A Gun for Sale (6 page)

‘He used to subscribe heavily to the Anti-Vivisection Society. Mrs Milbanke told me. She showed me one of his cheques with his signature.’

‘He was really humane.’

‘And a
really
great writer.’

A girl and a boy who looked happy applauded the man with the paper flag and he took off his cap and began to come down the queue collecting coppers. A taxi drew up at the end of the street and a man got out. It was Cholmondeley. He went into the bookshop and the girl got up and followed him. Raven counted his money. He had two and sixpence and a hundred and ninety-five pounds in stolen notes he could do nothing with. He sank his face deeper in his handkerchief and got up hurriedly like a man taken ill. The paper-tearer reached him, held out his cap, and Raven saw with envy the odd dozen pennies, a sixpence, a threepenny bit. He would have given a hundred pounds for the contents of that cap. He pushed the man roughly and walked away.

At the other end of the road there was a taxi rank. He stood there bowed against the wall, a sick man, until Cholmondeley came out.

He said, ‘Follow that taxi,’ and sank back with a sense of relief, moving back up Charing Cross Road, Tottenham Court Road, the Euston Road where all the bicycles had been taken in for the night and the second-hand car dealers from that end of Great Portland Street were having a quick one, before they bore their old school ties and their tired tarnished bonhomie back to their lodgings. He wasn’t used to being hunted; this was better: to hunt.

Nor did the meter fail him. He had a shilling to spare when Mr Cholmondeley led the way in by the Euston war memorial to the great smoky entrance and rashly he gave it to the driver: rashly because there was a long wait ahead of him with
nothing
but his hundred and ninety-five pounds to buy a sandwich with. For Mr Cholmondeley led the way with two porters behind him to the left-luggage counter, depositing there three suitcases, a portable typewriter, a bag of golf clubs, a small attaché case and a hat-box. Raven heard him ask from which platform the midnight train went.

Raven sat down in the great hall beside a model of Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’. He had to think. There was only one midnight train. If Cholmondeley was going to report, his employers were somewhere in the smoky industrial north; for there wasn’t a stop before Nottwich. But again he was faced with his wealthy poverty; the numbers of the notes had been circulated everywhere; the booking clerks would almost certainly have them. The trail for a moment seemed to stop at the barrier to Number 3 platform.

But slowly a plan did form in Raven’s mind as he sat under the ‘Rocket’ among the bundles and crumbs of sandwich-eaters. He
had
a chance, for it was possible that the ticket-collectors on the trains had not been given the numbers. It was the kind of loophole the authorities might forget. There remained, of course, this objection: that the note would eventually give away his presence on the north-bound train. He would have to take a ticket to the limit of the journey and it would be easy enough to trace him to the town where he alighted. The hunt would follow him, but there might be a time lag of half a day in which his own hunt could get nearer to
his
prey. Raven could never realize other people; they didn’t seem to him to live in the same way as he lived; and though he bore a grudge against Mr Cholmondeley, hated him enough to kill him, he couldn’t imagine Mr Cholmondeley’s own fears and motives. He was the greyhound and Mr Cholmondeley only the mechanical hare; but in this case the greyhound was chased in its turn by another mechanical hare.

He was hungry, but he couldn’t risk changing a note; he hadn’t even a copper to pass him into the lavatory. After a while he got up and walked the station to keep warm among the frozen smuts, the icy turbulence. At eleven-thirty he saw
from
behind a chocolate machine Mr Cholmondeley fetch his luggage, followed him at a distance until he passed through the barrier and down the length of the lit train. The Christmas crowds had begun; they were different from the ordinary crowd, you had a sense of people going home. Raven stood back in the shadow of an indicator and heard their laughter and calls, saw smiling faces raised under the great lamps; the pillars of the station had been decorated to look like enormous crackers. The suitcases were full of presents, a girl had a sprig of holly in her coat, high up under the roof dangled a bough of mistletoe lit by flood-lamps. When Raven moved he could feel the automatic rubbing beneath his arm.

At two minutes to twelve Raven ran forward, the engine smoke was blowing back along the platform, the doors were slammed. He said to the collector at the barrier: ‘I haven’t time to get a ticket. I’ll pay on the train.’

