Beggar’s Choice (21 page)

This was coming to the point with a vengeance. In his long-winded and respectable manner, Z.10 appeared to be “offering me the opportunity” of knocking my uncle on the head, or tipping him into a pond, or perhaps merely picking his pocket or what not. There was a beautiful rolling vagueness about “translating my very natural feelings of anger and resentment into action.” I would have liked to draw him, but I didn't think it was decent. I wasn't going to discuss my uncle with him, and I was feeling a bit hot about his butting in on my family affairs, so I said pretty stiffly,

“I don't know what you mean.”

He moved again.

“Don't you, Mr. Fairfax? Come, come—I think you do. I think you have had a pretty bad time of it during the last three years, and I think you must feel that you owe your uncle something of a grudge. Suppose you were offered an opportunity of getting some of your own back—would you not be inclined to entertain it?”

I thought this was pretty stiff. I wondered what he would go on to propose, and who was behind it. That is what I wondered most, so, by way of finding out, I asked him what he meant.

“You go too fast,” he said. “We have, at present, your grudge against your uncle, and my proposal that you should be afforded an opportunity of realizing this grudge. Before we go any farther I should want a specific declaration of your willingness to proceed upon these lines.”

I wanted to pick him up and throw him through the windscreen, the little rat; but I controlled myself.

I said bluntly, “Do you mean murder?” and I saw him jump.

“And if I did?” he said, breathing a bit quicker. I had startled him out of some of his propriety anyhow. I couldn't hold on any longer.

“Why, you infernal little scallywag!” I roared, and before I'd got farther than that he had opened the door on the far side and slipped out.

I made after him, but it was too dark. His being so nippy took me by surprise. I called into the dark,

“Here you—Z.10! Where are you?”

I thought I heard something move. A moment later he called out,

“Here!”

The voice came from about twenty yards back. I made a dash for the place, but as I got there, I heard behind me the sound of the engine. Some one had started the car. I stopped and turned. The tail light was on, and the engine running. I began to run back, but as I came level with the rear wheels, the door slammed on the far side. The car was already moving, and whilst I was trying to make up my mind whether to have a shot at boarding it or just to let him go, it drew away and was out of reach.

I stood and watched it go. It was no good running. It was no good looking either, for the matter of that, for the number plate had a bit of paper or something hanging down over it.

I saw the last of the tail light as the car turned into Churt Row.

XXVIII

I was wild with myself for having missed such a good opportunity. I ought to have grabbed the little squirt and shaken the truth out of him. As it was, I'd about as much chance of finding him as one would have of picking a special drop of water out of the Thames. London is stiff with Smiths, and stiff with little men who wear pince-nez. Probably his real name was something quite different, and I hadn't one earthly chance of ever coming across him again. After what had just passed, he wasn't very likely to want to find me.

I stood there and cursed myself. Who would have thought the little blighter could have nipped out like that? Anyhow he'd got away, and I had to think what I'd better do next. I should have to send back the money. I hated that like poison. It's quite extraordinary how soon you get used to having money in your pocket again. I thought about going back to cadging for jobs and thinking myself lucky if I got a square meal once in three days or so. It was perfectly beastly.

Then I thought about my uncle. It seemed to me that he ought to know about Z.10; and yet for the life of me I didn't see how I was going to tell him. He'd probably think I was pitching him a cock-and-bull story, and at the very least he'd think I was trying to curry favor. It wasn't as if I'd got the number of the car, or a line of writing, or anything that I could show—it would be simply my unsupported word and a story that sounded like something out of the Arabian Nights. There was a distinct flavor of Baghdad about it—Adventure of the Poor Young Man and the Wicked Cadi sort of touch.

Well, I couldn't take root in Olding Crescent, so I shoved the whole thing into the back of my mind and started to walk in the direction of Churt Row.

