Why didn’t it yowl now? Why didn’t it leap up at the intruder? Surely that was the reception one would expect from a mad dog! Why did it lie there, as though it were dead?
And then Ben realised that it was dead.
For a moment this realisation wiped out all thought of Molly. Some men can hold a dozen thoughts in their minds and a dozen emotions in their bodies at the same time. Ben could only encompass one, which explains why he was apt on occasions to move so slowly towards his main object. D’Artagnan, hearing a lady moan while concealed in a chimney, would have run half-a-dozen men through and been at the lady’s side in a trice; but Ben, whose simpler structure reacted to each immediate obstacle, and became absorbed by each, journeyed to his crowning acts through devious delays and by-ways, and could even forget a face that meant his only comfort while contemplating the carcase of a dog.
‘Did that there dawg die nacheral?’ he asked himself.
And, if not—?
Again, in imagination, he listened to the dismal yelping and to the sudden softer whining. He visualised the possible aspect of this very room while the yelping and whining were going on. The dog was alive in its corner then. And the old man would be standing by it, eh? With a stick or something. Lummy, no! Not a stick! An iron hammer! For there was the iron hammer …
Yes—but why?
Well, the fact remained, if the reason evaded. Mr Lovelace had killed his dog. Killed it while Ben had been groping his way towards the house.
Now hatred as well as fear entered into Ben. Kill a bloke, if you like! The bloke might turn the tables on you, see? But—a dog!
He went to the corner and touched the limp mass. It was not yet cold. He returned to the door, walked out into the passage, and crossed to Molly’s door.
Disappointment awaited him here. The key did not fit.
He found and tried four more keys. None of them fitted. He began to despair. Then all at once he remembered the chimney.
‘Mug agine!’ he thought. ‘Corse—the chimbley! That’s the ticket, ain’t it?’
He knocked on the unresponsive door, to pass the news on.
‘If you ’ear me goin’,’ he called, ‘it’s on’y becos I’m comin’, see, and don’t git a shock if I comes aht o’ the fireplace!’
Then he turned, to put his latest brain-wave into execution.
Down the stairs again, past the sentinel clock—the ticking sounded queerer than ever now; had a mouse got inside?—across the large hall, with its unpleasant memory of the hat-stand, into the bleak ‘drawing-room’ once more, where the remains of Mr Lovelace’s tea still waited to be returned to the kitchen, and across to the capacious fireplace. A mound of soot formed a conspicuous reminder of his last ascent.
‘’Ere goes!’ he muttered, as he crept into position.
To his surprise he found the climb comparatively easy. He had time now to pick and choose his bricks, and to mount from one foothold to another with deliberation. He approached the ledge with caution, manipulating his arms so that they could continue to function, and watching for the narrowing of the shaft that had previously imprisoned his head.
Now his groping hand touched the wooden door. He felt for a knob to turn, but evidently the only knob was on the other side, for he searched in vain. The door, from its unyielding tightness, seemed to be locked. A little slit, suggestive of a key-hole, strengthened this view.
‘Orl right—’ere goes!’ grunted Ben, grimly.
He stuck his head over the ledge, directing it towards the door like a battering-ram. He raised his waving feet behind him till they crouched with a light pressure against the bricks at his rear. Then, suddenly, he increased the pressure by violently straightening out.
His head shot forward, meeting the door with the impact of a bullet. For a few moments, during which the heavens split and the stars came tumbling out, Ben did not know whether the door or his head was broken; he simply knew that one of them was; but when the stars ran back into heaven and the celestial split was sewn up—or maybe remedied with a zip-fastener, it was so quick—Ben found that his head had won, and that the conquered door was flat off its hinges.
He did not waste time in personal triumph. Beyond the prone door was a chair, and on the chair, bound and gagged, was Molly.
Her eyes were open, and as they met the eyes of Ben he needed no greater reward for the bruise on his head and the soot on his face. For such a glance he would have been willing, at any time, to negotiate the tallest chimney in America.
‘’Ere I am!’ he gurgled, foolishly. ‘Toldjer, didn’t I?’
