The girl from Scotland Yard
life lined on either side by common lodging houses, with a pauper’s
graveyard at the end of it?”
“I don’t exactly see what you’re driving at.”
She had made him angry and was secretly amused.
“I shall do my best, naturally, to find work. I had an idea of going
abroad.”
“Exactly.” She nodded. “To one of the colonies. It is the most popular
of all delusions that people without grit or ambition can magically
acquire these qualities the moment they go ashore at Quebec or Sydney,
or wherever their high spirits lead them.”
He was laughing now in spite of himself.
“You’ve certainly got a knack of riling a man.”
“Haven’t I?” she put in. “I’ll tell you what I was driving at, Mr.
Dawlish. For you to refuse a loan of money now suggests that you’re
perfectly satisfied in your mind that you will never earn enough to
repay the loan. The only way you can justify a refusal of money is to
believe that you can never pay it back; that you’re going to belong to
the bread lines and the park benches and the public charities.”
She saw that her shaft had got home, and went on quickly:
“Of course you will do nothing of the sort! You’ve come out of prison
with a grievance against the world, and you’re hardly to be blamed for
that. I should imagine you are one of the few innocent men who ever
went to Dartmoor.”
He looked at her shrewdly.
“You believe I was innocent?”
She nodded.
“I’m pretty sure,” she said, and then: “Do you carry a gun?”
He laughed aloud.
“The price of a Browning pistol would keep me in luxury for two
months,” he said. “No, I carry nothing more dangerous than a
toothbrush.”
The drawer from which she had taken the cigarettes was still open; she
put in her hand and took out a small black cash box, and jerked back
the lid.
“We will do this thing in a businesslike way,” she said. “You will
find a paper and pencil on the desk; sign an IOU for twenty pounds. If
you believe in your heart of hearts that you’ll be unable to pay me
back, that a man of twenty-nine or twenty-eight, or whatever age you
are, will never earn a sufficient margin above his cost of living to
send back that money in a year or two years, then you need not take a
cent. And this little bit of charity, as you call it----”
“I’ve called it nothing of the sort.”
“In your mind you have,” she said calmly. “It is very rude to
contradict a lady! Now, Mr. Dawlish, I challenge you! If you think you
are permanently down and out, the incident is finished, and I think
you’re finished, too.”
She looked at him through her half-closed eyes, nodding slowly.
“You mean I’m not worth salving?” he asked, and got up. “I’ll accept
your challenge.”
He took the pencil, scribbled a few words on the writing pad, and,
tearing it off, handed it to the girl.
“Produce your twenty pounds.”
He was amused in a sour way, but his anger was mostly directed inward
to himself, that he should be angry at all. If anybody had told him,
when he had walked into that room, that he would accept a loan of
money from the girl who had not been absent from his thoughts since he
had met her, he would have laughed at such a suggestion. Yet here he
was, counting solemnly the notes as they were handed to him, and
pocketing them without one single qualm of conscience.
“I think I’m beginning to know myself,” he said. “I started a
weakling, and prison hasn’t improved me. No, no, I do not mean that it
is a weakness to accept this money, but it would have been a weakness
to refuse. I’m awfully obliged to you.”
She held out her hand.
“Where will you be staying?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But I will keep in touch with you. Please don’t bother
about me any more. If I can’t get a job of some kind, I’m really not
worth helping. Why are you doing this? It isn’t part of the usual
police procedure.”
She shook her head.
“The police help where they can, you ought to know that,” she said
quietly. “But I admit that this is a purely personal action on my
part. You are part of a big experiment. It isn’t my womanly heart, but
my scientific brain that is dictating just now.” And then, going off
at a tangent: “I wish you would shave yourself, Mr. Dawlish. You look
too much like a musical genius to be thoroughly wholesome.”
He was still chuckling to himself when Lucretia closed the outer door
upon him with unnecessary violence.
He knew a small temperance hotel where he could sleep that night, a
place in Lambeth, near Waterloo Station. “Temperance hotel” was rather
a grand name for an establishment which was only a little superior to
a common lodging house, but he guessed it was too late to get a bed at
any of the Rowton houses.
He walked briskly down Charing Cross Road and into the Strand, crowded
with cars and taxis, for the theatres were closing and the northern
sidewalk was almost impassable. And then he thought he saw his mother
preceding another lady into a car, and stopped. Yes, it was Margaret
Dawlish, and the lady with the dirty-gray hair was Aunt Anita. He
could afford to grin now, and the discovery was very pleasurable. He
could well imagine that if he had seen that party earlier in the
evening, the sight would have evoked a sneer and just that twinge of
self-pity against which he was trying hard to guard himself.
He turned back, lest in passing they recognize him, and went down
Villiers Street, mounting the stairs to Hungerford Bridge. It was not
the twenty notes in his pocket, a compact, cosy little roll, that made
his heart and his step lighter; he had caught something of the girl’s
spirit, had been imbued with a little of her courage and sanity.
Leslie Maughan puzzled him. She was more than pretty; there was in her
face a spirituality which he had not detected in the face of any woman
of his acquaintance or knowledge. He realized with a start that he had
always disliked clever women. He liked them soft and feminine, and, if
the truth be told, a little silly. But he liked this capable and
pretty young woman.
