Beggar’s Choice (30 page)

She was working herself up into one of her rages. When Anna is in a rage, she tells the truth. It's almost the only time she does, so I was listening with a good deal of interest.

“What do you say to that?” she said, and stamped her foot.

He said, in a cold, amused sort of way,

“Well, if you've made a fool of yourself, you've made fools of the police to keep you company.”

“What do you mean?”

He laughed.

“Don't be afraid—I'm going to tell you. It's much too good a joke to keep to myself. Bobby sent you what you asked for, did he?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Neat little packets of white powder—neat little packets of cocaine?”

“Yes,” said Anna defiantly.

“Cocaine—
nix!
” said Arbuthnot Markham. “Common salt, my dear—common or garden salt.”

XXXIX

Anna repeated the word in a perfectly flat tone:

“Salt——” she said. Then quite suddenly her voice broke and choked. I had heard that happen before in one of her rages. She had tried to scream, and not been able to get out more than a ha'porth of sound. It was beastly to listen to, and it meant she was fairly off and would only stop raging when she hadn't the strength to go on.

Arbuthnot took her by the shoulders again and shook her—at least that was what it sounded like. When he stopped, she stood catching her breath and whispering,

“You hurt me! You hurt me!”

“I meant to. I've no time for hysterics. You'd better be getting home if you won't stay here. Pack what you want, and meet me at Croydon Aerodrome at three. We're flying to Paris.”

“You hurt me!” she said, half sobbing.

“No, I didn't. But I will if there's any more nonsense. Don't forget to bring your passport.”

“Has Bobby gone to Paris?” said Anna.

“Never you mind where Bobby's gone. The less you know about it, the better. You've been playing with fire, and it'll do you good to sit still and twiddle your fingers for a bit. If Fosicker's arrested, you may find yourself in a hotter place than you care for.”

I was getting most awfully interested, because I'd had an ideal all along that Fosicker and Arbuthnot were the same person. I was listening as hard as I could, when quite suddenly, just as he said “arrested,” I wanted to sneeze. I pinched the bridge of my nose and did everything else I'd ever heard of, but for about a minute I just hung on the edge of a crash. Then I downed the beast, and began to listen again. You can't listen when you're hanging on to the tail of a sneeze and wondering every moment if the thing isn't going to get loose and do you in.

I heard Anna say in a quite a loud, surprised voice,

“
Fosicker?
But you are Fosicker!'”

I forgot all about the sneeze. For once in a way Anna and I were twin hearts that beat as one, because that was just what I had been thinking.

“What?”
said Arbuthnot Markham in a voice that sounded as if he'd had all the breath knocked out of him.

Anna whispered the name she had just said.

“Fosicker—I've always known—you were—Fosicker.”

“Are you crazy?” he said.

“No, I'm not.”

“You thought I was
Fosicker?
Why?”

“I thought you were. I think—you
are.”

“I'm sorry to disappoint you. Did you really think you'd married a dope king? However, unless you want a husband in jail, I'm the better bargain. If Fosicker didn't manage to get clear to-day, he'll be arrested to-morrow. Personally I hope he got clear, because of Bobby—otherwise I'd be very pleased to see him go down for a five years' stretch. Anyway the game was up—and that, my dear, was why I put a spoke in your wheel. There's going to be a slump in dope.”

“How do you know,” said Anna, “if you're not—Fosicker?” Her voice seemed to fade a bit when she got to the name. I thought she was frightened to say it.

“Drop it!” he said. “Fosicker's bolted. I wasn't in with him, and I don't care a hang what happens to him. Bobby told me all I know, and that's not much. He came to me to get him out of the scrape. And now you'll go home.”

They began to move away. I could hear her saying something, and I could hear him shutting her up. And then I couldn't hear them any more.

I'd have a very interesting time listening, but I was most awfully glad when they were gone. I'd had a bit of cypress tickling my left ear, and I didn't dare scratch it, to say nothing of having been stuck in one position for about ten minutes without being able to move. It felt much longer than ten minutes, but I expect it was about that.

