The House Opposite

7

The Will of a Woman

BACK in his sanctuary on the second floor, Ben reviewed the situation. He did not review it as a detective would have reviewed it, building point upon point and forming question upon question; he reviewed it unscientifically and emotionally, the various problems revolving in the ample space of his mind like planets in a deranged solar system. But out of the chaos we, better fed and better equipped, may select material for constructive conjecture by seizing on the more important of the questions in transit, and letting the others go. As, for example:

‘’Oo locked that cupboard unner the stairs? Yus, and when did ’e do it’? Yus, and wot’s in it? Or ’oo? Lummy!…

‘That old feller! Is ’e mad? Lummy!…

‘If the ’ouse is ’is—if mindjer—orl right! But it ain’t the Injun’s, too, can it? ’E tole me ter go, too! Sime as the old ’un did. Are they workin’ tergether? Lummy!…

‘If ’e thinks I’ve gorn—well, corse ’e must, wouldn’t ’e, will ’e come back presen’ly and do wot ’e thinks I gorn for? Lummy!…

‘Now this ’ere ’ouse can’t be the gal’s if it’s ’is—if, mindjer. Orl right. If it isn’t the gal’s, wot she pay me ter stay ’ere for? Was it so’s I’d be ’ere when ’e comes back ter do wot ’e’s goin’ ter do? Gawd!…

‘And ’ere’s a funny thing. ’E fires at me bang in the fice and misses me. Bang in the fice. And misses me!…

‘Yes, and wot abart my cheese?’

To Ben’s credit, he did not harp on the cheese. That thought merely came to him now and again in momentary pangs. He harped most on the bullet. He couldn’t make that out at all. Think he didn’t know when a revolver was pointing bang in his face?

‘Well, if ’e didn’t ’it me,’ muttered Ben suddenly, still requiring documentary proof that he was alive, ‘let’s see where the bullet did ’it.’

He turned and gazed at the wall. He saw no evidence of a bullet mark. He walked to the spot where he had been when the old man had fired, and then he located the spot where the old man had been when he had fired, and then he drew an imaginary line between the two spots. He even traced the line with his finger along the floor, continuing it to the wall and up the wallpaper as far as the height of his face. Nowhere near his finger when it paused at the correct elevation was there any sign of a bullet’s impact. There was no sign of it in the whole of the room.

‘Well, if that don’t beat a cat ’avin’ chicks!’ blinked Ben, in amazement. ‘’E fires at me. ’E don’t ’it me. ’E don’t ’it nuffin’!’

The only solution was that the bullet had suddenly stopped dead in the middle of space and had evaporated. ‘P’r’aps it was disappointed like at missin’ me and wouldn’t go on,’ thought Ben. But this thought was itself pulverising, so he reverted for relief to another problem—the problem of the cupboard under the stairs in the hall. It was, admittedly, a queer relief, but at least the cupboard presented a puzzle that could be solved, given a stout boot and a stouter heart. Ben possessed the former; it represented the best thing he’d ever found in a dust-bin; but he doubted whether he possessed the latter.

‘And yet it’s funny,’ he cogitated. ‘I done some brave things in my time. There was that toff ’oo was drahning that time. I was thinkin’ o’ savin’ ’im jest afore that other chap done it. And once I ’it a copper.’

Could not those days of glory be revived? He went on cogitating. And suddenly, to his profound astonishment, he discovered himself in the passage, starting to go downstairs.

He was astonished because he believed he was being courageous. Actually, he could not survive the idea of spending the night in No. 29 Jowle Street with the secret of the cupboard unsolved. It would be too likely to work into his dreams.

‘These stairs and me’s gettin’ ter know each other,’ he murmured, half-way down. He liked to talk to himself. It was company. ‘I could play a tune on ’em!’

As a matter of fact, he couldn’t help playing a tune on them, and it wasn’t exactly ‘Home Sweet Home’. It might have been more aptly described as a nocturne in creak minor. Just round the corner to the left was the cupboard door. Oh, the difference!

