Sixty Days to Live (26 page)

Those were the last words he lived to utter. There was a sharp report, his head jerked up, an ugly splodge of red appeared just below his temple; without a moan he sagged and collapsed in a silent heap.

The men who were on top of Hemmingway sprang up in panic. Gasping from the pain in his stomach he rolled over. Framed in the side-entrance of the public-house he glimpsed Lavina. Her face was white as a sheet, but his automatic was clenched firmly in her hand and a trail of blue smoke still drifted from its barrel.

The roughs were staring at her. It takes a brave man to stand his ground when threatened with a loaded automatic; particularly
when the person behind it has already demonstrated that he is prepared to kill with it. When that person is a woman, to take such a risk is no longer bravery, but madness. Hemmingway’s attackers turned and fled; the two remaining thugs picked themselves up out of the gutter and took to their heels with equal swiftness. In less than a minute after the shot had been fired Hemmingway was standing on the pavement alone, with Lavina.

‘God!’ he panted, looking again at the tumbled figure on the driver’s seat of the car. ‘You’ve killed him!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Lavina in a small voice. She seemed a little stunned but not particularly upset. ‘You know, it all happened so suddenly. I’d only just got my dress on when I heard the shouting and when I looked out of the window I saw them all attacking you. I simply grabbed up the gun, rushed downstairs and shot him. Funny, wasn’t it?’

The fact that she had killed a man did not strike Hemmingway as at all funny. The little rat was probably no better than he should have been but, all the same, he was a human being and if Lavina was caught all sorts of unpleasant complications might ensue. The thugs had stopped farther down the street and were shouting. The Jewish girl had rushed out of the greengrocer’s shop. Other people were running up the street from both directions to see what had happened. The fat landlord appeared in the doorway of the pub and after one look at the dead man in the driver’s seat of the Rolls, began to blow shrilly upon a police whistle.

Lavina still held the gun and Hemmingway yelled to her:

‘Don’t let him grab you but throw him his money for the bedroom!’ Then, turning to the car, he opened its door and dragged the dead body out on to the pavement.

Lavina held out one of the pound-notes that Hemmingway had left with her, but the landlord stopped blowing on his whistle to exclaim: ‘I wouldn’t soil me ‘ands with it.’

It was no time to argue. Hemmingway was now in the driver’s seat. As he called to her, she slipped round to the far side of the car and jumped in beside him. He let in the clutch and the big Rolls slid forward.

The roughs and a lot of other people were now barring their passage a hundred yards along the street, but Hemmingway sent the car charging straight at them. One flung a stone which starred the window, but when they saw that he was prepared to run
them down they leapt aside and scattered. A moment later their shouted curses were fading in the distance.

‘By Jove! That was a nasty business,’ Hemmingway muttered.

‘Horrible!’ she agreed. ‘Of course, I didn’t really mean to do it.’

‘You knew my gun was loaded.’

‘Yes. But, except for the other night at the Dorchester, I don’t think I’ve ever seen men fighting in earnest before. In a way that I can’t quite explain, I felt as though I was back on a film set and we were all putting on an act. I was quite surprised myself when I saw that I’d killed him. I wonder if you can understand that?’

‘I think so,’ Hemmingway said slowly. ‘My hurling that potato through your window had only just woken you from a deep sleep. I suppose you must have felt that the whole thing was a sort of nightmare.’

‘In a way I did. But if I’d been fully conscious I believe I’d have shot him just the same.’

‘What?’ Hemmingway turned to stare at her for a second.

She nodded, and went on with that inexorable feminine realism which takes no count of ethics: ‘You see, it was us or them, wasn’t it? You were on the ground and it looked to me as though they were going to murder you, but I was scared that I might shoot you if I fired in that direction. The little fellow had started up the car and, if he had got away with it, I knew we’d both have been sunk. It just came to me in a flash that if I shot him that would scare the others out of their wits; so I aimed at his head and pulled the trigger.’

Hemmingway was quite staggered by the logic of her simple and effective reasoning. He knew there must be a catch in it somewhere but he couldn’t argue about it, and she was probably right in believing that she’d saved his life; or at least saved him from serious injury. His laugh was a little uncertain as he said:

‘Well, it was darned good shooting, anyhow.’