I stretched myself and stamped my feet, and felt my neck to see if there were really spiders or caterpillars crawling on it. There weren't any.

I came out of the bushes and made my way to the gate. I'd got plenty to think about. The thing that stuck out on top was Anna being married to Arbuthnot Markham. I thought that was pretty good news for the family, but a bit rough on him. I didn't like the man, but if I had to choose between five years' penal servitude and being married to Anna, they'd find me beating at the prison gates and begging them to let me in. I'll say this, Arbuthnot seemed to have her pretty well in hand. It was an eye-opener to me the way she knuckled down to him.

I began to sort out what I'd heard. I wondered if Arbuthnot had been telling the truth about the packet I'd come to retrieve. If it contained nothing worse than salt, there didn't seem to be much point in my taking it away with me.

I got it out, opened one of the little packages, picked up a grain or two, and tasted it rather gingerly. Salt it was—decent, honest salt. It came over me how funny it was, and I backed up against the wall and shook with laughter, all by myself in the dark. Anna's great melodramatic revenge and silly-idiot hatred, her lies, her intrigues, and her bogus telegrams, all fizzling out like this!

I took up the nice little harmless dollops of salt, and I as just going to empty them out, when I thought of something better. I put them back in their box, rummaged out a pencil, and wrote as well as I could in the dark, “A. Markham Esq.”; and under that, “A Present for a Good Boy.” I sucked the pencil to make it as black as possible, and hoped the result would be legible.

I'd just got it done, when Anna's car came down the drive. The lights dazzled for a moment, and then were gone. It struck me it was a pity I couldn't get her to give me a lift, when she was going to Linwood and so was I.

I went up the drive. There were no lights showing in the house. I came under the portico, mounted the steps, and pushed Arbuthnot's present into the letterbox. I wondered what he would make of it.

I laughed again, and ran back along the drive to the gate. But when I got there, I stood still, because I hadn't thought what I was going to do next. The laughter went out of me like the air from a pricked balloon. One minute I was as pleased as Punch and full of laughter and the spirit of adventure, and the next I was flat and cold and tired.

And right into the middle of that flat, cold moment there came two things, very suddenly. The first was a torch turned full in my face, with a policeman behind it. And the second was the recollection of the Queen Anne bow.

I had forgotten all about it.

The torch hit my face, and the idea hit my mind, one after the other—right—left—bang! Between them I lost my head. Instead of saying “Good evening, constable,” and behaving as if I'd every right to be there I was, I gave the whole show away by taking to my heels and bolting up Olding Crescent.

I heard the policeman's whistle go behind me, and I thought I'd never heard such a beastly row in my life; it sounded as if it would wake the dead. But it didn't wake those dark houses on the other side. They stayed in their black silence; not a blind moved, not a window opened, not a spark of light showed in the whole grim crescent.

I kept in under the trees. After the first start I took it fairly easy. I used to be able to touch two minutes for the half mile, so I wasn't really worrying about any policeman. I aimed at getting round the corner and cutting up the first side road. The minute I began to run, I felt quite happy and confident again.

It's rather odd how you can think of two things at once. I had my eye on the corner of Churt Row, and my ears cocked for the sound of the bobby behind me; and at the same time I was most awfully taken up with the question of whether Arbuthnot Markham was, or wasn't, Fosicker. I can't think why I should have bothered about it, but I did. All the time that I was running, I was trying to make up my mind.

First of all I thought he was speaking the truth. And then I wondered why he had talked about Fosicker at all, out there in a dark shrubbery with at least the possibility that some one might be near enough to overhear what he was saying. Anna had seen a match struck, and he had come out with a torch to see who was there, and on the top of that he had gone out of his way to talk about not being Fosicker. All at once it came to me that the beam from his torch had struck through a gap in my cypress bush and hit me in the face. It was quite a little gap, and I thought he hadn't seen me; but now I wondered whether he had.

