Bland Beginning (17 page)

“You are overwrought,” said Edward, slightly alarmed, but persistent. “Nevertheless, I shall say what I think it my duty to say, and leave you to reflect upon it. I do
not
think it desirable that there should be any more of this ridiculous detective work which involves such activities as taking my car without so much as a by-your-leave, and rummaging among family papers with a strange young man. The police should be left to deal with a matter which they can perfectly well handle. I must ask your assurance that there shall be no further attempts to anticipate police activities.”

“You must, must you?” said Vicky. She advanced upon Edward threateningly.

He tried to step back, but was prevented from doing so by the fender. He retreated towards the door. “You are overwrought,” he repeated. “Perhaps I should not have spoken just now.” He jumped out of the way just in time to miss the book that she aimed at his head, got out of the door, and closed it after him.

Mrs Rawlings was unperturbed. “Now you’ve lost my place,” she said.

Vicky stood for a moment with her arms swinging loosely. Then she ran out of the room, up the stairs and into her bedroom, where she lay sobbing on the bed.

Anthony got into the Bentley and drove away from the Rawlings’ house with a furious disregard for traffic conventions. He drove towards his own home, but changed his mind as he reached it, and went past the gateway. He needed action of some kind, he decided, but he found himself brooding instead on Vicky’s conduct. Who would have thought that a girl would fly off the handle like that just because a chap wanted to play a bit of cricket? Was he to consider their engagement broken? And did he want it to be broken? Could it be that she was in love with that odious Basingstoke? “Damned unwashed artist,” Anthony muttered, which was rather unfair, for Basingstoke, although he might be shabby, was certainly clean. And why the devil had the fellow ever been there to cause this trouble in the first place? Why couldn’t it have been a straightforward gift from a chap to the girl he was in love with?

By an obscure process, his thoughts moved to Ruth Cleverly.
There
was a girl for you – clever and all that, but still understood that a chap might want to play cricket. Interested in the game herself and knew something about it too. Couldn’t compare with Vicky in looks, of course, but attractive in her own way, and seemed to like him. She’d been jolly sporting when he’d been knocked out – he certainly hadn’t shown up very well over that. If only he had that same chance again – if only that little red-faced man came his way…

Anthony slowed down as he came into London. He still had no idea of what he should do, except that he might telephone Ruth, but driving and brooding had made him thirsty. He stopped outside the “Goat and Compasses” in Whitmore Street, and was just about to enter the saloon bar when he noticed a grey saloon car drawn up a few yards down the street. He blinked and looked again. There could be no doubt about it. It was the car which had been used by the men who had knocked him out, and in the driver’s seat was a figure wearing what looked like a very familiar bowler hat. As he watched, this figure got out of the car and went down a dark alley by the side of the “Goat and Compasses”. Anthony watched him enter a door marked “Gentlemen”, flattened himself against the wall and waited until footsteps tapped again on the cobbles. Then he stepped out. It was the little man of the sale-room and the Barnsfield Road encounter. Anthony gripped him firmly by the collar, and a round red face glared up at him.

“’Ere, ’ere,” said the little man. “Whaddyer think you’re doing? Let me go.”

“Not likely. We’re going to have a little talk.”

“I could ’ave the police on to yer for this. Do you know what this is? It’s assault.”

“Nothing I’d like better,” Anthony said. “Let’s go and see Inspector Wrax now, shall we?”

With a brisk wriggle, the little man freed himself from Anthony’s grip, gave him a well-placed and painful kick on the shin and darted down the alleyway. It would be too great an indignity, Anthony thought desperately, if the man escaped after being literally in his grasp. He made a Rugger tackle and brought the little man down with a crash on the cobbles. When they got up the man’s face was streaming with blood, and Anthony was alarmed until he saw the cause of the trouble. The little man’s nose was bleeding, and a few drops fell on his tight blue suit.

“You shouldn’t ’a done that, mate,” said the little man. “You might ’ave ’urt me bad. I never done you any ’arm.” He noticed the drops of blood on his trousers, and added indignantly, “And look what you done to me suit. And me hat.” He picked up his bowler hat, and dusted it with his sleeve.

Anthony’s look was fierce. “I know you. You were bidding against me at the book-sale, and you were one of the gang of thugs who knocked me out on the Barnsfield road. You can either talk to me or to the police – make up your mind which.”

“Oh, all right,” said the little man sulkily through the rather dirty handkerchief he was holding to his nose. “I knew it was a bleedin’ silly idea to ’ave me in on that party yesterday. Let’s ’ave a drink. And you needn’t try to break my arm. I ain’t going to run away.”