But Ben had made up his mind, and when he made up his mind it sometimes remained made up. Swerving round the corner to the left and refusing to stop to think, he reached the cupboard door, gasped at it, and swung back his boot.

‘Now fer it!’ he thought, closing his eyes.

The boot thought differently, however. It remained swung back, and for exactly four seconds Ben became a statue of a blind man about to kick a goal. A taxi had stopped outside.

Four seconds was too long. He realised it during the fifth. A key was now being slipped into a lock of the front door, and the front door was beginning to open. He only had time to jump away from the cupboard and jerk himself round before the visitor appeared …

Once before in this house Ben had waited for an ogre and had received a vision. Now history repeated itself, although it was a different vision. The other had been a girl. This was a woman. A woman in evening dress, with a wonderful fur cloak, that half-concealed and half revealed an even more wonderful white throat. Ben didn’t know they came so white. The whiteness of this woman’s throat was dazzling. And yet, of course, he’d seen her kind at cinemas. Breathless close-ups, that advanced towards you enormously, outdoing reality. Yes—she’d make a close-up! She was difficult enough, even at six yards! Made your head swim … if you’d been through a bit of a time, you know, and felt emotional …

‘So—you are still here,’ said the ravishing woman.

Well, her tone was friendly, anyhow. She was smiling at him. Ben smirked back sheepishly, and swallowed.

‘Do you know, I’m rather glad,’ went on the woman, closing the door behind her. The taxi did not drive away. In the middle of his confusion Ben was still alert for details. ‘Of course, it’s very foolish of you, but I was rather hoping for a little chat.’

‘Was yer, mum?’ replied Ben.

The other had been miss. This was mum. Though, mind you, she was young. Young as blazes!

‘Yes. You see, I admire bravery. I admire courage and character. And I can recognise it when I see it.’

‘Ah,’ blinked Ben, struggling against an increase of the sheepishness.

‘Now, listen,’ said the woman, opening a little evening bag and extracting a little cigarette-case. Gold. Or looked like it. ‘I’m going to sit down on that uninviting bottom stair for two minutes, and I’m going to smoke half a cigarette. And by that time I hope we shall know each other and understand each other … Do you mind?’

‘Eh? Corse not, mum,’ answered Ben, wondering what difference it would have made if he’d said he had.

But, then, he wasn’t sure that he did mind. A two minutes’ chat with a dazzling creature like this? It did not often come within a poor sailor’s experience. Just him and her, and the stairs! And the queer, tantalising scent she had on her! And the marvellous hair, as exact as a battleship. And that white throat of hers …

It may surprise you that Ben should have been affected by these things. You may consider it ridiculous, even presumptuous. But Ben, for all his dirt and his grime, his hunger and his ineffectiveness, was a bit of life, and the last thing that Life stamps out of us is the little spark of romance within us. When that is gone, we may as well go too.

About to sit on the stairs, the woman suddenly paused and held out her case.

‘Won’t you join me?’ she asked.

Ben shook his head. That might be too presumptuous! But she continued to hold her case out, and he advanced in response to her urging and took a dainty, gold-tipped cigarette with fingers unprepared for the honour. Then his spirit failed him again, and he slipped the cigarette into his pocket.

‘Presen’ly, if yer don’t mind, mum,’ he mumbled.

She shrugged her shoulders. One shoulder actually peeped out for a moment from its warm nest of fur.

‘As you like,’ she said, lighting her own cigarette. ‘But here is a match, ready?’

She bent forward with the match. The light glowed on her deliciously made-up cheeks, and her darkened lashes, and her very perfect lips. No man in her station could have refused the moment. But Ben again shook his head, hardly knowing why. Perhaps he was still struggling against presumption, even while she admitted it.

‘Even in small things, I see you are consistently dogged!’ She sighed, as the light went out, and with it, for the moment, her face. She seemed only a wonderful shadow now, with a little glow, first bright, then soft, before it. But her voice came from the stairs on which she sat, proving her substance. ‘Well, that only increases my interest in you. The cigarette—that is nothing! But this house—that is another matter. Why are you dogged about that? Why won’t you leave?’

