The Tiger in the Well (45 page)

Her other arm was already held by the policeman. He said, "Miss Lockhart.?"

They were on the pavement, only six feet from the barrier holding back the crowd. Margaret was reaching out—but they'd stopped, too far to touch.

'Tes.'"' Sally said, shivering, hoarse.

"Miss Lockhart, it's my duty to arrest you on the charge of attempted murder. Anything you say will—"

There was a surge of excitement in the crowd; the three nearest reporters lunged forward at once, clamoring for details; James Wentworth tried to restrain Jim, who seemed to be about to hit the policeman; the secretary stood by, stem, biting his lip; Margaret and Rebecca darted through the barrier to help Sally, who had fallen to the ground.

Except that she hadn't fallen. She pulled free of their hands, impatiently, and sat up to tug down her torn, wet stocking, taking out a folded piece of paper, handing it with shaking fingers to Margaret. "Open it! Unfold it, carefully. ..."

All the urgency of the crowd, the moment, seemed to have swirled in a curious vortex around this still point: a bare patch of wet pavement surrounded by a thousand eyes. Margaret, sensing the importance of the paper, desperate not to tear it, went slowly and methodically along one edge and peeled it open before trying the next. Sally had folded the paper into four. If the ink had run . . .

Margaret carefully separated the two comers and gently peeled it back. Winterhalter was a thorough man: his records

were meant to be permanent. He'd used India ink, and there it still was, that column of payments labeled P for Parrish.

"There!" said Sally, looking up at them all, pale in the triumph no one could understand. "I've done it. Now where's my childr

Rabbits

The one person in the crowd who knew what that paper meant was the secretary; and as he slipf>ed away Jim saw him and shouted, "Hold him!"

Hands reached out to seize him. He struggled, glaring at the sergeant who'd tried to arrest Sally. The policeman looked back, bewildered, and then Mr. Wentworth spoke.

"Sergeant, whatever claim you have on Miss Lockhart, as her lawyer I must insist that she first has medical attention. Once we've heard what she's got to say about this obviously very important paper, you'll be able to decide whether or not to go ahead and arrest her."

The sergeant was confused. There was just too much going on; and he was conscious that he'd overstepped his powers in trying to arrest Sally in any case, since he didn't know for certain who she was, and was only going on the word of the secretary and a vaguely remembered circular about a kidnapping, or something—a child involved—and yet she was asking where the child was, so she couldn't have stolen it. Damn it, he couldn't sort out this confounded betanglement. . . .

"Move along there," he said sternly to no one in particular.

Winterhalter was loudly demanding to be set free, to see his lavi^er, and no one was taking any notice, because Sally had fainted. Jim was holding her, and Mr. Wentworth and Margaret were clearing a path through the crowd.

"Oy," said the sergeant uncertainly. "Constable Willis,

follow the cab. Don't let her out of your sight. And as for the rest of yer: move along! Clear the road! Move along there!"

"Don't lose the paper," Sally said, half-conscious. "Jim, is that really you.'' Jim, you know who that was.^ The man in there.?"

"The Tzaddik," said Jim. "That's what I heard."

"He was Ah Ling! He was Hendrik Van Eeden! You remember—back at the beginning—he killed my father— opium—"

Jim nearly dropped her.

"But—but you shot him!"

"And paralyzed him. Didn't kill him. Someone got him away that night. And ever since then—"

She had to stop then, as they helped her into a cab.

"Ever since then," she whispered, "he's been dying for revenge. Dying. He's dead now. Dead of revenge. But in the cellar, Jim, I tried to save him. I did. I pulled him out of the water, I kept him alive. ..."

She fainted again. Jim looked at the others; he was dumbfounded.

"Did you hear what she said.? The bloke at the back of this was ... So thafs what it was all about!"

"As I understand it," said Mr. Wentworth, "Miss Lockhart could defend herself against the charge of attempting to murder that man yesterday by claiming that in fact she tried to murder him eight years ago. Or have I got it wrong.?"

Jim, holding Sally in his arms, looked at the lawyer sharply to see if he was being ironical, and decided he wasn't.

"That's about it," he said.

Margaret was still holding the paper. She looked at it, trying to make sense of the columns of figures.

"This is a record of payments—of money received," she said. "But which column is the important one, or whether they all are, I couldn't say."