Rather to his bewilderment, Anthony found himself following the little man into the empty public bar of the “Goat and Compasses”. His companion sat down on a wooden bench and put his head back. “’Aven’t got such a thing as a key to put down my back, I suppose? Stops the bleeding. Ask Jimmy be’ind the bar if he’s got one. And I’ll ’ave a large whisky.”

Anthony’s bewilderment increased. The situation seemed to have passed out of his control. The key was obtained and applied externally, the whisky was applied internally, and presently the bleeding stopped. The little man sighed. “I’m out of training, and that’s a fact. Couple o’ years ago you wouldn’t ’a been able to bring me down like that, big though you are. Nice work, though,” he said judicially. “S’pose they teach you that at the old public school playin’ what’d’ye call it – Rugby football. I foller Chelsea myself.”

The conversation seemed to be moving on quite the wrong lines. “Look here,” said Anthony desperately. “What’s your name?”

“Call me Flash,” said the little man easily. “‘Cause me clothes are smart, see.”

“Why did you rob me?”

“Damned if I know, mate. Did we pinch anything? I was only carrying out instructions, like I always do.”

“What do you know about Jebb’s murder?” Anthony said fiercely.

“’Ere. Don’t speak so loud. That’s a nasty word. I never ’ad anything to do with that. Nothing like that for yours truly.”

“Robbery with violence is one thing, I suppose, and murder is another,” said Anthony sarcastically.

“You said it, chum.” The little man straightened his dazzling tie. “What’ll you ’ave? The same again?” He bought two more drinks, and while he was at the bar Anthony collected what seemed to be scattered wits. “Best of ’ealth,” said the little man, raising his glass. He put it down in alarm as Anthony said, “I’m going to call the police.”

“Don’t do that, mate. Don’t do that. Won’t do you any good. I shan’t say a bleedin’ word to ’em. Whaddyer want to know?”

“Why were you bidding at the sale? Why did you rob me? What’s this thing all about?”

The little man’s piggy eyes looked at Anthony speculatively. “If I tell you about it, you won’t call the cops?” Anthony nodded, against his better judgement. “I’ll take the word of a gentleman for it,” said the little man handsomely. He stared thoughtfully at his whisky, and began to talk.

“Well, I’m a member of an organisation, see. What you might call a business concern, same as any other. I ain’t sayin’ what we does or what we don’t do, but we ’andles pretty near anything, see. Some of what we do is legitimate, but sometimes we ’andles the other thing.”

“Who’s the head of this organisation?”

“Ask old Wraxy – ’
e
knows,” said the little man unexpectedly. “Now, one of the jobs we was asked to do was to go to that sale and buy the book you got ’old of. We ’ad a commission like – see – from a client. Nothing wrong with that, is there?” he said rather defiantly.

“Who was the client?”

“I dunno. I ain’t the boss – but I don’t know if the boss knows, either. I think some bloke just gets on the wire and asks ’im to carry out these little jobs. Anyway, I was told to go along to that there book-sale and bid up to a ’undred pounds for that book. Which I did, and, ’avin’ no instructions to go no ’igher, I stopped there. But when I got back there was ’ell to pay when this bloke rang up and talked to the boss.”

“Are you sure it was a man who rang up?”

“I wasn’t on the wire – ’ow should I know?” the little man said tersely. “But the boss creates, and says I ought to ’ave ’ad sense enough to go on bidding. So
then
’e says, ‘’E’s making one more try to get it legit, and if that won’t do we’ll ’ave to try the other way.’ And then the next day the boss says, ‘All right. We’re going to get that book.’ So we did.”

Anthony pondered this story. “And where’s my book now?”

“You can search me. The boss sends ’em on and –” He stopped, took off his bowler hat and wiped his red, ridged forehead with a silk handkerchief. “I don’t know, chum. And I don’t like you tryin’ to mix me up in any murder business, either. I’ve ’ad nothin’ to do with that, so ‘elp me.”

Anthony ruminated again. He felt a great surge of indignation against the people who had stolen his valuable book, and raised a lump on his head. “I want you to take me to your boss,” he said.

The little man looked at him open-mouthed. “You must be off your ’ead. What divvy will you get out o’ that?”

“I want that book back. You people have got to be made to understand that you can’t do things like this in England, and get away with them,” said Anthony firmly.

