Fear to Tread (28 page)

It came again.

Mr. Jeffery took out his handkerchief and rubbed his neck. Almost at once the most alarming symptoms developed.

“Just as if it was on fire,” he said afterwards. A burning irritating itching torment. He must have called out, because the next thing was that his wife had struck a match and was examining him anxiously.

“I do believe you’ve got scarlet fever,” she said.

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Jeffery. “I had scarlet fever when I was four. Ouch! Don’t touch it whatever you do.”

“If you’d allow me,” said their neighbour in the queue, a pleasant young man to whom they had already spoken, “I’m a medical student.”

A third spectator produced a torch. The young man took a long look and was about to pronounce the word “urticaria” (which would have been the first, though not the last, incorrect diagnosis of his professional career) when another voice in the crowd said: “Here it comes, whatever it is.”

Sure enough, plainly visible in the light of the torch, its passage marked by the disturbance of the fog vapour, a jet of something was originating from a hole in the brickwork beside them.

The medical student who was holding the torch exclaimed something and pointed to the back of his own wrist.

On it were spots of brown powder.

Handing the torch to Mr. Jeffery he drew a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the powder carefully away. The back of his hand was already beginning to look inflamed.

He turned to Mr. Jeffery with a grin. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “You know what it is? Some joker’s blowing itching powder at us through that hole in the wall.”

“Blowing what?”

“Itching powder. That’s the popular name. It’s quite harmless. It’s a sort of powdered berry.”

“I don’t care what sort of powdered berry it is,” said Mr. Jeffery stiffly, “he’s not going to blow it over me.”

The sentiment of the crowd was with him there. It was felt that the dignity of the Elephants was at stake.

“A bloody poor joke,” said a large man in tweeds, who had been fortifying himself from a hip flask. “I suggest we send a little deputation round to sort the joker out.”

This suggestion found favour too.

“There’s a policeman at the corner,” said the medical student. “He’d better come along as well.”

Accordingly when, in answer to a loud and persistent ringing at his doorbell, Mr. Holloman came to the door he found no fewer than four men on his step, one of them a police constable.

Mr. Jeffery outlined the case for the prosecution.

“Oh dear,” said Mr. Holloman. “Oh dear, yes, I’m afraid that must be my boy Sammy. Such a mischievous child. I’ll certainly see he doesn’t get away with this.”

“Well then, gentlemen,” said the policeman pacifically, “if Mr.—?”

“Holloman, officer.”

“If Mr. Holloman promises to deal with the boy.”

“H’m!” said Mr. Jeffery.

“I don’t believe there is a boy,” said the man in tweeds suddenly. “He’s got a bloody shifty face. He’s lying. He did it himself.”

“Really,” said Mr. Holloman angrily, “I can assure you—”

“Let’s see the boy,” said the man in tweeds, “I’ll believe’m when I see’m.”

“Show the dog the rabbit,” suggested the medical student.

“Really, there’s absolutely no need—” began Mr. Holloman.

“I think, after all, I
should
like to see the boy,” said Mr. Jeffery

“Come now, sir,” said the policeman. “Just produce the boy and the gentlemen will be satisfied.”

“I’ll be satisfied when I’ve seen him given a bloody good walloping,” said the man in tweeds.

After embracing the opposition with a calculating look, Mr. Holloman stalked down the passage, turned the key in the storeroom lock, and jerked the door open. Sammy, who was crouching ready just inside, came with it like a bullet. Mr. Holloman grabbed, and caught a handful of red hair. There was a moment of tension, but the hair was well-rooted. Sammy slid to a halt with a squeak.

Mr. Holloman transferred his grip to the boy’s sleeve, had time to mutter: “Just you remember what I told you,” and then dragged him back towards the front door.

“Well, now, gentlemen,” he said smoothly, “here he is. As a matter of fact I’d locked him in as a punishment for something he did earlier this evening. I never imagined he’d be up to more tricks.”

Everybody now looked at Sammy, who was perfectly silent.

“What have you got to say for yourself,” asked the policeman.

“Speak up, boy,” said Mr. Holloman, “and tell the gentlemen you’re sorry.”

