Beggar’s Choice (20 page)

XXVI

September
24
th
—I was just writing about lunatics, when Mrs. Bell came up with a telegram. She disapproves most frightfully of telegrams.

“I don't know what things is coming to,” she said. “Posts come in regular, and you do know where you are with them, but telegrafts I can't abide nor see any use in, because if it's bad news, you're bound to get it sooner or later, and the later the better.”

“But supposing it's good news?” I said. I wasn't in a hurry, because Z.10's the only person who wires to me now-a-days, and I've got past having heartthrobs over being told to ring him up at some unearthly place, or to be sure to send him back his last envelope, or something of that sort.

Mrs. Bell snorted.

“Nobody worries about sending you a telegraft when it's good news,” she said. “If it's anything that's going to worry a pore soul into her grave, nobody don't grudge a shilling to send the bad news along. But if some one was to leave me a fortune, or something of that sort, it's my opinion the first I'd hear of it 'ud be on a post-card—and they wouldn't hurry themselves too much about that. And did you say there was any answer, sir? And I hope as it isn't bad news for you this time anyhow.”

I said, “No, it wasn't bad news, and there isn't any answer.”

Then she went away.

This is the telegram:

Meet me to-night ten-thirty far end crescent. Z.10.

Well, there it was. The crescent would be Olding Crescent.

Z.10's an odd creature. He has his queer moments of caution, like making me send back envelopes and not putting the name of the place in full—which is one of the things that make me wonder which side of the law he's on. I'm not going to quod for Mr. Z.10 Smith, so if that's his dream, he'd better wake up quick.

The telegram had been sent from the G.P.O., so I didn't get any help out of that. Telegrams aren't very helpful anyhow. A letter does give you something about a man—you can tell whether he got it straight off the bat, or whether he dawdled about, trying to make up his mind what he was going to say; and you can tell whether he was pretty well bucked with life or in rather a Weary-Willie frame of mind—but a wire doesn't give you any help.

I wondered what on earth he wanted, and whether he'd really got a job for me, and what sort of a job it was likely to be, and I wished that ten-thirty wasn't about seven hours away.

It came along at last. I got to the Olding Crescent about ten minutes before the time and walked along to the end of it. By the “far end” I supposed he meant the end that was farthest from Churt Row. I walked in the shadow of the wall where he and I had talked before. It was absolutely pitch-black under the trees. The other side of the road was just visible. There weren't many lamp-posts, only one every two hundred yards or so—a pretty poor allowance for a suburb.

I had the long brick wall of somebody's big garden on my left, and the trees on the other side of it hung over and made dense shadows. I felt my way along the wall. After about three hundred yards I came on a door. It was set flush with the wall, and it was locked. The wall went on and on. It seemed to me that there weren't going to be any houses on this side of the crescent at all. I thought I would cross the road and prospect, so I made for the next lamp-post.

All the lamps were on the other side. I was standing under the lamp looking about me, when a car with a rug over its bonnet went slowly past and came to a stand-still on the wrong side of the road under the trees. As it stopped, the lights went out. I heard the door open, but I didn't hear any one get out.

I stared into the dark, but I couldn't see a thing. Then I heard my name.

“Fairfax—is that you?”

It was Z.10 all right. I knew the sound of him at once. He has one of those dry, breathless and soundless sort of voices. You can do a very good imitation of it if you pitch your voice just above a whisper and see how far you can make it carry without putting any real life into it. It had struck me from the beginning that it wasn't at all a bad way of disguising one's voice. He called again, and I stepped out across the road.

The car was a saloon. I couldn't tell the make. The front door was open, and as soon as I got level with it he spoke again from the driver's seat.

“Get in—I want to talk to you.”

I put one foot on the running-board and kept a hand on the door.

“Are you going out of town?”

He said “Why?” in rather a surprised sort of way.

“Well, last time—” I began. And then I realized I was making a break, because he took me up most uncommonly sharp.

“Last time? What do you mean by ‘last time'?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said—“nothing.”

Really I wasn't sorry I'd made a slip of the tongue. I'd never felt sure how much Z.10 knew. He'd given me an appointment at the corner of Olding Crescent and Churt Row, and he'd written afterwards to say that he'd been prevented from keeping it. And some one else had kept it for him. Anna Lang had kept it. And Anna's account was that she'd overheard a conversation between two men whom she didn't know. One of them said that he had an appointment to meet me at his place—mentioning me by name—and that he wasn't going to keep it because he was putting me through some sort of test.

Speaking broadly, I should expect anything that Anna said to be untrue. She doesn't tell the truth if she can help it—I thinks she finds it dull. But on the other hand, bits of her story do fit in very well. So I couldn't make out whether Z.10 knew that Anna had met me or not, and I thought I should rather like to find out, because if Anna was in with Z.10, I was through.

“I think you must have meant something,” he said, and from the sound of his voice he was leaning towards me.

“Well,” I said, “last time—”

He interrupted me.

“Last time I met you at the corner. We walked up and down beside the wall and settled your salary.”

“I didn't mean that time—I mean the time before.”

“There was no time before.”

“Oh yes, there was. You made an appointment to meet me at the corner at ten o'clock.”

“And I did not come—I was prevented.”

“Somebody came,” I said.

I swear he was taken by surprise. He made some sort of a movement and drew his breath in quickly.

“What do you mean?”

“What I say—somebody met me.”

“Somebody met you here?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I don't know how. I thought perhaps you did.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said,

“Who met you, Mr. Fairfax?”

“A lady,” I said.

“You don't know who she was?”

“Oh yes, I know; but if you don't, I can't very well tell you.”

“A lady? A lady?”

I thought it was a blow to him. Then he seemed to pull himself together.