Amazement, admiration, indignation and perplexity were mixed in the little man’s piggy stare. “All right,” he said. “Come on.” He got up to go out, but swayed, and clutched at Anthony. “Feel a bit faint,” he muttered. Anthony lowered him, not very gently, on to the wooden bench, and he sat for a moment with closed eyes. “It’s loss of blood,” he said. “You wouldn’t think it, but I’m delicate. Anaemic, the doctor says.” He led the way out into the street, but when Anthony moved to get into the Bentley the little man shook his head. “Better park that. I’ll get the bird if I take a posh car like that down where we’re going.” With a mounting sense of adventure, Anthony put the Bentley in a car park, and got into the front seat of the grey saloon. What would Vicky say if she could see him now?

They went through Holborn and down the Commercial Road, into a part of London that Anthony hardly knew, where women looked at them with hostility from the open doors of houses, and children played ball in the gutters. A kind of hush prevailed in these streets, as though an inner, secret life persisted under more obvious activities. Was there something menacing about this hush? Anthony wondered for a moment, and then his spirits moved upward again in the excitement of the chase. “Don’t suppose you come down ’ere much,” said the little man, and when Anthony signified that he did not, added, “You’re wise.”

They turned off the East India Dock Road towards the river, and Anthony lost his sense of direction in the series of twists and turns which the little man executed. They passed through mean street after mean street, each one apparently a duplicate of the last. Finally the grey saloon came to rest in a cul-de-sac which seemed to be composed of deserted warehouses. “Here?” Anthony asked, and felt a twinge of misgiving.

“Rahnd the side,” said the little man. He drove the car into the yard and pointed to some iron steps that ran up the side of the warehouse. They got out of the car. “Come on,” said the little man again. Anthony clutched firmly the pipe in his pocket, which he intended to point as a revolver.

Their feet clattered on the iron steps, a door opened at the top of them and a thick, moronic face peered out. “’Allo, Flash,” said the face. “ ’Oo’s this?”

“Friend,” the little man said briefly. “Where’s the boss?” The door was opened wider, and they stepped inside. They were, Anthony supposed, somewhere above the warehouse. A dank smell was in the air. A naked electric lamp swayed slightly from a cord and revealed dirty and discoloured walls and, above them, a great expanse of darkness. “Half a jiffy,” said the little man, and opened a door in front of them. The moronic figure, who was perhaps six feet six inches in height, looked at Anthony, and Anthony looked back at him.

“Come on in and meet the boss,” said the little man. He held open the door and, with a sense of disappointment, Anthony saw, sitting behind a desk, the youngish man with the thin, dark moustache who had accosted him on the Barnsfield road. The man was smiling. “So you’ve found us out. Sorry for that bit of unpleasantness yesterday.”

“I want my book back,” said Anthony.

“Sorry. I haven’t got it,” said the youngish man. His smile did not change, but his eyes were watchful.

Anthony put his hand in his pocket. The pipe looked quite credibly like a revolver. “Put up your hands,” he said. Neither of them moved. “Put up your hands,” Anthony said again.

Half-pityingly, the little man said, “You ain’t got a gun, chum. I frisked you while we was in the pub.” Anthony had a premonition of danger. He swung round just in time to grapple with the vast, moronic figure who had come in after him. He ducked and heard the swish of air as a ham-like fist swung past, and then he was caught by the moron’s rush. They were on the floor together, and he could smell the moron’s sweet breath. He pushed the great, thick head backwards and away, and then heard a voice say words that seemed to come out of another time, “I’ll take ’im.” Anthony moved up and away, but he was too late. A vivid flash of lightning seemed to split his skull, and then there was blankness.

James Melton Cobb was a man of legend. His exact age, even, was unknown; for although in
Who’s Who
he obligingly gave details of his liking for chess, he remained silent about the year of his birth. His origins were obscure. It was rumoured that his father had been an artisan and that Cobb kept this fact secret because he was ashamed of it. The first thing publicly known of him was that in the eighteen-sixties he had owned a bookshop; and it was assumed that he had ridden to fortune on the crest of the wave of interest in first editions that marked the eighteen-eighties and ’nineties. He had been an inveterate correspondent with the great writers of the time – Swinburne, Tennyson, Stevenson, Browning, Henley, and others – and some of them had roundly denounced as a public nuisance this figure who worried them about publication dates of their first editions, and asked for details of the exact form in which their books had been bound. “This Cobb,” wrote Swinburne to a friend, “is one of those parasites who pester poets in our decadent day. Genius for them shines with the glitter of gold, and they are making a merry monetary meal off an art they cannot appreciate.” But it is rarely that persistence goes unrewarded, and as the artists who despised him died Cobb became recognised as an authority on their works in that mysterious world where the worth of books is estimated less by their contents than by their physical condition, and their date of publication. He made bibliographical discoveries, and published notes about the poets and prose writers whose calligraphic company he had assiduously courted. The impatience and indifference of those who had corresponded with him was forgotten, while the letters in which they had more or less patiently answered his queries remained. He amassed an enormous library of first editions (he ceased to be a bookseller in the eighteen-eighties), built a curious home for himself in Clapham Park to house it, and became more and more a recluse, coming into public life only to snap occasionally in
The Times Literary Supplement
at the incorrect conclusions or assumptions of younger bibliographers, upon whom he bore down with the weight of one who had actually known the writers about whom they were speculating. His irascibility (which was said to be tempered occasionally by a surprising generosity), his dislike of interviewers, and his love of sweetmeats were all well known to Ruth Cleverly and many of her friends.