So this was why she had called! This was what she wanted to talk to him about!… Of course, she’d already implied it …

‘It’s very foolish of you, Mr Strong Man, really it is,’ her voice continued. Had a tinge of irony dropped into the voice now? ‘It won’t do you any good to stay in this house.’

Suddenly Ben faced her, and tackled matters squarely.

‘Wot’s wrong with the ’ouse?’ he demanded.

‘Wrong with it?’ she repeated. Now the voice was perplexed. ‘Nothing is wrong with it. Why should there be?’ Ben was silent. ‘The only thing that is wrong with it, if I may say so without offending you, is your own presence in it. That, of course, is wrong. But it’s a wrong that can be so easily righted.’

‘Can it?’

‘Yes. And must be, before the little wrong becomes a big wrong. My father has a terrible temper, when he’s roused.’

Ben stared at her.

‘Yer father, mum?’ he murmured.

‘Yes, my father,’ she nodded. ‘You don’t mind my having a father, do you? It seems we all have to have one. If you would like to get the position quite clear, this house belongs to my father, who lives opposite, and when I dropped in just now, on my way to a theatre, I found him in a frightful state. It seems he’d been trying to turn you out—forgive my gauche expressions—and that you had refused to go. I suggested a policeman—you mustn’t mind, because you really are trespassing, you know—but he wouldn’t hear of it. He prefers to deal with things himself, and I’m afraid he said, “Policeman be damned!” If you don’t go at once, he’ll get into one of his really, really bad states, and there may be murder done. So, you see,’ she concluded, ‘I decided to come here myself, because I knew I could persuade you, and could make you see reason. Was I right?’

It certainly seemed reasonable enough when she put it like that. But—was it really reason—or just her scent?

‘Yes—but ’e tried ter shoot me!’ blurted Ben, struggling against both her scent and her sense, and striving feebly to make out a case for himself.

She jumped up from the stairs, and seized his arm. Now her face was very close, and almost hypnotised him. A little wisp of hair was nearly touching his cheek.

‘Tried to shoot you?’ she cried, in alarm. ‘Good heavens! He’s in that condition! Don’t you see, you must leave—you must! Now! This moment!’

Her fingers tightened convulsively on his sleeve. Unconsciously, he had strengthened her case instead of weakening it. He felt himself being impelled imperiously towards the door, while rich fur brushed against shabby cloth and Houbigant mingled with stale tobacco … Now the front door was wide. The damp street opened its misty arms … And now he was on the pavement, his mind in a whirl, being bundled into the taxi …

‘Wot’s this?’ he protested.

‘My taxi,’ whispered the woman’s voice in his ear. ‘I’ll get another, but you mustn’t wait a second! I’ve told the man to drive you away, and I’ve paid him—’

He felt her final shove. The soft fingers could be hard and capable. The next instant the taxi began to move, and he was being driven away from Jowle Street.

His brain swam. He must steady it, and think. He groped for his cigarette.

8

Ben Finds New Quarters

THERE was no doubt about it, Ben needed a few soothing whiffs to regain his normal balance. Abruptly, within the space of a single minute, his little world had been uprooted and his immediate future changed; moreover, he was struggling to throw off the effects of the bemusing beauty that had entered the little world and had uprooted it. It had entered from a world much vaster than Ben’s. It had enveloped him with almost sinister potency, and with all the cynicism of the unattainable; yet its design had been backed by ruthless logic, or else the semblance of it, and he could not put his finger on the flaw. A flaw there must be. But where was it? That was the problem Ben hoped, with the aid of his cigarette, to solve.

He little realised, as he inserted the dainty, gold-tipped thing, how definitely it was going to assist him in his search for the catch!

‘I’ll give meself a couple o’ minits,’ he thought. ‘Just a couple, that’s orl. Then I’ll do something’.’

He struck a match, and lit the cigarette. The match-light glowed on the back of the taximan. It was a broad back, and the end of an untidy moustache protruded beyond the curve of a cheek. It must be a big moustache, Ben reflected, because it was a big cheek. Funny how you liked some moustaches, and hated others!