I crossed to the lighted side of the crescent, and as I walked along, I kept looking over the way at the long black line of the wall with the trees hanging over it. That wall had a sort of fascination for me from the very beginning. I've always had a fancy for a wall, especially a high brick wall with a door going through it into a garden. Now, as I walked along, this wall began to have a most extraordinary attraction for me. I suppose it was because I didn't want to go on thinking about sending back the money and about my uncle. I wanted something else to think about—and there was the wall.

I began by wondering what the garden on the other side of it was like. And then I got on to the house, and from the house to the people who lived in it. By the time I got to the corner of Churt Row, the whole place, house, garden and wall, was fairly tugging at me.

I stood at the corner for a minute and looked along Churt Row. There wasn't a lighted window or any sign of a living thing. I looked back down Olding Crescent, and everything was dark.

The house behind the wall pulled harder, and what I wanted was any sort of an excuse for going to have a look at it. And all of a sudden the excuse burst on me like a Very light. I started to run back just as fast as I could go.

Why had Z.10 hit on this particular place to meet me? It was a very good place for his purpose—I doubted whether anything as dark and secluded could have been found without going a great deal farther afield. It was an admirable place. But how did he know about it? It wasn't the sort of place you would know about unless you lived there or thereabouts, and the first time he met me he had been on foot and I hadn't seen how he came. Suppose he had come out the door in the wall. Of course there were about ten million chances that he hadn't. But I didn't think about them; I clamped on to the chance that he had, and I went pelting down Olding Crescent looking for the way in.

The door in the wall was locked, but there must be a proper entrance somewhere—perhaps round the corner. If I was right, Z.10 could have driven along Churt Row, turned left, and left again, and come round to the entrance I was making for. If my very light had only gone off at once, I could have made straight for the gate and watched him come home. By this time I was quite sure that he lived in the house behind the wall.

I found the entrance just at the corner. Olding Crescent runs into a biggish road with trees on either side of it. There was a big iron gate between brick pillars. The gate was open, and as I came on it, I saw the tail light of a car disappear along the drive. I wanted to shout, but I didn't. I ran after the car. There was a short drive, very dark, twisting through a high black shrubbery. I blundered into a holly bush and scratched myself, so I stopped running and felt my way instead.

A last twist brought the house into sight. The lower windows were lighted. I could see chinks and edges of light where the curtains let it through. It looked like a big house, with a portico sticking out and spanning the drive. There was a fanlight over the front door, very brightly lit. The car was standing under the portico. It had been turned and was facing the gate.

I hadn't thought what I was going to do, but it came to me in a flash. I marched up to the door and rang the bell. I had the sort of feeling that one gets sometimes—I felt absolutely sure of myself, and I didn't care a damn for any one.

The door opened almost at once. I think I'd expected to see a man-servant, but it was a pretty girl in a blue dress and a flimsy cap and apron, who looked as if she had walked out of a play. I had my piece all ready to say, and I said it.

“Does Mr. Smith live here?”

“No, sir,” said the girl.

“What a nuisance!” I said. “I'm most awfully sorry to bother you, but I think I must have been misdirected, and looking for a Mr. Smith at this time of night is rather a hopeless sort of job.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“The other is I've forgotten the name of the people in the next house. I mean they said, ‘It's next door to the So-and-So's,' and I've forgotten the So-and-So's name.” She smiled and looked friendly, so I went on, “I suppose you can't help me? I'd know the name if I heard it. Who lives here?”

“Mr. Arbuthnot Markham, sir,” she said.

I must have looked a prize ass. My jaw fell as if it had dropped about a yard. And just as I was trying to think of something to say, a door up at the end of the hall opened and I heard Anna Lang laugh.

I didn't dally. I said “Thanks ever so much,” and I made tracks. I'd know Anna's laugh in a million. Anna and Arbuthnot Markham.… Oh, my hat!

I walked about a dozen yards for the look of the thing, and then I ran until I struck another holly bush—that beastly drive was full of them. It pulled me up, and I got behind some sort of cypress and did a bit of a think.

