Beyond this place (16 page)

Paul took a grip of himself, turned back to Burt.

"I'll come along with you. It is a bit hot in here. A breath of air will put you right."

Before she could protest, he called the waiter and paid for the drinks. Nervously, stealing glances at the adjacent table, she gathered her belongings, got into her coat. At last she was ready.

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They stood up. Immediately, Sergeant Jupp got up too, tucking the folded pink newspaper into his pocket and, gazing at nothing with a noncommittal air, walked out of the bar before them.

Paul's nerves were jangling like a peal of bells. As he walked out with Burt, would a hand be laid once again upon his shoulder, hauling him off again to Police Headquarters on some trumped-up charge? No, by God, he would not submit to that. His eyes darted ahead. He could see the policeman standing on the pavement, waiting, facing the swing doors. Grimly, taking the wilting Burt's arm, he kept on his way.

"Just a minute."

Paul drew up, faced the sergeant, who came closer, with a blank expression.

"I've been watching you in there. You're annoying this young woman."

"You're a liar."

"Oh, am I?" he turned towards Burt. "This fellow's been interfering with you . . . hasn't he?"

There was a hollow pause. Then, with a gasp, Burt shrilled:

"Oh, he has . . . askin' me to go with him . . . and all that, when I didn't want to."

"All right. Clear out of here quick."

As Burt took to her heels Jupp gave Paul a meaning glance.

"You see. Now look here. Mathry, we're not going to run you in. But the Chief wants you to know this is your second warning and he hopes you re wise enough to take it."

Instead of relief, Paul felt a blinding anger sweep over him. This assumed indulgence was harder to bear than actual injury. He did not wait. It was useless to follow Burt now. Breathing a little quickly, he swung abruptly into the shadows and turned the corner of the street.

After crossing three minor intersections he took a side road into the busy thoroughfare of Marion Street. Here he slowed his pace and mingled with the stream of people moving along the wide pavement towards Tron Bridge and the centre of the city. Mostly they were women, slowly promenading, singly, or in pairs with linked arms, along the wide and dusty tree-lined boulevards, offering their glances of invitation under the blue

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downpour of light which fell at long intervals from the overhead electric standards.

As he went forward, his jaw still set, recovering his breath in quick gulps, Paul's sense of outrage grew. He had escaped the immediate danger but his contact with Burt was irreparably broken. She would never recover from this scare. A savage exclamation broke from Paul's lips. The sense of being hampered, spied upon, and threatened at every turn fanned the dark embers which continually smouldered in his breast.

When he got to Poole Street he pulled off his clothes and fell, dog-tired, into bed. Would they seek him here? He did not think so. The actual occasion had passed and although it would be marked against him, he doubted if they would use it as a pretext to apprehend him. Rightly or wrongly he guessed that the purpose of the Chief Constable was still to frighten him away from Wortley. But if they did come he would not really care. He closed his eyes and slept heavily.

CHAPTER XXI

NEXT morning when he awoke it was to a clearer perception of what he had gained on the previous evening. Interrupted though the interview had been, he had nevertheless obtained from Burt several vital facts, of which not the least were those relating to the green bicycle and the skin purse. Reflecting deeply, Paul now realized that if the owner of the purse had been a medical student he must by this time, almost certainly, have qualified as a doctor. By checking the Medical Directory against an old list of the members of the Grasshoppers' Club it would be possible to determine his identity.

Spurred by this fresh hope, Paul jumped out of bed. It was after eight and fifteen minutes past his usual time for getting up. He shaved, dressed, rushed through his breakfast and hur-

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ried to the store. At the Bonanza he found Harris waiting for him inside the main entrance. This was unusual, the manager did not normally appear till ten.

"You're late," Harris said, stepping forward and blocking the way.

Paul looked at the big clock at the end of the store. It showed six minutes past nine. There were no customers in the shop yet, only the assistants, and most of them, including Lena, had their eves on the manager. Lena, in particular, seemed strangely troubled.