He tried the first carriages. They were full and locked. A porter shouted to him to go up front, and he ran on. He was only just in time. He couldn’t find a seat, but stood in the corridor with his face pressed against the pane to hide his hare-lip, watching London recede from him: a lit signal box and inside a saucepan of cocoa heating on the stove, a signal going green, a long line of blackened houses standing rigid against the cold-starred sky; watching because there was nothing else to do to keep his lip hidden, but like a man watching something he loves slide back from him out of his reach.

2

Mather walked back up the platform. He was sorry to have missed Anne, but it wasn’t important. He would be seeing her again in a few weeks. It was not that his love was any less than hers but that his mind was more firmly anchored. He was on a job; if he pulled it off, he might be promoted; they could marry. Without any difficulty at all he wiped his mind clear of her.

Saunders was waiting on the other side of the barrier. Mather said, ‘We’ll be off.’

‘Where next?’

‘Charlie’s.’

They sat in the back seat of a car and dived back into the narrow dirty streets behind the station. A prostitute put her tongue out at them. Saunders said, ‘What about J-J-J-Joe’s?’

‘I don’t think so, but we’ll try it.’

The car drew up two doors away from a fried-fish shop. A man sitting beside the driver got down and waited for orders. ‘Round to the back, Frost,’ Mather said. He gave him two minutes and then hammered on the door of the fish shop. A light went on inside and Mather could see through the window the long counter, the stock of old newspapers, the dead grill. The door opened a crack. He put his foot in and pushed it wide. He said, ‘’Evening, Charlie,’ looking round.

‘Mr Mather,’ Charlie said. He was as fat as an eastern eunuch and swayed his great hips coyly when he walked like a street woman.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Mather said.

‘Oh, I’m delighted,’ Charlie said. ‘Step this way, Mr Mather. I was just off to bed.’

‘I bet you were,’ Mather said. ‘Got a full house down there tonight?’

‘Oh, Mr Mather. What a wag you are. Just one or two Oxford boys.’

‘Listen. I’m looking for a fellow with a hare-lip. About twenty-eight years old.’

‘He’s not here.’

‘Dark coat, black hat.’

‘I don’t know him, Mr Mather.’

‘I’d like to take a look over your basement.’

‘Of course, Mr Mather. There are just one or two Oxford boys. Do you mind if I go down first? Just to introduce you, Mr Mather.’ He led the way down the stone stairs. ‘It’s safer.’

‘I can look after myself,’ Mather said. ‘Saunders, stay in the shop.’

Charlie opened a door. ‘Now, boys, don’t be scared. Mr Mather’s a friend of mine.’ They faced him in an ominous line
at
the end of the room, the Oxford boys, with their broken noses and their cauliflower ears, the dregs of pugilism.

‘’Evening,’ Mather said. The tables had been swept clear of drink and cards. He plodded down the last steps into the stone-floored room. Charlie said, ‘Now, boys, you don’t need to get scared.’

‘Why don’t you get a few Cambridge boys into this club?’ Mather said.

‘Oh, what a wag you are, Mr Mather.’

They followed him with their eyes as he crossed the floor; they wouldn’t speak to him; he was the Enemy. They didn’t have to be diplomats like Charlie, they could show their hatred. They watched every move he made. Mather said, ‘What are you keeping in that cupboard?’ Their eyes followed him as he went towards the cupboard door.

Charlie said, ‘Give the boys a chance, Mr Mather. They don’t mean any harm. This is one of the best-run clubs –’ Mather pulled open the door of the cupboard. Four women fell into the room. They were like toys turned from the same mould with their bright brittle hair. Mather laughed. He said, ‘The joke’s on me. That’s a thing I never expected in one of your clubs, Charlie. Good night all.’ The girls got up and dusted themselves. None of the men spoke.

‘Really, Mr Mather,’ Charlie said, blushing all the way upstairs. ‘I do wish this hadn’t happened in my club. I don’t know what you’ll think. But the boys didn’t mean any harm. Only you know how it is. They don’t like to leave their sisters alone.’

‘What’s that?’ Saunders said at the top of the stairs.

‘So I said they could bring their sisters and the dear girls sit around …’

‘What’s that?’ Saunders said. ‘G-g-g-girls?’

‘Don’t forget, Charlie,’ Mather said. ‘Fellow with a hare-lip. You’d better let me know if he turns up here. You don’t want your club closed.’

‘Is there a reward?’