I didn't think all this in words; it just came in my mind, like a picture comes in water. And then something broke the whole thing up, as you break a reflection when you pitch a stone into the middle of it. The policeman behind me blew his whistle again—he was a long way behind—and just round the corner of Churt Row another whistle answered it, and, blip round the corner, there came policeman number two, running for all he was worth.

I stopped bothering about Arbuthnot Markham. The second policeman was only about thirty yards away. I thought about tackling him low; but if he managed to get a grip of me anywhere, the other man would have time to come up. I only had a second to make up my mind. Just ahead the trees hung so low that they would only just clear me. I ran up close to the wall and felt above my head for a sizeable branch. As luck would have it, my hands closed on a limb as thick as my wrist. I pulled on it and brought a larger branch within reach, and, scuffling, scraping and sliding, I went up the wall.

I was nearly up, when I remembered the
chevaux de frise
on the top. It was a perfect beast to negotiate, but the tree stood my friend and saw me through. I got hold of a higher branch, swung myself over, and dropped.

Just as I let go, two torches flashed up their light from below, and two hearty police voices shouted to me to come down out of it. I came down with a thud—but not on their side of the wall.

It was good soft falling—leaf-mold a foot deep—and I was up in a moment. I didn't think they'd try to climb the wall. I shouldn't have liked to take it on myself in a heavy tunic, or in cold blood. They'd have to go back to the gate, and my idea was to cut across the garden, climb the wall anywhere I could, and get away. I didn't know, of course, whether there was a road on the other side of the garden, or the grounds of a house; but it didn't really matter.

I pushed through the shrubbery, got out on to a lawn, and started to run across it. Away from the trees it wasn't so dark. There was no actual light; but the sky wasn't black, and the trees were, so I could get my direction. All at once something was right in front of me. I put out my hands just in time to save myself from running headlong into a holly hedge. As it was, I got scratched.

My luck seemed to have broken down—for I defy any one to climb a holly hedge. I had to decide which way I would go. If I followed the hedge to the left, it might run along between me and the wall as far as the corner of Churt Row or farther, in which case I should be dished. I couldn't risk it. I turned to the right and ran along the hedge in the direction of the house—at least that's the way I figured it out.

I ran for a bit, and then slowed to a walk and listened. I could hear some one tramping about down in the direction of the gate, and I could see an occasional flash from his torch. I thought there was only one man looking for me, which meant that the other was up the Crescent or watching the gate. I was getting my wind back nicely, but I was worried about my clothes. I felt pretty sure I must be horribly begrimed, and I knew I was bleeding from a scratch on the hand, and that my right trouser leg was torn below the knee. I was going to be a fairly conspicuous object whenever I emerged into the light.

The holly hedge ran on to the end of the lawn. My feet left the grass and scrunched on gravel. The hedge went on on my left. It came to a stop about twenty yards farther, at the entrance of a stable yard. There was an open arch, and then I was on cobble-stones old enough to be worn almost smooth. I couldn't see anything in front of me, but there was the feeling of a closed-in space, and a smell of petrol.

I stood still, because something told me to stand still. And then, without any warning, the headlight of a car sent two brilliant shafts across my path.

XL

I stood just where I was. The nearer of the two dazzling lanes of light was about four yards away. I could see shadows round all the cobble-stones on the farther side of the yard; the shadows were as black as spilled ink. I could see the lanes of light, but I couldn't see the car from whose headlights they sprang. I couldn't see it, because the wide, dark screen of the open garage door cut off my view.

As soon as I saw that, I moved as silently as I could, until I was standing right against the open door and behind it. Then I had another look.

I had altered my position for the worse as far as seeing anything was concerned. The door made a right angle with the front of the garage. I stood behind the edge of it, and didn't dare put my head round to see what was on the other side. All I could see was the bright misty dazzle and a lot of cobble-stones, with a dim impression of the wall and the arch through which I had come.