"I'm sorry," Paul muttered. "I'm afraid I overslept."

"Don't answer me back." Harris was working himself into a temper. "Have you an excuse?"

"What for?" Paul stared at the other in dull surprise. "I'm only six minutes behind."

"I asked you if you had an excuse."

*'No, I haven't."

"Then you're sacked. We've no use in this store for police suspects."

Giving Paul no opportunity to answer, he swung round and walked back to his office. As he traversed the aisle the assistants busied themselves at the counters — all but Lena, who still stood, pale and undecided, at her desk.

With a raw hurt in his breast Paul turned and went out of the store. As he walked along Ware Street he had a vague suspicion that he was being followed.

At first, in a restless fury of resentment, he strode rapidlv and without purpose through the busiest thoroughfares of the city, losing himself in the crowds that thronged the pavements. Then gradually his mood grew calm and cold. Freed from the tyranny of that insufferable piano, at least he was at liberty to put his deductions of the previous evening to the test.

He stepped into a telephone booth and by consulting the directory discovered that the National Cyclists' Union had an office at 62 Leonard Street. In ten minutes he reached the building, passed under the sign of the gilded, winged wheel, and stood at the inquiry desk in the map-hung foyer.

The secretary, a middle-aged woman, received his inquiry

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without undue surprise, and taking a handbook from the counter, flipped the pages expertly. But her search was unproductive.

"We seem to have no present record of such a club. Was it affiliated?"

"I don't know," Paul confessed. "And it may now have been disbanded. But I do particularly want to trace it. Please help me. It's most important."

There was a pause.

"I haven't the time myself," she said. "But if it's important I might let you look over our back records. It should be listed there."

She showed him into a small annex beside the office and indicated a rack of yellow and green paper-backed books.

Left alone, Paul went through all the handbooks and annual reports for the past twenty years. This meticulous research occupied him a full three hours. There was no record whatsoever of the Grasshoppers' Club.

Discouraged, but undeterred, he reflected grimly, with all the logic he could command, if such a club had actually existed its members must undoubtedly have procured their machines from some local store. Abruptly, he left the N.C.U. and set out on a systematic tour of all the cycle agencies in the city.

But there, again and again, he was disappointed, meeting only blank negation, indifference, ridicule, and in certain instances, actual abuse. No one had ever heard of the organization he sought and some were inclined to suspect him of playing a stupid practical joke. He had begun by thinking in high excitement that if only he could find a member of this old cycling clique who was by this time a medical practitioner, his quest was ended. Now he told himself despondently that the whole thing must be a myth, a fantasy created by Burt's disordered and perverted imagination.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, tired and cast down, he had reached the outskirts of Eldon in search of the last address on the list of cycle agencies, which proved to be a small garage bearing the name Jed Stevens. It was little more than a petrol station with two hand pumps, but outside a shed in the yard he perceived a few second-hand bicycles laid out for sale or hire.

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Nothing could have seemed less promising; yet after a'momentary hesitation, almost automatically, he crossed over and approached a man in overalls who was hosing down the concrete pavement.

By this time the form of Paul's inquiry had become blunt, almost peremptory. But as he waited for an answer equally terse he was surprised to discover in the features of the garage proprietor a note of consideration. Without replying immediately he cut off the water at the nozzle, and looked at Paul reflectively.

"The Grasshoppers," he repeated to himself. "Come to think of it, I've heard my father speak of them."

"You have?"

"Yes. In Dad's time this was purely a cycle shop — it's since he died I've added the garage — and I believe he used to do repair jobs for a club of that name. Sturmey-Archer bicycles they used ... all painted green." ' "Then you must know who were the members."

"Not me." The proprietor smiled. "I was just a kid at the time."

"Surely your father kept some record . . . receipted bills . . . an address book . . . something."

"Not him. Cash over the handlebars was always his motto."

"But there must have been a list of members . . . printed minutes . . . reports of meetings. . . ."