She did not reply for the obvious reason that she couldn’t.
He rose from the ground—for he had not won standing—and dived towards her. His trembling hands groped at her cords, and tore at the cloth tied so cruelly round her mouth. How she had managed to moan was a mystery! It must have been a superhuman effort produced by dire necessity …
But now she was free, and staring at him limply.
‘Oh, Ben!’ she murmured. ‘Ben!’
He stared back at her. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Call him a fool or an idiot, and he’d a dozen retorts ready. But call him ‘Ben’ like that, in a tone that almost made the name sound Biblical, and he just crumpled up.
Then Molly crumpled up. Her eyes closed, and she collapsed like a pricked balloon. Ben saw her collapsing, and dived forward to catch her. He was just in time to save her from the floor.
There was a bed in the room. Somehow or other he got her on to it. She lay like a closed flower, so quietly that for a moment Ben thought she was dead, and decided to die, too. Then she sighed faintly, and Ben decided that he needn’t die after all. He’d stay alive to get her a cup of tea.
The door to the passage was, of course, locked, and the tea would have to arrive by the same channel as had delivered Ben himself.
Do not ask me how Ben managed to bring a cup of tea up a chimney without spilling more than three-quarters. If you had asked him, he would probably have answered,
‘Well, I jest thinks of ’er fice, see? I thinks of ’er lyin’ there orl pale and quiet, like, and, well, wantin’ a cup o’ tea. Well, there you are, see?’
By such incoherent logic are most heroic acts performed!…
And while Molly drank the tea, sitting up on the bed and patting odd bits of Ben with her disengaged hand as the odd bits hovered around her, he felt as though heaven had heard of him at last, and was giving him a little foretaste of what it was going to be like.
‘Owjer feel, miss?’ he asked, when she laid the cup down.
‘You just can’t stick to “Molly,” can you?’ she smiled.
‘I fergit, like,’ he murmured. ‘Well, ’ow are yer, Molly?’
‘Getting O.K.’
‘O.K. enuff fer the chimbley?’
‘I don’t know. But—what’s happened, Ben?’
‘Tell yer later, miss. Molly. Fust job’s ter git clear o’ this blinkin’ plice, ain’t it?’
‘And to fetch the police?’
‘Eh? Police?’ Ben considered. ‘Well, we’ll talk about that, later, too.’
‘I’m afraid we’ve got to talk about that now,’ she answered, gravely. ‘You see, Ben—I’ve seen Mr Lovelace commit a murder.’
18
Molly’s Story
Then Ben and Molly told their stories. It took several moments to convince Ben that this was the time and place for the narrations, but Molly supplied an argument that was irrefutable. In spite of her pluck and her optimism, she had not yet recovered sufficiently to face a voyage down a chimney.
‘Still a bit wonky, Ben,’ she said, while she regarded a bruised foot, ‘but I’ll be as right as rain presently. It’s not been exactly a picnic, you know. Or for you, either. Well—fire away!’
Ben’s story we know. How far Molly knew it when he had finished narrating it is not certain. Ben could invent remarkable yarns, but he found difficulty in remembering actual ones. As instance the trouble he had
had, until he had been assisted by Mr Lovelace, in recalling where he had left his cap.
‘So it’s your cap they’re all after!’ exclaimed Molly, when he was dealing with this point. ‘Lovelace and Diablo and the lot!’
‘Yus, but why?’ demanded Ben.
Molly shook her head.
‘Don’t know,’ she answered. ‘There’s a lot we don’t know, Ben.’
‘That’s right,’ he nodded, glancing towards the door. ‘We don’t know why ’e killed a dawg.’
‘And—a man!’
‘Yus. Or where the man is! Funny ’ow nasty they feel when yer touches ’em with yer foot. And ’ere’s another thing we don’t know—why that there gal wot I meets at the pillar-box comes along ’ere, puts up a bluff abart bein’ orl in, and then goes pokin’ arahnd the room jest below where we’re now torkin’ lookin’ fer somethink!’