“He’d be a lot sorrier if I had my way,” said the man in tweeds.

Still Sammy said nothing. Nothing that he could say was going to be of any use. His fear had reached a point where Mr. Holloman seemed more than human. In a match of bluff the older man had all the weapons.

With sudden determination he swung out his left foot, and kicked Mr. Holloman as hard as he could on the ankle, Mr. Holloman swore and loosened his grip for a second. Sammy dived between the medical student and Mr. Jeffery, handed off the man in tweeds, wriggled under the policeman’s arm and disappeared down the front path into the fog.

If the gate had been latched he would have been caught, but it opened to his touch.

He scudded off down Strudwick Road with the pursuit hard behind him.

Even as he ran, he realised that his hope of safety lay in avoiding the main road. Among lights and people the shouts of his pursuers would quickly lead to his recapture. The fog both helped and hindered him. He turned right at the bottom of the road, and right again. He could still hear the steps of more than one pursuer. At the end of the road there was a choice of ways and he took the right once more. Quite suddenly he realised that he was in a cul-de-sac.

Ahead of him a brick wall blocked the way.

Without pausing to think, he jumped up on to the nearest garden wall, felt for the top of the high wall, and pulled himself up on to it.

Next moment he was over and hanging by his hands. Then he let go.

It was a good deal further down than it had been up. He hit a steep bank, rolled down it fast, and came to rest on something hard.

As he lay there winded he heard, away to his left in the fog, a sharp crack.

“Shooting,” he said to himself. “That’s the limit. They’ve started shooting now.”

At that moment the ground on which he was lying started to vibrate to a slow rhythm and he felt that he was near a heavy moving body. Then, out of the darkness not three feet away a tall shape passed, ringing and thudding. The red glow of a banked fire. The hiss of escaping steam. The smell of hot oil. Then, further off, the report of a second fog signal and he was alone again in the darkness.

The realisation that he was lying actually on one of the tracks of a main railway line dawned slowly. Then he got to his feet and started shakily across.

It was not until he had gone too far to turn back that the dangers of what he was doing occurred to him.

The width of the track seemed endless. It would be the main north line into London. Was any of it electrified? Sammy thought not, but he slowed down still further, lifting his feet carefully over successive rails. As he crept across great engines seemed to be moving quietly in the fog to destroy him.

He lost count of the rails he had crossed when suddenly there was another wall in front of him. A low one, this time.

He dragged himself over it on to grass; took one step forward, was slipping, and was up to his shoulders in water.

After that railway a canal was nothing. Sammy struck out with the confidence of one who has swum from before he could remember. Then he was climbing out on to cinders. It felt like a towing path.

If he followed it he must come to a gate.

He shook himself and started out. A few minutes later he saw something. First it was a faint lightening of the darkness. Then a glow, as the early-morning sun coming up through mist. Then, still veiled behind the curtain of the mist, a belching of red and orange and flame.

There was a big building on fire, and it was not far ahead of him.

He broke into a trot.

When Mr. Wetherall got home to his flat, he was prepared to bet that he would be worrying about the complicated affairs of the Donovans for the rest of the evening.

As it turned out, he was wrong.

First he placated Alice, whom the fog and his continued absence had combined to upset. Then he settled down to attack a prime chop which had been sitting in the oven for more than an hour and now looked and tasted like pemmican.

It was at that moment that he noticed Mr. Bullfyne’s letter. It was not visibly different from a score of other letters which that energetic gentleman had written to him except that, not being bulky, it could not contain a rejected manuscript. He opened it quite casually.

His shout brought Mrs. Wetherall running.

“Death by Big Ben,”
he gasped.

“What do you mean.”

“I’ve sold it. Bullfyne’s sold it.”

“It’s not true.”

“In black and white,” said Mr. Wetherall. The prime chop grew colder and harder as husband and wife read and re-read Mr. Bullfyne’s letter.