‘Oh, no,’ she demurred modestly. ‘I was only about six feet from him; the poor little wretch didn’t stand a chance.’

Hemmingway had turned south, into the Blackwall Tunnel, and was now running through it under the Thames. He was thinking what a mighty good job it was that there had been no police about; otherwise Lavina would certainly have been
arrested for manslaughter in the first degree—and they were by no means out of the wood yet.

Fortunately, as it affected their situation at the moment, no private calls had been taken by the London telephone exchanges for the last twenty-four hours so that neither the landlord nor one of his neighbours could ring up the police, but the matter was certain to be reported as soon as they arrived on the scene. A description of themselves and the car would be given, and Mr. Guggenbaum’s luxurious Rolls would be a very easy car to trace. Hemmingway wished now that he had contented himself with the Ford.

The question was: would the police be too occupied with other matters to wireless their speed-cars on the south side of the river to keep a look out for the Rolls? They were certainly much too busy to bother about ordinary motoring offences, but to shoot a man dead and leave his body on the pavement was a very different business. He did not mention to Lavina his gloomy speculations about possible trouble to come. Instead, he asked her how she was feeling.

‘Pretty mouldy,’ she shrugged, ‘and I must look like the wrath of God. I lost my bag days ago in the riot at the Dorchester so there’s not a trace of make-up left on my face and I didn’t even have a chance to wash when you fetched me out of bed just now. D’you think we could pull up somewhere where I could buy a comb and some powder and a lipstick?’

‘No,’ replied Hemmingway, ‘I don’t. And it doesn’t matter much what your face looks like, anyhow. It’s how you’re feeling in yourself that I’m worried about.’

‘Then you don’t know much about women, my friend,’ Lavina said with some asperity. ‘A girl feels good or ill to exactly the extent she sees her face looking in a mirror. I caught one glimpse of mine in that lousy bedroom and I feel like Methuselah’s wife dug up out of her grave.’

‘Well, you’ll feel better when you get down to the country.’

They had left the Tunnel, crossed Greenwich Marshes and were passing the Naval College when Lavina suddenly exclaimed:

‘I say, what’s happened to Derek?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea and I don’t damned well care,’ Hemmingway said bluntly. While they sped on through South Street, across the main Blackheath road and uphill towards
Lewisham, he proceeded to tell her of the extreme inconvenience which Derek had caused him.

‘You don’t like Derek, do you?’ she said quietly, giving him a quick look from beneath half-lowered eyelids.

‘I’ve no objection to him as a person but I don’t suffer fools gladly at any time and I just hate having them around when I have to handle an emergency.’

‘Poor Derek,’ she sighed. ‘And he’s so good-looking, don’t you think?’

‘I’ve never even looked at him from that point of view. All I know is that he landed you in this mess and has given me one hell of a job to get you out of it.’

‘Why did you bother?’

‘Because you’re Sam’s wife, of course.’

She smiled a little acidly. ‘Thank you. That’s quite the nicest compliment I’ve had for a long time.’

‘Oh, come,’ he shrugged impatiently. ‘I didn’t mean it that way, but Sam’s been more than any father to me for the last seven years. I’d be selling pea-nuts in the streets of New York, or something of that kind, if it hadn’t been for Sam. You’re his wife, so it was just up to me to find you and get you down to Stapleton somehow.’

‘With a neat label round my neck, I suppose: “In good order and untouched”.’

‘That’s just the way I hope it’ll be,’ he agreed, refusing to rise to her baiting.

There was very little traffic about and few people; and Hemmingway was anxious to place a good distance between themselves and the East End as soon as possible; so, on entering the broad tree-lined streets of Rushey Green, he let the car rip. In Catford, as he slowed down to enter a narrower turning, sign-posted
TO THE CRYSTAL PALACE
, Lavina remarked thoughtfully:

‘You’re rather an extraordinary person, aren’t you, Hemmingway?’

‘No. I wouldn’t say that,’ he smiled. ‘My mental attainments are a good bit better than most people’s, if that’s what you mean; but otherwise I’ve ordinary feelings and only one head and a couple of legs like everybody else.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of you mentally or physically, but as a person.
It’s so unusual to find anyone these days with such unquestioning loyalty.’