"Better let me dry it out," said the lawyer, opening his shabby Gladstone bag and taking out a folded sheet of blotting paper. He put the paper inside it.

"Goldberg," said Sally, waking dimly again. "He's got a pocket book . . . belonged to Parrish ..."

"Ah!" said Mr. Wentworth. "I begin to see."

His ugly face was brimming with a kind of wicked delight. Jim couldn't help smiling in response. Then he said, "I'll have to get back to Twickenham smartish. Sarah-Jane Russell's coping with Parrish and a policeman, and what with one thing and another, she's feeling a bit shaken."

He told them what had happened at the house, dwelling with pleasure on the crash the chamber pot had made.

"She thought she'd killed him," he said. "She thought she was going to be taken away and hanged; you could see it in her face. ..."

"I expect she was alarmed by the shot and dropped it accidentally," said Mr. Wentworth. "I daresay you'll be able to remind her of that. But it doesn't sound as though he's been harmed by it."

He looked out the window and banged on the cab roof.

"Cabbie!" he called. "Turn up here, if you will. I'll walk up to Clerkenwell—it's only a step from here to the tench."

"The tench.^" said Margaret, as the birdlike little man got up.

"Clerkenwell Detention Center," said Jim. "Goldberg.?"

The lawyer nodded. "Take them on to the hospital," he said to the driver as he got out, and then to the others, "I'll join you there as soon as I can."

And he was off. Jim watched him limping briskly up the road and turned to Margaret.

"He's a decent feller," he said. "Where'd you find him.'"'

"Around the comer from the office," she said. "He was there all the time, while that other helpless, cringing weakling of a solicitor allowed them to take everything away from her. ... If only she'd had Mr. Wentworth from the beginning!"

"What a hell of a mess," said Jim. "I feel I ought to be in six different places doing things. There's this crazy charge hanging over Sal, there's Harriet still missing. ..."

"There's the firm nearly bankrupt," said Margaret bleakly. "Parrish has taken out as much as he could grab, and it was all perfectly legal."

Jim looked out the window. The cab was tuming in through the gateway of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in Smithfield.

"Here we are," he said, and looked at his watch. "Can you stay with her.?"

"Of course. There's nothing to do at the office; there's nothing much left in it."

"Fm going to find a telephone. There's a number where there might be some news."

He looked at Sally for a moment, stroked her short hair with a rough tenderness, and swung himself out and away.

A LITTLE EARLIER, in a police station in Lambeth, Con and Tony had been arguing with the sergeant. They'd been dragged there by the constable who'd found them in the stables, and both of them were pouring scorn on his reason for pulling them in.

"Babies.^*" spat Con. "Is he touched in his head, that copper.?"

"I'll touch you in yours—" began the policeman, but Con ducked out of the way.

"Here, look," said the sergeant. "Constable, what's the complaint.?"

"His complaint is he's blind," said Tony. "Blind or touched."

"Quiet!" roared the sergeant,

'*They was seen," said the constable with dignity, "in the charge of a baby or young child, what the landlord or proprietor of the stables, Mr. Hackett, thought was likely to be stolen—"

Jeers from Con and Tony. Bang of the sergeant's fist on the desk.

"—so I apprehended 'em," finished the constable lamely.

"And Where's the baby.?"

"Ah. Well, that was with the other lot."

"What other lot?"

"The first lot, what he kicked out."

"He what? He sees one lot with a kid, kicks 'em out, and you go and pinch another lot to make up for it?"

"Well ..."

"Constable, I congratulate you. You've invented a whole new theory of policing. We don't look for the ones as did the crime; we pick up the next lot that comes along. What a saving in boot leather! What an astounding advance in criminal jurisprudence! What a—"

"Can we go, then?" said Tony.

"No!" shouted both sergeant and constable together.

"But, Sergeant—" said Con, and Tony said, "Oh, go on, we ain't done nothing," and Con said, "We'll be a nuisance, man! Ye'11 have to charge us with something!" and the sergeant said, "I'll charge you with a bloody regiment of cavalry—" and Tony said, "I'll send for me lawyer," and the constable said, "I'd like to see you try," and Con said, "Where's this baby, then?" and Tony said, "Ye can turn me pockets out and hang me upside down, but ye won't find no baby on me," and the sergeant said, "That's enough of that," and Con said, "Who wants a baby anyway?" and the constable said, "They did, Sarge—he swears it—" and Tony said, "He doesn't know what he's talking about," and Con said, "I know the law! Habeas corpulus! You got to produce the corpse! So where is it, eh?" and Tony said, "Begob! Where's the body?" and the sergeant said, ''Get outV

Five seconds later they were out of the building and around the corner. Con shook his head with pity and contempt.