“What happened?” he said.

“She took me for a drive.”

“She took you for a drive?” There was the extreme of surprise in his voice.

“For a nice country drive,” I said.

“At ten o'clock at night?”

“From ten to eleven,” I replied.

I could hear him beat on the wheel with an exasperated hand.

“Mr. Fairfax, you're not serious!”

“Oh, but I am.”

“On your word of honor?”

“I'll take an affidavit if you like.”

He said, “Well, well——” and made a clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth. Then he asked me point-blank “Who was this woman?”

I didn't say anything.

He hit the wheel again.

“Where did she take you?”

I thought I'd let fly at a venture. If he didn't know anything, I shouldn't be telling him anything; and if he knew already, there wouldn't be anything to tell.

“She took me to Linwood Edge,” I said—and I'd have given a good deal to be able to see his face.

There was a complete and hollow silence. I could hear two branches rubbing against each other somewhere overhead where the trees crossed one another along the wall, and I could hear the sound of traffic on a main road a long way off. It's funny how town things and country things sound alike in the distance. That noise of cars and lorries and trams passing each other on a tarred road had just the sound of waves coming in on a pebble beach after a storm. I thought of that whilst I was waiting for him to speak. I had to wait a long time.

When he did speak, I could tell by his voice that he had turned away from me and was looking into the dark ahead of him. He said,

“Get in, Mr. Fairfax, and sit down. We shan't be driving down to Linwood to-night.”

XXVII

I hesitated for a moment. Then I got in.

There was one curious thing about these talks with Z.10 Smith—I would go to ring him up or to meet him, feeling how damned fishy the whole thing was, but the minute I began to talk to him, the oddest interview seemed to be perfectly ordinary and respectable; before I had been talking to him for half a minute I felt as if I was being interviewed by my bank manager or my solicitor. I suppose it's partly something dry and prosaic about his voice, and partly the little jerky way he has of putting his pince-nez straight—but there it is, and it must be a tremendous asset to him if he's on the cross.

Well, I sat down and waited for him to begin. He'd got his glasses off, and I think he was polishing them—out of sheer habit, I suppose, for the place was nearly as dark as a shut room. I could just see the spokes of the wheel and his hands fidgeting to and fro, and once or twice his pince-nez caught the very little faint light there was. He finished polishing them and put them on. He was sitting well into his own corner facing me.

“So you want to throw up your job, Mr. Fairfax?” he began.

I said, “I can't throw up what I haven't got. If you give me a job, I'll do it; but I can't go on taking money which I'm not doing anything to earn.”

“And yet,” he said, “jobs aren't so easy to get. You've had some experience of that, I think.”

I said, “Yes.” I tried not to sound as depressed as I felt. I'd been too near the gutter to feel cheerful about giving up the best part of a hundred and fifty pounds and the promise of more to come.

“Well, perhaps you'll change your mind,” he said. “We can talk first, and you can make your decision afterwards. Perhaps when you've heard what I've got to say—”

I wanted him to get on and say it, but he'd got his own elderly, fussy way of doing business. It was one of the things that made him seem so respectable. I couldn't help thinking that a sharp crook would have come to the point long ago—but perhaps that's what he wanted me to think. This sort of business makes one most frightfully suspicious. I was determined not to speak first. In the end he said about the last thing in the world that I could have expected:

“I believe you have an uncle, Mr. Fairfax.”

It made me jump, because, naturally, I hadn't been thinking about my uncle. I expect he thought me facetious because I came out with,

“Most people have.”

He clicked with his tongue against his teeth in a reproving sort of way.

“Your uncle is Mr. John Carthew of Linwood?”

I made amends by saying “Yes,” as soberly as I could.

“Now, Mr. Fairfax—why has your uncle not come to your assistance in the straits to which you have from time to time been reduced?”

“That,” I said, “is his affair.”

“Well—it might be said to concern you—yes, it might be said to concern you rather intimately. If Mr. Carthew did not assist you, it was not from lack of means to do so. He is, I believe, a man of large property and ample means.”

“I believe so.”

“What, in fact, would be correctly described as a wealthy man.”

“I suppose so.”

“Mr. Carthew is not married?”

“He is a widower.”

“A childless widower?”

“Yes.”

He moved slightly. I thought he leaned a little forward.

“You were, naturally, brought up to consider yourself his heir?”

I took a moment to think about this. It's very difficult to be sure just what one had thought about a thing like that.

I said, “I don't know—I don't think I thought about it very much—I don't really think that I thought about it at all—not before the smash anyhow.”

“And after the smash?” he said.

“Well, then I knew for a dead cert that I was right off the map.”

“Your uncle gave you to understand that he wouldn't do anything for you?”

I wondered what on earth he was driving at. It seemed to me that we were working round to the Anna Lang business again. I couldn't see what it had got to do with him anyhow.

“My uncle and I had a quarrel,” I said—“and that was the end of any prospects I might have had. I've never seen him nor heard from him since.”

Mr. Smith leaned forward again. I could see his hand move on the wheel.

“Exactly. And you very naturally experienced some resentment?”

I didn't see what it had got to do with him if I had.

“That's my affair,” I said.

“You're very cautious, Mr. Fairfax. But you can speak freely. Any young man of spirit must have felt resentment at being treated in the way that you were treated. I really think”—he leaned back again—“I really think that we may take your indignation and resentment for granted, and that being the case, we may proceed to my next point.”

I nearly said, “Get on, you old stick-in-the-mud!” but his frightfully respectable manner kept me just politely attentive.

“Feelings of anger and resentment,” he went on, “are, of themselves, of no practical use; but if you were accorded an opportunity of translating these very natural feelings into action, what, I wonder, would be your attitude?”