The match went out. Now only the reflection of his cigarette glowed in the broad back of the taximan. Yes, it was soothing, all right! Just what he wanted. But only for a couple of minutes, mind! No longer …

Ben watched the little glow as he puffed. It expanded and dwindled. So did the back it shone in. Now the back was enormous. Now it was tiny. Now it was enormous again. Queer, that. You could puff a cigarette glow up and down, but could you puff a back?

‘Wunner where ’e thinks ’e’s takin’ me,’ thought Ben; ‘’cos wherever ’e thinks, ’e’s wrong.’

But the next moment he was wondering about something else. The back was doing extraordinary things. It was swaying. First one side, then the other. Left—right—left—right! ‘’E’ll fall off ’is seat in a minit,’ thought Ben. But he didn’t fall off his seat, and all at once Ben realised the reason, with a shock. The taximan wasn’t swaying. Ben was swaying!

‘’Ere—wot’s orl this?’ murmured Ben. ‘I’m comin’ over orl funny!’

He puffed fiercely, and then suddenly raised his hand and snatched the cigarette from his mouth. His hand was like lead.

‘Gawd—so that was ’er gime!’ choked Ben.

He had struck the flaw in the logic. No really nice girl carries a drugged cigarette in her case!

Suppose he had smoked the cigarette when she had first offered it to him? She had offered it, he recalled, before he had mentioned anything about the pistol shot. He would have been feeling then as he was feeling now. The hall would have swum, instead of the taxi. He would have become limp … he would have been carried out unconscious … into the taxi …

‘’Ere! Stop!’ he bawled.

That was funny! Where was his voice? He didn’t hear it! Nor, apparently, did the taximan, for he didn’t stop.

‘Police! Fire! ’Elp!’ roared Ben.

But, again, it was a roar without a sound. His imagination raged, while his lips were mute. Two white arms went round him and held him. He sank into a sea of scent. A beautiful woman with a gleaming throat stood on the shore and laughed as he went under … Now, all was peaceful and velvet …

The sense of gliding—that remained. He had not smoked the whole cigarette. The body that could no longer function glided through the velvet, conscious of movement and of occasional incidents in the movement. Sometimes, for instance, the movement became a little jerky. Sometimes a cow squeaked through it. Sometimes it changed its direction abruptly, and took loops. Sometimes the velvet became speckled with little lights, or alleviated by a momentary big one, reminding one of the sensations of passing through stations on night journeys. And, as a sort of background to it all, there was a continuous, rhythmic throbbing, soft, and very close to the ears …

Now the movement became very jerky. Now the cow squeaked loudly, two squeaks at a time. And now the movement stopped, and the Universe paused in its transit. And now a new movement started—a heavy, formless, bumping kind of movement, that irritated one and made one vaguely rebellious. The gliding hadn’t been so bad. You could sink into it, yield yourself to it, accept it. In fact, you had to. But you couldn’t sink into this new form of locomotion through space. It shook you. It made you feel slighted. It caused your heavy arms to try and move with preventive intent, and your legs, equally heavy, to attempt kicks. But it wasn’t any good. The bumping movement went on, up, along, up, along, up, along, this side, straight again, t’other side, straight again, now tipping, now swaying, now swinging, now jolting, now cursing, now grumbling—up, along, up, along—woosh—flop!

Ben’s form became horizontal and inert again. Stretched out limply, it entered into its last stage of impassivity. When it began to emerge, the dim space around it started separating into sections, and each section formed into an object. An enormous oblong dwindled in size as it improved in focus, till it became a wardrobe. A block became a chest of drawers. A smaller block became a chair. A curious golden arrow became the light of a street lamp streaking in through a window.

‘’Ere—wot’s orl this?’ muttered Ben, sitting up suddenly. But he flopped back again almost immediately, because his movement had shifted the good work of the telescope, and the focused objects were beginning to lose their definition again. Once more he became inertly horizontal, but this time with a slowly-moving brain. ‘Stop ’ere like this fer a minit,’ advised the slowly-moving brain, ‘and then try it agin more slow like.’