‘There’d be a reward for you all right.’

They got back into the car. ‘Pick up Frost,’ Mather said.
‘Then
Joe’s.’ He took his notebook out and crossed off another name. ‘And after Joe’s six more –’

‘We shan’t be f-f-finished till three,’ Saunders said.

‘Routine. He’s out of town by now. But sooner or later he’ll cash another note.’

‘Finger-prints?’

‘Plenty. There was enough on his soap-dish to stock an album. Must be a clean sort of fellow. Oh, he doesn’t stand a chance. It’s just a question of time.’

The lights of Tottenham Court Road flashed across their faces. The windows of the big shops were still lit up. ‘That’s a nice bedroom suite,’ Mather said.

‘It’s a lot of f-fuss, isn’t it,’ Saunders said. ‘About a few notes, I mean. When there may be a w-w-w-w …’

Mather said, ‘If those fellows over there had our efficiency there mightn’t be a war. We’d have caught the murderer by now. Then all the world could see whether the Serbs … Oh,’ he said softly, as Heal’s went by, a glow of soft colour, a gleam of steel, allowing himself about the furthest limits of his fancy, ‘I’d like to be tackling a job like that. A murderer with all the world watching.’

‘Just a few n-notes,’ Saunders complained.

‘No, you are wrong,’ Mather said, ‘it’s the routine which counts. Five-pound notes today. It may be something better next time. But it’s the routine which matters. That’s how I see it,’ he said, letting his anchored mind stretch the cable as far as it could go as they drove round St Giles’s Circus and on towards Seven Dials, stopping every hole the thief might take one by one. ‘It doesn’t matter to me if there is a war. When it’s over I’ll still want to be going on with this job. It’s the organization I like. I always want to be on the side that organizes. On the other you get your geniuses, of course, but you get all your shabby tricksters, you get all the cruelty and the selfishness and the pride.’

You got it all, except the pride, in Joe’s where they looked up from their bare tables and let him run the place through, the extra aces back in the sleeve, the watered spirit out of sight, facing him each with his individual mark of cruelty and
egotism
. Even pride was perhaps there in a corner, bent over a sheet of paper, playing an endless game of double noughts and crosses against himself because there was no one else in that club he deigned to play with.

Mather again crossed off a name and drove south-west towards Kennington. All over London there were other cars doing the same: he was part of an organization. He did not want to be a leader, he did not even wish to give himself up to some God-sent fanatic of a leader, he liked to feel that he was one of thousands more or less equal working for a concrete end – not equality of opportunity, not government by the people or by the richest or by the best, but simply to do away with crime which meant uncertainty. He liked to be certain, to feel that one day quite inevitably he would marry Anne Crowder.

The loudspeaker in the car said: ‘Police cars proceed back to the King’s Cross area for intensified search. Raven driven to Euston Station about seven p.m. May not have left by train.’ Mather leant across to the driver, ‘Right about and back to Euston.’ They were by Vauxhall. Another police car came past them through the Vauxhall tunnel. Mather raised his hand. They followed it back over the river. The flood-lit clock on the Shell-Mex building showed half-past one. The light was on in the clock tower at Westminster: Parliament was having an all-night sitting as the opposition fought their losing fight against mobilization.

It was six o’clock in the morning when they drove back towards the Embankment. Saunders was asleep. He said, ‘That’s fine.’ He was dreaming that he had no impediment in his speech; he had an independent income; he was drinking champagne with a girl; everything was fine. Mather totted things up on his notebook; he said to Saunders, ‘He got on a train for sure. I’d bet you –’ Then he saw that Saunders was asleep and slipped a rug across his knees and began to consider again. They turned in at the gates of New Scotland Yard.

Mather saw a light in the chief inspector’s room and went up.

‘Anything to report?’ Cusack asked.

‘Nothing. He must have caught a train, sir.’

‘We’ve got a little to go on at this end. Raven followed somebody to Euston. We are trying to find the driver of the first car. And another thing, he went to a doctor called Yogel to try and get his lip altered. Offered some more of those notes. Still handy too with that automatic. We’ve got him taped. As a kid he was sent to an industrial school. He’s been smart enough to keep out of our way since. I can’t think why he’s broken out like this. A smart fellow like that. He’s blazing a trail.’

‘Has he much money besides the notes?’