"Can you believe the helplessness of them?" he said. "Now let's find the others. I bet Ravelli's."

"I bet the Dog and Duck."

Ravelli's was their shorthand for The South London Imported Italian Goods Warehouse, Antonio Ravelli e Figli, Props. Italian goods were pasta, dried fruits, olive oil, and the like, and Antonio Ravelli and the Figli stored them in an

unsupervised shed behind an engineering works off Duke Street. The gang had found a way in a month before and discovered a sheltered little yard behind the main building; they had loosened a plank in the fence to make an easy exit. Con and Tony went there first and struck lucky.

They were lucky enough, in fact, to find Bill and Liam having a fight in the yard, with most of the gang enthusiastically watching and placing bets.

"What's got into them.'"' said Con to the nearest spectator, as he eased himself through the hole in the fence.

"Bridie," said the boy. "They's each of 'em jealous of the other."

"Oh," said Tony, disappointed. If they had nothing better than a girl to fight about, they must be getting soft, he thought. The scrap was furious, though: fists and feet and heads and knees and elbows were all fair weapons between rivals, though belts and knives and knuckle-dusters were barred.

"Is the kid here.'*" said Con, but the fight was getting exciting, and no one answered. He looked in through the window and saw Bridie and the child both sitting on a heap of straw with a bag of macaroni between them. Bridie was showing the little creature how to blow a feather in the air through a tube of macaroni.

"Well, that's all right," said Con. "D'ye think they've got a telephone in the warehouse.'"'

Tony looked at the roof, nodded absently, and turned back to the fight. Sighing responsibly. Con began to pick the lock.

So IT WAS that when Jim asked the operator to connect him with number 4214 and spoke to the man in Soho, he was told to go to Duke Street, Lambeth, and there he'd find the child.

"Let me come," said Sally five minutes later, trying to sit up. "I must—"

"Stay there!" said Jim sharply. "You're not moving till you've had all those cuts and grazes cleaned and stitched and stuck together. Gawd knows what horrible diseases you picked up paddling around in that sewer. Isn't that right. Doctor.?"

The doctor nodded. "I haven't finished examining you, Miss Lockhart. I can't take any responsibility if you leave."

"Sit on her, Margaret," said Jim.

"But what happened? V^h^iQ is she.?"

"Apparently your man Goldberg managed to get her out of Parrish's place in Clapham. She's with some friends of his now, down in Lambeth. If you let me have my hand back, I'll nip across the river and fetch her."

Sally released his hand. "Goldberg.?" she said, and then the tension and the relief were too much for her, and she began to cry helplessly. Jim left.

A crawling cab ride over Blackfriars Bridge, a furious exchange with a dirty and suspicious Irish boy through a broken fence, a muddy scramble through a gap, and he was in the yard of the Italian goods warehouse. A gang of—^what were they.? Leprechauns.? Street goblins.?—were squatting in the open, pitching coins, and the boy who'd let him in pointed to the door.

"He's reading to her," he said proudly. "From a book."

The fight was over. Bill and Liam had decided that any girl tame enough to let herself be fought over wasn't worth the bother, though it had been a good scrap, and they were lolling at their ease on the straw while Bill read his book aloud to Harriet.

"See the rabbits.?" he said. "Listen to this, now. This is good. 'How very pretty the young ones look by the side of j their mother; they all seem so happy.' "

"Bloody miserable-looking bunch," said Liam. "I wouldn't, give ye three ha'pence for 'em."

"Bloody misable," agreed Harriet.

"No, listen, listen. 'AH brothers and sisters should lovcj

one another, and then they would be happy too. We should never let the dumb animals ex—ex—excel us in affection.' "

"Is that the best yeVe got.'*" said Liam, but Harriet was pointing at the door, and the boys looked up, and there was Jim.

They sat up slowly, and each of them moved in closer to Harriet. Their expressions had changed in a moment: they were tense and dangerous, ready to fight. Jim was impressed.