‘Was she looking for your cap?’
‘Well, she didn’t find it!’
‘No. But you say you thought she found something?’
‘Yus. When she hopens one drawer I ’ears ’er give a sort of hexclamashun as if she was thinkin’ “’Allo, ’ere it is, I got it, wot a bit o’ luck!” That sort of hexclamashun. And then I ’ears a sort of paper sahnd—’
‘What’s that?’ she interrupted.
‘Eh?’ he jerked.
‘What did you say?’
‘Oh! Sahnd! That’s a noise. I thought you meant you’d ’eard a sahnd! ’Allo! Ain’t it?’
He jumped up and stared towards the door. She stared after him.
‘I don’t hear anything!’ she muttered.
‘Not like—dawg’s feet?’
She shook her head. Then Ben gave a sigh of relief.
‘It’s that there clock on the stairs,’ he said. ‘It ticks with a limp, like.’
‘Well, if you don’t stop hearing things, like,’ she retorted, ‘you’ll hear me scream, like! Are you quite sure, Ben, that you heard the girl’s exclamation, like?’
‘Yus. P’r’aps she was lookin’ fer a will, like?’
‘Oh, Ben!’ exclaimed Molly, in muffled tones. ‘One moment you make me want to shriek and the next you make me want to laugh. Do let me know which is coming!’ She sank back on the bed, and buried her face suddenly in the pillow.
He looked at her concernedly, trying to interpret the noises that issued from the pillow. She seemed to be both laughing and shrieking. Then the fit of hysterics passed, and was followed by a reaction of increased solemnity. Molly now seemed to be ashamed of her laughter and of her momentary yielding to it.
‘Little fool I am!’ she muttered, as she raised her head from the pillow. ‘Going off like that!’
‘You couldn’t ’elp it,’ Ben tried to console her, feeling it was his fault but not knowing why. ‘Shall I pop dahn and git yer another cup o’ tea?’
The remark was intended to soothe her, but it had the effect of making her lips tremble ominously again. Perhaps the mental picture of a blackened parlourmaid popping down a chimney for a cup of tea had something to do with it.
‘No, Ben,’ she answered. ‘We’ve got to get busy. Now I’ll tell you my story, and then we’ll decide what’s best to do.’
And this, though she told it more shortly, was Molly Smith’s story.
When she had dived up the side lane on the previous evening and had hopped over the stile, she had had no notion that Ben was not still at her heels. So vivid can imagination be after a robust push-off by reality that she even thought she heard Ben swear while stumbling over the stile, and she called back a quick encouraging word. But after she had crossed a couple of fields and negotiated a dense wood she became conscious of empty space behind her, and, stopping suddenly, she turned.
Then she got a shock. There was no Ben. What had happened to him?
She began to retrace her way. In daylight she could have found it easily, but now the task was impossible. The wood was full of paths and twists and tangles, and when at last she emerged into a field, it was not the field from which she had entered the wood. It was an entirely new field.
She returned to the wood and tried another route. It ended in the same field. She took a chance and crossed the field, in the hope that this would lead her to some familiar spot. She became utterly lost.
Once, in the distance, she thought she saw Ben, and dived towards him. It turned out to be the Spaniard! She wheeled away, and ran for her life …
‘Did ’e see yer?’ asked Ben.
‘I didn’t think so, then,’ answered Molly, ‘but now—I’m not sure!’
‘Eh? Why ain’t you sure?’ exclaimed Ben, glancing for the ninety-ninth time towards the door.
‘You’ll hear in a minute,’ she replied.
And she, also, glanced towards the door. But she had only done so about eighty-eight times.
At last she had stopped running. She had come to a lane. A man was sitting in the lane. It was the bibulous gentleman who had disturbed them outside the barn.
Despite his condition, he had managed to change his pitch.
‘Hic! Who goes there?’ he called. ‘Frien’ or hiccopotomus?’
Molly, anxious of the time, did not relate the complete conversation to Ben, but we may hear it.
‘How did you get here?’ asked Molly.
