here’s the water,’ said Mr Lovelace, abruptly, ‘and how are you feeling?’
From his tone, he might have been saying, ‘How soon can I get rid of you?’
‘Not too bad,’ came the weary response. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute. It really was too silly!’
‘But what was it made you so dizzy?’ demanded Mr Lovelace. ‘Are you often taken this way?’
‘Never before! I think the fog upset me.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘Well—there was something more,’ she admitted, after a pause.
‘What?’
‘A sort of a tramp.’
‘Oh!’ The exclamation came sharply. ‘You’ve seen him, then, too?’
‘What! Has he been here?’
Now Mr Lovelace paused. His answer, when it came, was non-committal.
‘Well, you can’t really say anything definite in a fog. But—maybe I’ve seen the fellow about. And, when next I catch him, he’s in for a bad time!’
‘You think he’s a bag-snatcher?’
‘Do you?’
‘I don’t know. He—just frightened me.’
‘Did he do anything to you?’
‘No.’
‘Where did you see him?’
‘By a pillar-box.’
The simple statement nearly caused Ben to loosen his chin-hold on the ledge, and to fall down into the grate with a ton of soot. The pillar-box! Lummy! So that was the girl, was it? The one he’d seen at the pillar-box!
‘Yus, but I didn’t frighten ’er!’ he thought. ‘Wot’s she wanter put up that yarn for?’
Meanwhile, the girl’s statement appeared to be having some effect below. Mr Lovelace was murmuring, ‘The pillar-box, eh? The pillar-box!’ as though he found the word unusually interesting.
‘And nothing actually happened?’ queried the old man.
‘No,’ the girl answered.
‘That was all that worried you?’
�
�That was all. And now, please, I think I’ll be going. It’s awfully good of you to have let me come in. Where is this house?’
‘You’re on Wimbledon Common.’
‘Yes, but what road is this? And where exactly—’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll see you to the gate. Maybe a step or two beyond. Well, shall we be starting?’
The voices ceased for a few moments. The conversation was resumed at the door.
‘But I really mustn’t take up your time,’ the girl said, a note of anxiety in her tone.
‘Don’t mention it—it’s a pleasure,’ answered Mr Lovelace, in a tone of contrasting complacency. ‘Besides, you won’t be taking up much of my time. I shall be back here again very soon—very soon indeed. You see, I’ve got to find that tramp you mentioned, haven’t I, for we can’t have bag-snatchers frightening people in lonely lanes! Yes, I’ll find him, I’ll find him—and make the rascal sorry he was ever born!’
But Ben was already that as he heard the key turn in the door for the umpteenth time.
15
Down Agine
In the uncomfortable darkness Ben began to count up things. Among the units in his impossible sum were a malevolent old man, a missing body, a missing cap, a girl who pretended to be faint with the object, apparently, of examining other people’s drawers, and another girl whose distressed condition was less open to question. There were, of course, further units lurking in the fog outside, but those already enumerated were enough to go on with and to confuse a more astute mathematician than a simple sailor.
The unit of most immediate importance, however, was the chimney. Was Ben to stay in it, or to get out of it? And if which, how?
He re-examined his position. He was not sure where his legs were, but his chin was still resting on the ledge, and this was due, he gathered, to the ledge’s generous proportions. It was indeed a rather remarkable ledge, and when you were able to get your hand upon it as well as your chin, and to grope about it, you discovered that it obtruded from a small wooden partition. The ledge was at the bottom of the partition. This was proved by another sudden and startling discovery. A cold, horizontal line that had vaguely distressed the lower latitude of Ben’s face turned out to be a draught emanating from a crack beneath the partition.
‘Blimy, it’s a door!’ thought Ben.
A door to the room above—to the room from which had come the moans!
Yes, but how could the door be manipulated unless you untied your elbow from your knee-cap? From Ben’s present cramped and restricted position he could only feel the lower portion of the door. The upper portion was unattainable Mecca! He might attain it by elevating his own upper portion a few inches, yet here again there were difficulties. The chimney, wide below, was narrow above. There was not much farther up that even a little man could go.
Ben went up the rest in a sudden, disastrous lurch. His head reared roofwards in response to an effort he never thought could be fruitful; and, meeting converging bricks, it stuck. Now Ben felt like the nut in the nut-crackers.
How long he stuck there he did not know. The abrupt narrowing of the shaft had dislocating consequences. But all at once a sound fell upon his ears that produced a fresh burst of convulsive energy. The moan was repeated, and, in this new proximity to its source, it came to his ears in startling, recognisable form.
The nut-crackers opened as fresh energy came to the imprisoned nut, Ben shot abruptly downwards, and a moment later found himself once more on the floor, warding off a shower of soot.
He also found Mr Lovelace peering at him through the shower.
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Lovelace, in tones of unconcealed sarcasm. ‘You have saved me from the trouble of going up.’
There were several reasons why Ben did not reply. The least important was that his mouth was full of soot.
‘Don’t hurry,’ continued the old man. ‘Recover from your journey. There’s plenty of time.’
‘I ain’t goin’ ter ’urry,’ Ben told himself. ‘I gotter think.’
‘And, if I may suggest it,’ the old man proceeded, ‘one should never fall down chimneys with one’s mouth open. Strictly speaking, one shouldn’t be in chimneys at all.’
‘Wot about lyin’ doggo,’ thought Ben, ‘and then jumpin’ hup sudden like and givin’ ’im a bit o’ Kid Berg?’