Leslie Maughan had just enough of the official quality to keep him at
a distance, and yet she was genuinely friendly, as friendly as a
sensible elder sister might be, though in truth she must be years
younger than he. Sometimes he felt a very old man; Leslie Maughan had
made him feel like a child.
He was over the middle of the river now, and there was revealed to him
the pageantry of the Embankment, with its lights reflected in the dark
waters of the Thames. He felt himself responding to the glow and
colour of it. And then, for no reason at all, he had an uncomfortable
feeling that he could not trace, but instinctively he looked back.
There were several people crossing with him, but immediately behind
him, not half a dozen yards away, were three little men who moved
shoulder to shoulder. They had the curious high-stepping walk which he
had seen in Orientals, a sort of modified prance. They were not
speaking to one another, as friends might who were walking home
together, and, curiously enough, it was their silence which made him
uneasy. Five years in a penal establishment had not been a good nerve
cure for a man of Peter Dawlish’s temperament.
He ran down the steps and found himself in a dim and gloomy street.
From here was a short cut to the York Road, near where his temperance
hotel was situated. His way led him through a deserted street of tiny
houses, that was not quite a slum, but was barely respectable. As he
turned into the thoroughfare, he glanced back and saw that the three
little men were following. They moved noiselessly, as though they were
wearing rubber shoes. Peter crossed the road and they followed a
little nearer to him.
He was wondering whether it would not be better to turn and face them
till they had passed. He had decided upon this action, when something
fell over his head. He raised his hand quickly to catch at the thin
rope, but it was too late. The slip knot tightened about his throat,
two muscular little figures leaped at him, and in another second he
was lying on the ground, fighting for life, strangled, his head
bursting, his hands clawing at the rope. And then consciousness left
him. After an eternity he felt somebody lifting him up and propping
him against a wall; a brilliant light shone on his face.
Peter put his hand to his throat; the rope had gone, but he could
still feel the deep depression it had made upon his skin.
“What was the game?” said a gruff voice.
He blinked up, could distinguish a helmeted head--a policeman.
“How do you feel? Would you like me to get an ambulance? I can put you
into the hospital in a minute.”
Shaking in every limb, Peter struggled to his feet.
“I’m all right,” he said unsteadily. “Who were they?”
The policeman shook his head.
“I don’t know. They passed me at the end of the street, and I thought
they looked queer. Little fellows with flat noses; more like monkeys
than men. And then I saw them go for you and came after them. I think
I just about saved your life, young fellow.”
“I think you did,” said Peter ruefully, as he felt at his scarred
throat.
“Run! I never saw anybody run as fast as they did,” said the
constable. “Did you have a row with them?”
“No, I never saw them before in my life,” said Peter.
“Humph!” The officer was looking at him dubiously. “Wonder who they
were? They talked in some lingo I didn’t understand. I only caught one
word, or maybe it’s two--orange pander or bander.”
“_Orang blanga?_” asked Peter quickly, and whistled.
“Know ’em?”
Peter shook his head.
“No, I don’t know them. I guess their nationality. Javanese.”
The officer was loath to leave him.
“Where are you going now?”
“I’m trying to find a lodging.”
He was still far from recovered, for when he took a step the street
and the officer went round in a mad whirl, and but for the policeman’s
arm he would have fallen.
“You’ll get yourself pinched for being drunk,” said the policeman
humorously. “Lodgings? Now where did I see a lodging?”
He switched on his light, walked slowly down the street, flashing the
lamp upon the windows. Presently he stopped.
“Here you are,” he said.
Peter made a slow and cautious way to where the policeman was
standing. The lantern was focused upon a little card in the window:
Lodgings for a Respectable Young Man.
“Will this do for you?”
Peter nodded, and the constable rapped gently on the door. He had to
wait some time, but presently there was a heavy foot in the passage
and a woman’s voice asked hoarsely:
“It’s all right, missis,” said the custodian of the law. “I’m a
policeman; there’s a gentleman here who wants lodging.”
The door was unlocked and opened a few inches.
“I’ve got a room, yes, but it’s a bit late, ain’t it?”
The constable uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“Why, bless me, it’s Mrs. Inglethorne!”
“Yes, it’s Mrs. Inglethorne,” repeated the woman bitterly. “And well
you ought to know, considering the trouble you police have brought on
me! My old man being as innocent as a babe unborn, and our lodger as
nice a young man as ever drew the breath of life!”
She peered at Peter in the reflection from the policeman’s light; he
saw a bloated red face, a loose mouth, and eyes of singular smallness.
She was short and stout and wore a red flannel dressing gown, though
apparently she had not disrobed for the night.
“I can’t take you unless you’ve got money,” she said. “I’ve been done
before.”
Peter skinned a pound from the roll and showed it to her.
“All right, come in,” she said ungraciously.
Stopping only to thank the policeman for his help, Peter followed her
into the narrow, evil-smelling passage, and the door closed behind
him.
Fate had played its supreme joke on Peter Dawlish when it had led him
to the unsavoury home of Mrs. Inglethorne.