‘I don’t think so. Look at Sam. You couldn’t find a more loyal man than Sam anywhere.’ ‘He’s your hero, isn’t he?’

‘Yes. If you like to put it that way, I suppose he is.’

‘And now you’ve saved his wife from worse than death!’ she mocked him. ‘It might have come to that, you know. I probably shouldn’t have awakened till the evening, and if I’d still been on my own in the East End just after sunset the sight of me might have given lots of unpleasant people funny ideas.’

‘Well, let’s say that I was lucky enough to get you out of what might have proved a pretty sticky corner.’

‘And I saved your life; or, at least, saved you from being beaten unconscious by those thugs.’

‘You certainly did.’

‘That’s lovely. Then, we’re all paladins together. But tell me, what sort of effect does the comet have on you?’

‘It makes me feel very queer. I was in the house last night waiting for you and Roy and Derek to turn up and …’ he hesitated.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘Well, if you ever get back to St. James’s Square you may find out.’

‘Don’t be a pig! Do tell me?’

‘All right. But you must remember that at the time I was completely abnormal. I’m afraid I used up all your scent.’

‘My scent! I thought you smelt rather nice.’

‘Oh, afterwards I naturally did my best to get the damned stuff off me but I suppose some of it’s still lingering in my hair. Sorry to have robbed you, and how the idea came to me, God knows. But I just couldn’t resist going up to your room, sitting down at your dressing-table and dabbing myself all over till the bottle gave out. Extraordinary, wasn’t it?’

‘Very,’ agreed Lavina, smiling at her toes.

They had run up Perry Hill, entering a poorer district in Lower Sydenham. As they mounted the steeper gradient of West Hill, towards the Palace, they saw that a small crowd had collected about half way up it where the road narrowed to cross a railway bridge above Sydenham Station.

Hemmingway put on speed again. He did not mean to be held
up now that he had at last got away with both Lavina and the car and had every hope of being out in the open country in under half an hour; but a moment later his brows drew together in a frown and he checked the car.

As the group in the roadway parted he saw that they had stretched a number of thick wires across it, between two and six feet from the ground, and were flagging him to pull up.

For a moment he contemplated charging the barrier; but the wires were almost cable size and he knew that even the weight of the Rolls would not be great enough to snap them all. He would only succeed in forcing them back like bow strings and might even turn the car over.

‘Lord, help us! It’s the police,’ was the thought that flashed into his mind. ‘They must have telephoned through already and, knowing we’d killed one man, thought we’d take a chance on running others down if only we could get away. They’ve fixed these wires to make certain of halting us here.’

But, as he brought the car to a standstill, he saw at once that there was not a single policeman in the crowd. It was another gang of roughs.

‘Give me that thing,’ he cried to Lavina, snatching the automatic that lay on the seat between them as the ugly-looking mob surged round the car. Yet a second glance at the yelling crowd convinced him of the folly of either threatening them with it or attempting to use it. There were at least fifty men in the mob and their faces showed them to be desperate. He felt certain that if he even produced the gun Lavina and he would be dragged out of the car and kicked to death.

‘Come on!’ shouted a man in a red tie, who seemed to be the leader of the roughs. ‘Out you get! We want that car!’

Hemmingway hesitated, but only for a second.

‘Out you get!’ repeated the man. ‘And no argument, unless you want a beating-up!’

Discretion was unquestionably the better part of valour. For Lavina’s sake as well as his own, Hemmingway saw that peaceable surrender was the only policy.

‘It’s no good,’ he said, with a wry grin at her. ‘We can’t tackle this lot. We’ll have to get out.’ And, picking up his satchel of papers, he helped her down into the road.

The gang appeared to be organised and, having fixed up their
car-catching apparatus, were taking their turns to get away in each private car they could waylay as it came along.

The man in the red tie gave an order. The barrier of wires was lowered. A flashy little man climbed into the driver’s seat and drove the Rolls over it; after which about eight of the other men, laughing and joking, packed themselves into the car.

Taking Lavina by the arm, Hemmingway led her over to the pavement. As they had given up the car peacefully, nobody attempted to molest them; but with bitterness in their hearts they watched the wire barrier raised again and Mr. Guggenbaum’s beautiful Rolls drive smoothly away.