‘Of course, I knew you were up the chimney,’ said Mr Lovelace. ‘Never having seen you perform at Maskelyne’s Theatre, I assumed you couldn’t penetrate a locked door, or escape through a nailed-up window without breaking it. Why did you go up the chimney, may I ask? What did you expect to find there?’
As Mr Lovelace put the question, and his eyes glinted with piercing inquiry, Ben suddenly realised his policy. There must be no physical encounter—yet. He was not equipped for it. He must meet subtlety with subtlety, quell the old man’s suspicions, and then …
‘Bird’s nest,’ replied Ben.
‘I see! You thought you heard—sparrows up there?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Suppose we stop being funny, and grow serious?’
‘Suits me, guv’nor.’
‘Really? I’m relieved. Hitherto you have religiously concealed your more sober requirements!’
‘Me wot?’
‘Never mind. Pick yourself up. You’ll find it easier to be serious on your feet.’
‘I can’t be nothink till I’ve ’ad a drink,’ retorted Ben, as he rose.
‘There’s half-a-glass of water on the table,’ answered Mr Lovelace. ‘You know who took the top off, don’t you?’
Faithful to his new policy, Ben admitted that he did, while he prepared to deal with the bottom.
‘That gal,’ he replied.
‘Yes. That girl,’ nodded Mr Lovelace. ‘Our recent visitor who stated that you frightened her. You heard what she said, of course?’
‘Yus.’
‘Well, what’s your version?’
‘Wot’s that? Poetry?’
‘No, no! Your story! What happened when you met her at the pillar-box?’
‘Nothink.’
‘She said you scared her?’
‘I can’t ’elp that.’
‘No. Scarecrows can’t be choosers. But what did you think of her story, while you were up the chimney?’
‘Yer can’t think up a chimney.’
‘Then why did you go up the chimney?’
‘Ter git away from you,’ replied Ben, hoping that his frankness would prove acceptable. ‘Yer lock me in a room, and yer nail hup the winder, and when I come fer a job yer asks me why I killed a bloke wot I didn’t! If yer want me ter love yer, guv’nor, yer goin’ a funny way abart it!’
The little outburst had its effect. Mr Lovelace’s expression became a little more hopeful as he gazed at the indignant individual before him.
‘I’d almost forgotten! You came here for a job,’ he observed.
‘Corse I did!’ answered Ben.
‘And you still want the job?’
Heroically swallowing his hesitation, Ben responded,
‘Corse I does!’
‘Well, maybe you’ll get the job if you behave yourself in the next few minutes.’ Ben strove to look delighted, and resembled a sweep pretending hard that he had not eaten lobster salad. ‘So you had nothing to do with the murder of our mutual friend, Mr White?’
‘I’ve toldjer.’
‘What happened, exactly?’
‘I’ve toldjer that, too. ’E knocks off me ’at and ’e gits me another, and we’re goin’ ter the Stashin in a taxi, see, and I gits aht fer a minute—’
‘Why did you get out?’
‘Eh?’
‘You’ve not told me that!’
No, and he didn’t particularly want to. The old man saw his hesitation, and added sharply,
‘You ask me why I’ve locked you in this room? Do you realise, my man, that the police would be delighted if I handed you over to them? Perhaps that’s why I’ve locked you in? Till I could
make up my mind about you!’
‘Yus,’ thought Ben, ‘and is that why you nailed the winder hup, too? I reckon the police’d like ter see the pair on us?’
But he kept the thought to himself.
‘So—once more—why did you get out of the taxi?’
‘Ter send orf a letter.’
‘Whom to?’
‘Oh—chap in Cannerder,’ lied Ben. He wasn’t going to be first to mention Molly.
‘Chap in Canada,’ murmured Mr Lovelace, disbelievingly. But he passed it over. ‘Well, and then?’
‘I gits back ter the taxi, and finds ’im dead.’
‘And then?’
‘I ’oofs it.’
‘And then?’
‘Eh?’
‘I said, “And then?”’
‘Oh. I goes on ’oofin’ it.’
‘Even though you had nothing to do with the murder?’
‘Go on! If a feller nex’ ter yer steals a sorsidge, yer both ’as ter run, doncher?’
‘Do you? Well—have you any idea who stole this sausage?’
‘Corse I ’ave!’
‘Who?’
‘A Spanish bloke!’
‘Yes—I was wondering when you were coming to him,’ murmured the old man. ‘You know, of course, that the newspapers are connecting you together?’
‘Well, they can just hunconnect us agine,’ retorted Ben, ‘’as we ain’t together, see?’
‘But you’ve been seen together.’
‘So’s a birch and the plice where yer uses it. Lummy, yer don’t suppose I’d tike hup with a bloomin’ Spaniard, do yer? It’s t’other way abart. ’E’s bin tryin’ ter tike hup with me.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Yus. I bin tryin’ ter shike ’im orf, see? But ’e’s stuck closer’n a postage stamp. I’d ’ave sed ’e wos arter me money if I ’adn’t fergot wot money was.’
‘Perhaps he was trying to help the police, who were also after you!’
‘Go on! ’E was ’oofin’ it, sime as I was!’
‘H’m!’ murmured Mr Lovelace, contemplatively.
‘Then your theory is that this Spaniard poked his head into the taxi while you were out of it—and killed Mr White?’
Ben Sees It Through Page 10