"I very much doubt it. According to my impression, it was an informal sort of affair, made up of a group of young fellows more out for a lark than anything else, a bit of a craze you understand, and it didn't last long."

There was a pause. Raised to a peak of excitement only to be dashed down again, Paul fought off an onrush of bitterness and frustration.

"When you have time, I wish you'd look for any papers vour father might have left. And if you find anything at all bearing on the club, please let me know. I'll be most grateful."

In a controlled voice he gave his name and address; then accepting a trade card which the other offered him, with a word of thanks he turned on his heel and set off for the city.

And now, fatigued by useless effort, broken with disappointment, he lost his way, and found himself unexpectedly in Grove

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Quadrant, a residential district given over to stately houses. Vaguely, as he trudged along, he noted the names upon the entrance pillars. The Towers, Wortley Hall, Robin Hood Manor: they all had a grand and opulent sound. Suddenly, above a letter box fixed upon an imposing double gate, his eye was caught by a small brass plate which bore simply the owner's name. It was Sir Matthew Sprott.

Halted, transfixed by that name, Paul stared at the shining plaque, and at the garden, the mansion and fine domain beyond, his cheeks so pale they seemed drained of blood. This was the prosecutor's home — he had come now to identify Sprott in terms of that single word: prosecutor. And in finding himself, without warning, in such close proximity to it there rushed over him, in a flood tide, all that secret sense of accusation which, fostered by Swann, already had gathered and grown within his breast.

Here was a man of paramount intelligence, a legal expert, skilled to the highest degree in the technique of deduction and elucidation. How had it come about that he had ignored evidence of the first importance — the green bicycle, the skin purse, above all, the duration of the murdered woman's pregnancy? Was the omission deliberate? Could such a one wilfully ignore facts favourable to the accused and by concentrating solely upon prejudicial evidence, playing the part of devil's advocate, use all his power and personality to crush a feeble, incompetent opposition and secure a conviction which he knew to be false? Was that the law?

At the mere thought a chaos of emotion, of rage and rancour, rose chokingly in Paul's throat. He trembled to think that, from this very entrance, the prosecutor could suddenly appear, that he might meet him face to face. All at once he wanted to escape, but his limbs were leaden, he could not move and held on to the railings for support. But at last, with a great effort, he dragged himself away, and found refuge in a crowded street at the foot of the hill.

Back in his room he flung his coat on the bed and began, nervously, to pace up and down. At least he had proved that there was vital substance in Burt's story. But his inability to act upon it

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galled him beyond endurance. He wanted action, drastic and immediate. As the minutes passed his restlessness increased. Just as he felt he could endure it no longer, there came a knock upon the door. Hurriedly he threw it open. Lena Andersen stood before him. She wore her loose raincoat and was hatless. The keen night air, or perhaps her rapid passage through the streets, had brushed back her blond hair from her forehead and brought a fine blood into her cheeks. Poised uncertainly upon the threshold, her eyes were wide and startled, her brows marred by a concern she seemed unable to conceal.

"Paul . . . I'm sorry to disturb you ... I had to come. This afternoon at the store . . . someone called to see you."

"Yes?" he questioned, in a strained voice. At the sight of her, so unexpected, his gaze instinctively had brightened. But, immediately, insidious as poison, came the recollection of all that Harris had told him. He could not bear to think of her in this new, discreditable light. He had an unwelcome feeling that in her affected simplicity she had sought to make a dupe of him. Unconsciously, his manner chilled, became harder, as he said: "Will you come in?"

"No. I have to get back at once." She spoke impulsively. "It was so unfair of Mr. Harris this morning."

"I daresay he had his reasons."

She watched him, still agitated. Above the buttoned collar of her raincoat he could see the pulse beating in her white throat.

"Have you found another job?"

"I haven't tried."

"But what will you do?"

Her unguarded anxiety wrung his tortured spirit. But he shrugged.