She had no special reason for asking the question. It just filled the moment while she decided whether to stay and converse or not.
‘On my legs,’ replied the tipsy man. ‘On all three of them.’
He seemed harmless. He might know something. Molly decided to risk it.
‘Tell me—have you seen anybody?’ she inquired.
‘Hundreds,’ nodded the idiot. ‘Includin’ Walter Raleigh.’
‘Oh, dear! Can’t you talk sense?’ she begged.
‘Much too dull!’ he protested.
‘Well, try! Have you seen my friend?’
‘Frien’?’
‘Yes!’
‘I’m your friend!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘Ridicklus?’ beamed the tipsy man. ‘Tha’s long word for the time o’ night. Hic! Nine syllilibles!’
‘Listen, please! I’m serious!’ exclaimed Molly, and gave the man’s coat a vicious pull to incite his proper attention.
‘Come in,’ he murmured.
‘Have—you—seen—the—man—who—was—with—me!’
Now he discarded his smile, and bent forward as though his waist were hinged.
‘You want to know something,’ he informed her, earnestly.
‘Yes! Where is my friend?’
‘I’ve not got him.’
‘But have you seen him?’
‘Let me think,’ said the tipsy man.
The hinge gave way, and his head fell forward, face downwards, in his lap.
Molly was about to leave him when the head suddenly popped up again.
‘Is your frien’ Kruger?’ its owner asked.
‘Do you mean, has he got a beard?’ she replied.
‘Oh, no! Bird’s-nest,’ he corrected. ‘Yes, I’ve seen a man with a bird’s nest.’
‘Where?’ cried Molly.
The tipsy man raised his left hand flabbily, held it firm with his right, and twisted the fingers round till they made a sign-post.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Where all my fingers but nine are pointin’!’
‘You saw him go along there?’ inquired Molly, looking along the road that seemed to be indicated.
‘Tha’ right! Call me a liar!’ he frowned.
‘When did you see him?’
‘When I sat down. “Help me up!” I said. “Be a Good Companion!” But, no! On he goes with his bird’s-nest!’
Sticking determinedly to the point, Molly pressed.
‘What time was it?’
‘Time—?’
‘Yes! How long ago?’
‘Ah, how long ago. Tha’s hard to say. Things happen before you can catch them. This year.’
�
�Five minutes ago? Ten minutes ago?’ She prompted, to bring him out of calendars into clocks.
‘Yes. This year five minutes ago. And ten minutes ago. All the lot.’
There was nothing more to be gained from him, and what she had gained, as matters turned out, was negligible. Ben had not passed the tipsy man along the road. Probably it had merely been Sir Walter Raleigh.
But the road led back to Southampton, and, in the absence of Ben, Southampton was as near as Molly could get to him. For Ben had read her mind correctly when he had deduced that she would remember the letter waiting for her at the Post Office.
In this letter would be the address of the house to which Ben had been going; and although Molly believed he had lost the address, she also believed—again in accordance with Ben’s theory—that he might remember it again, and that in any case it formed the only possible link between them.
Even if Ben had been caught by the Spaniard, Molly would still have to go to the address …
‘Why?’ asked Ben, at this point.
‘Because of Don Diablo,’ explained Molly.
‘Yer mean—’e’d be goin’, like?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’d be a reason for you not ter go,’ said Ben.
‘But—have you forgotten—we were coming here to warn Mr Lovelace,’ Molly pointed out.
‘It’s hother people want warnin’ agin’ ’im—not ’im agin’ hother people!’
‘That’s right, Ben. But you and I didn’t know that till we got here, did we?’
‘No more we did, Molly!’
‘And then—there was another reason why I had to come here—even if you were caught by Don Diablo.’
‘Wot?’
‘Why—to see Don Diablo—and to get you back again.’
Ben swallowed.
‘’Ere, miss, wot’s orl this abart?’ he demanded, rather huskily. ‘Are you savin’ me, or am I savin’ you?’
‘P’r’aps we’re both saving each other?’ she responded. ‘Let it go at that, shall we?’
Ben Sees It Through Page 12