“I am happy to tell you,”
he wrote,
“that Messrs. Hobnell and Block want to make a contract for ‘Death by Big Ben’. I have always had confidence that this novel would find a purchaser (‘Hmph!’ said Mr. Wetherall). Mr. Bertram Block, who is well-known to me, writes, ‘I like ‘Death by Big Ben’ very much. It is an excitable and readable story, and above all, it is a pleasant story. Apart from the word “bloody” on page 156 there is not a word in it which I should hesitate to read to my children. That is my standard of a good detective story.’ He offers an advance of £100 on the signing of the contracts and a royalty . . .”

. . . (here they got lost in a maze of percentages and sliding scales which meant nothing to them at all.)

“Wilfred!”

“We ought to go out and have a drink.”

“A hundred pounds!”

“Perhaps we’d better not go out in this fog. Have we got anything in the house?”

“There’s some cooking sherry in the kitchen.”

“Wheel it in.”

By eleven o’clock they had drunk half a bottle of the cooking sherry and had retired to bed to continue spending the five hundred pounds, which was the least they calculated to be coming to them from the blessed Mr. Hobnell and the benevolent Mr. Block.

At ten minutes past eleven they turned out the light and settled down to sleep.

At twenty past eleven the telephone rang.

“Perhaps it’s an American publisher,” said Mrs. Wetherall, sleepily.

It was Todd.

“Have you seen Sammy?” he said.

Mr. Wetherall came back to the present with an effort.

“No,” he said. “Why?”

Todd told him.

“You mean he’s been missing since six.”

“There’s something very odd going on up at Strudwick Road. I was on my way back there, but I’ve got stuck.”

“You mean the fog?”

“Fog and worse,” said Todd. “I’m in a call-box near King’s Cross. There’s a factory on fire and the engines are blocking both main roads. What with that, and the fog, and the jam they had to start with, I don’t see this being sorted out until morning.”

“Factory,” said Mr. Wetherall sharply. “Do you happen to know what sort?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” said Todd. “Hang on a second. I’ll find one of the local inhabitants.” He came back. “It’s a place called Quigleys. Paint and varnish.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mr. Wetherall, and rang off before Todd could start asking questions. He found his wife behind him. “You get back to bed,” he said. “This may take some time.”

He rang up Scotland Yard, and after some delay, got put through to Hazlerigg, who sounded elaborately unruffled (a very bad sign, as Mr. Wetherall would have realised if he had known him better.)

“That factory at King’s Cross,” he said, without preamble. “Is that the one—?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Hazlerigg.

“What happened?”

“We were sixty seconds too late,” said Hazlerigg. “That’s what happened. One of our cars was actually outside the factory when it went up. From the flash it looked like a Stillson grenade. Prince says Sergeant Donovan simply pulled the pin out, counted two, and dropped it among the five of them.”

“Prince?”

“He was nearest the door. He managed to crawl out. He was pretty well burnt up though. He won’t last till morning.”

“And Sergeant Donovan. Is he—?”

“My goodness!” said Hazlerigg, with a sudden gust of anger. “Have you ever seen varnish burning? If we find a bone button between them it’s all there will be.”

“I see,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I’d better let his mother know.”

“It would be a help if you could do that,” said Hazlerigg. His voice was normal again. “We’ve got our hands pretty full here.”

After he had rung off, it occurred to Mr. Wetherall that he had forgotten Sammy. He hesitated. Hazlerigg had told him that he was busy, but even so it would be easy for him to ring up the local station and send a man round to enquire.

His hand was stretched out for the telephone when his front door bell rang.

He went down the stairs. They had been attic stairs in the original house, and his private front door was at the foot of them. He turned on the light and opened up.

Outside in the passage stood Sammy. It was perhaps lucky that Mr. Ballo’s passage light was dim. It allowed him to take Sammy in by instalments.

It was only when the boy started talking through chattering teeth that he realised that he was wet as well as filthy.

“Come up at once,” he said. “I’ll turn on a bath.”

Half an hour later, Sammy, wearing an old pair of Mr. Wetherall’s cricket trousers and two sweaters, with a dressing-gown over the top, was sitting in front of the fire. He had a long bruise down one side of his face where he had made contact with the railway embankment, but apart from this he looked as good as new.