What would such a man expect a woman reporter from a chess paper to look like? Ruth felt that her appearance should surely be a little dowdy. Rising to what she conceived to be the spirit of the occasion, she put on old flat-heeled shoes and a pair of rimless glasses, fitted with plain glass, which she had worn in a school play, and screwed her hair into a bun. In spite of these precautions, she felt a little uneasy when she moved out of the neat, busy, comfortably suburban atmosphere of Streatham Hill into the wide and empty roads of Clapham Park. Her uneasiness was increased on first sight of the house which Cobb had built for himself and which, in memory of a great scholar of the past, he had called Selden Castle. Ruth had heard something about Selden Castle, but nevertheless was not fully prepared for what she saw.

It was indeed a castle that James Melton Cobb had built for himself in Clapham – but a castle that bore also many features of an ordinary suburban house. A crenellated outer wall had been built, but it was less than five feet high. The drawbridge entrance had been constructed to cross a moat not more than two feet wide. The house itself, built in grey stone, was a medley of gables rising from purposeless battlements on the sloping roof, French windows alternating with diamond panes, and circular towers – one at each side of the house – topped by great figures of lions, gryphons and hippogriffs. Ruth stared at the house over the stone parapet and wondered seriously if Cobb was mad. Then she pulled a bell opposite the drawbridge (next to it, set in the wall, was a slot marked “Letters for Selden Castle”) and heard peals sound within the house. A man in green livery, wearing green hose and a green hat with a feather in it came out of the house. He was a small sandy man, and as he looked at her across the moat through a grille in the drawbridge she repressed an inclination to laugh. It was all Dickensian, she thought, and when he said, “What name?” she was reminded strongly of
Great Expectations.
What would happen, she wondered for a moment, if she extended the fantasy and said, “Pumblechook”? Would Cobb turn out to be Miss Havisham? She pulled herself together and said instead, “Miss Evelyn, from
Chess News and Views
.”

“Quite right,” said the sandy man, following his Dickensian role. With creaking sounds the tiny drawbridge was lowered. Solemnly she stepped across it. “Follow me,” said the sandy man, and she walked six steps over a lawn to the nail-studded front door. He preceded her into a small, windowless room with a stone floor. “I will tell the master that you are here,” he said, and was gone. It was chilly in the little room, and Ruth Cleverly shivered. She walked round the room to look at the pictures that filled the walls, and saw with surprise that they were not pictures, but letters. “Dear Mr Cobb,” she read. “Your detailed inquiries flatter my vanity, but I am sorry that I cannot answer many of the questions you ask about my early books.” She looked at the signature, “Tennyson,” and, fascinated, passed on to the next letter, which was from Robert Browning. The next was from John Ruskin, and the next from Christina Rossetti. What kind of man was it, she wondered, who hung his walls with correspondence?

“Come this way,” said the sandy man in green. She followed him down an uncarpeted stone-floored corridor. They turned a corner, and gargoyles grinned at her from the walls. She had a feeling that there was something wrong about their progress along the corridor. What was it? The man in green stepped a little mincingly two or three yards ahead of her, and Ruth suddenly realised that although two pairs of feet were walking along this stone corridor, only one pair – her own – was making any sound. The explanation was simple; the little man was wearing green rubber-soled plimsolls, as she saw now that she looked down at his feet. They stopped before another nail-studded door, and she saw that a knocker was fixed to it in the shape of a mailed fist. A thin voice said, “Come” when the man in green knocked. “Miss Evelyn, Master,” he said, and closed the door.