Anna and Arbuthnot Markham.… No wonder I'd had a feeling about the place. I suppose the car was waiting for her. It seemed pretty late for her to be visiting Arbuthnot anyway. Uncle John is strait-laced, and I wondered what he'd say if he knew. And then all the things I'd been keeping in the back of my mind came out with a rush. If Anna was behind this business, it had a very ugly look indeed. She had told me she'd forged my uncle's signature, and she'd told me she was in a blue funk about his finding out. On the top of this, Z.10 tried to induce me to—let us say, tip my uncle into a pond.

I had to put that away again. I couldn't think it out standing in a garden bed behind somebody else's cypresses. I felt as if it wanted concentration, and a wet towel round the head, and a good bit of midnight oil.

I came out on to the drive, and all of a sudden I thought what a mug I'd been. I ought to have had a look at the car before I marched up and rang the bell. I wondered if it was too late now. I went back, listening for the sound of the engine, but everything was quite still. The front door was shut. I could see the car plainly enough in the light that came through the fanlight. I wondered if there would be a chauffeur hanging about. I rather thought not, because in a house that size he'd get asked in.

I came up cautiously. There was no one in the car. Then I went round to the back of it and felt the number plate. There wasn't any paper over it now; but then I never expected there would be—he would have stopped somewhere along Churt Row and taken it off. I hadn't a match, or I'd have got the number—not that it really mattered very much. I had a shot at feeling for it, but the figures were not raised. I went round to the front again. There was a rug on the bonnet, a dark one. That told me nothing—most rugs are dark, and all I had really noticed about Z.10's rug was that it was there.

I got round to the side away from the house and started to open the driver's door. I knew that if I sat in the car, I should have a very good idea whether it was the one I had sat in before; the feel of the seat, the angle of the windscreen, the set of the wheel, are the sort of things that register themselves in your mind. I had got the handle half turned, when the front door opened. I stood there like a fool, looking through the car at the brightly lighted hall and steps. Some one had switched on an outside light as well. It looked like a stage setting with the leading lady in the limelight.

Anna was the leading lady. She wore a gold dress and a gold and crimson shawl. I'll admit she looked handsome. Arbuthnot Markham was just behind her, and she was talking to him over her shoulder. There didn't seem to be any servant about.

I didn't wait of course. I let go of the handle and got behind the nearest pillar. The portico ran right across the drive, with pillars along the edge of it. I got behind the middle pillar, and was glad to find it supplemented by some sort of creeper which almost doubled its width. I could hear their voices coming nearer, and then I heard the slam of the door.

I looked through the creeper and saw the shape of Anna's head against the light. She was in the driver's seat, so there wasn't any chauffeur. I hadn't time to wonder what had happened to Z.10, because I'd hardly seen Anna before Arbuthnot came round the back of the car. I just saw his white shirt-front, and then he turned away from me and leaned on the window by Anna.

It was a very uncomfortable position for me. Eavesdropping isn't much in my line. I hadn't the slightest interest in Anna's private affairs, but I didn't see my way out of the situation. If they were going to talk about their own concerns, I should feel like a cad. But if, by any chance, they were going to talk about Z.10, or my uncle, or me, I was bound to listen.

Well, first of all he said something so low that I didn't catch it; but I heard her say,

“I can't, Corinna Lee is staying. I'm not advertising this trip.”

He said something again, and she laughed and said,

“You'll have to put up with it.”

That sounds most frightfully ordinary, but it struck me no end. I've known Anna for about twenty-six years, and what struck me was this—she was speaking like an ordinary human being, not acting. It came over me that she felt, in some queer sort of way, at home with Arbuthnot; she didn't trouble to act for him.

I was so taken up with thinking this that I must have missed something, because all of a sudden he was saying,

“To-morrow?”

And she chipped in with, “Yes, to-morrow. I told you—it's his wedding day.”

That brought me up sharp, because it brought us all back to Uncle John. He's tremendously keen on anniversaries, and his wedding-day is always kept with a lot of fuss—flowers in front of my aunt's portrait, and a queer sort of ceremonial, going through her letters, and her jewelry, and their wedding presents. I'd forgotten the exact date, but it came somewhere in this week.