After the minute, Ben tried it again more slow like. It worked better. Now he was sitting up and the objects around him did not start running away. Even the object he was sitting up on stayed where it was, and proved to be a bed.

In a corner of the room he spotted something that spelt salvation. It was a jug in a basin. Keeping his eyes anchored upon it, he imagined a steadying rope joining himself to the jug. With the assistance of this rope he worked his legs over the side of the bed. When they touched the ground, the ground began to roll, but again the rope came to his aid and saved him from disaster. He waited for a few moments till the floor grew calmer, and then, glueing his eyes on the water jug, he made a sudden dive towards it. To his surprise, it was a bull’s-eye, and the cool handle of the jug felt good in his hot hand.

‘Nah fer a shower barth!’ he thought. ‘That’ll do the trick!’

He raised the jug and inverted it over his head. He was rather surprised at the ease of the operation. He must be growing stronger! But the inverted jug produced no comfort. It was empty.

‘There’s a dirty trick!’ muttered Ben.

He wanted to cry. He couldn’t stand many more disappointments. But all at once he spotted a small water bottle on the wash-stand. It was full of water—probably last month’s, but that didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that the bottle had received its last rub before the war. He seized it avidly, and cascaded the contents all over him from his hair downwards. The chilly moisture made life worth living again, and battles worth fighting. Should we ever despair, when heaven itself may be contained in a filthy carafe?

As the water trickled down him and around him his blood responded immediately and began to flow freely again. His mind worked, his scant store of courage returned. And he needed all his courage for what was before him. Turning, he eyed the door. ‘Aha!’ he cried. It was the bark of the dog that has just emerged from the sea, though not, at this moment, a good-natured dog. Its desire was to bite as well as to bark. The person to be bitten was somewhere on the other side of the door.

Ben crossed to it. Yes, he found he could do so. A bit groggy still, of course, but he no longer needed an imaginary rope. ‘Hi!’ he shouted. ‘Lemme out!’ As he shouted, he kicked the door with his boot—his present from the dust-bin.

No one came. He went on shouting and kicking. The door held firm.

‘Wotcher think yer doin’ of?’ roared Ben. ‘’Oojer think yer are? Lemme out, d’yer ’ear? Lemme out! If yer don’t, by Gawd, I’ll ’ave yer ’ouse dahn!’ Hefty kick. ‘D’yer ’ear?’ Another hefty kick. ‘Yer think I don’t mean it?’ Another hefty kick. ‘Orl right, yer bit o’ ’uman pulp with a bird’s nest on yer lip, I’ll show yer!’

Now he heard a tread upon the stairs.

‘Yer better be quick,’ bawled Ben, ‘or the door’ll come dahn on yer.’

It was a terrific kick this time. The door shook, and showed a little split.

‘Now, then—stop that!’ ordered a voice from outside.

‘Yus, likely, ain’t it?’ retorted Ben, and went on kicking.

‘Stop it. D’you ’ear?’

‘Corse I don’t ’ear? ’Ow can I? I’m lyin’ on yer blinkin’ bed drugged, ain’t I?’

‘You’ll lie there again in a minute, if you’re not careful!’ threatened the voice. ‘You’d better do as I tell you!’

‘Yus, why shouldn’t I do wot you tells me? Yer bin so nice ter me, ain’t yer? Taken me fer a nice ride and ain’t charged me nothin’. Why, I’m so fond o’ yer I’ll black yer boots fer yer—and then yer two eyes arterwards!’

It wasn’t polished repartee, but it assisted the kicking, and evidently it worried the person outside. Someone joined him, and there was whispering.

‘Yus, and ’ere’s somethin’ ter whisper abart!’ bellowed Ben suddenly. ‘Good-bye to yer ’appy ’ome!’

He staggered back to the water jug, seized it, and hurled it to the ground. It splintered with a crash. Then he seized the water bottle. There was another crash.

‘Tinkle-tinkle!’ cried Ben deliriously. There is a special form of delirium that accompanies the act of breaking things. ‘Didyer ’ear it? Now listen agin! This is goin’ ter be the soap dish. It’s ’ole.’ Smash! ‘Now it ain’t.’