Ruth had thought herself beyond astonishment, but still she was surprised by the room into which she now stepped, not because it was in any way remarkable, but because it formed such a strong contrast to the Gothic gloom out of which she had come. She found herself now in a typical Victorian parlour – so typical, indeed, that it might almost have come out of an exhibition. A dark floral paper covered the walls, a large picture of a Victorian family hung over the fireplace, two wing chairs faced a comfortable fire, china knick-knacks and little tables stood about everywhere. Beyond these Victoriana, French windows looked out on to a neat garden, in which a small fountain played. She had an impression for a moment that the room was empty; then a figure popped halfway up like a Jack-in-the-box in one of the wing chairs. At the same time she noted with horror that a board with red and white ivory chessmen was standing on a bamboo table between the chairs. “Come and sit down, my dear Miss Evelyn,” the Jack-in-the-box figure piped reedily. “And forgive me if I come only halfway, as it were, to greet you. Even in this warm weather my rheumatism is so bad that I am unhappy unless I have a fire. I do hope that you will not find it intolerably hot. Permit me to say how pleased – and honoured – I am by your visit.”

Ruth sat in the other wing chair and looked at Mr James Melton Cobb. She saw a wrinkled man with a face like a walnut, wearing a high white collar that was a little too large for him, and an old-fashioned cutaway coat. On yet another table lay a thick malacca cane and a box of candies. The eminent bibliographer was obviously very old – he might have been any age between seventy and a hundred; it was also obvious from his nutcracker smile that he was very pleased to see her. Ruth Cleverly suddenly felt ashamed of herself.

“You will do me the honour of joining me in a glass of wine?” He limped over to a mahogany sideboard with the aid of the malacca cane, and raised a cloth which uncovered a decanter with two glasses and a box of biscuits. “It is not often that I indulge myself with a glass of wine during the morning,” he said chirpily. “But then it is rarely that I have such a charming guest. This is a particular occasion.” The sherry was golden and Ruth, overwhelmed with contrition, drank. Obviously this harmless and physically feeble old Victorian gentleman who was so pleased to see a figure from the outer world had had nothing to do with the death of Arthur Jebb. His physique, for one thing, made it impossible that he could have killed Arthur. What a cruel trick they were playing on him! And then something, some acridity or sharpness in the look that the old gentleman gave her over the sherry glass brought Ruth Cleverly up with a shock. Could it be that he was really an excellent actor? Could it be, even, that he had poisoned this sherry? She put down her glass and said, “It – it’s a very interesting house you have here.”

“Castle,” corrected Mr Cobb with slight emphasis. “I like to think that my home, although simple, is a castle, as should be that of every Englishman. And for
us
, of course, Miss Evelyn, the word has another very real significance, has it not?”

“Of course,” said Ruth. She did not know what he was talking about.

“Or do you prefer the more modern term – rook?” Mr Cobb asked. Again something in his manner struck Ruth as curious, but she had remembered that a rook, or castle, was a chess piece, and she simply nodded, smiled, and took out the notebook she had borrowed from the office in what she hoped was a businesslike way. She peered at her host through the plain glass spectacles. “How long have you lived here, Mr Cobb?”

“Fifteen years,” he said, and she wrote that down. “I built this place as a refuge from the world. I provided it with a shell of romance – something strange and Gothic, almost Byronic in feeling. But inside, in the heart of the place, I made it comfortable. It was my fancy to build a castle of which I could be king – where no pettifogging people I did not want to see should interfere with me. No reporters.” He struck his stick sharply on the ground, and then smiled. “I make an exception in your case.” He took one of the candies from the box by his side, and then as an afterthought offered them to her. She refused.

“I know you haven’t given an interview to a reporter about your literary activities for a long time,” she said. “But you are still carrying them on, aren’t you?” He nodded. “Is there anything special that you are working on now?”

The knotted old hands picked a chocolate, and the nutcracker mouth snapped it. He nodded again. Ruth asked boldly, “Are you working on these literary forgeries that everybody is talking about?”

There was a pause. The old, thin hand detached another chocolate with a faint rustle of paper. The mouth closed on it decisively. “Shall we discuss chess?”

Ruth felt a slight sinking sensation in her stomach. Would it be well to reveal her true identity now? Somehow it did not seem to her that the time was ripe for such a revelation. She heard herself saying something on the lines of what Basingstoke had told her.

“I am flattered, most flattered,” Cobb said in his thin voice. He took a gold half-hunter watch from a waistcoat pocket, snapped it open, looked at it, and returned it to his waistcoat. He drew the bamboo table with the chessmen on it near to him. “Since receiving the telephone call from your editor – it was your editor, was it not?” he asked, looking up at her sharply.

Had Basingstoke called himself the editor? She could not remember. “Yes,” she said.

“Since receiving that telephone call, I have naturally given considerable thought to the matter of bibliophily in relation to chess. There are some peculiarly modern gambits which seem to me to require the same nice exactness of thought, the same following of minor points to their logical conclusion, that is needed by the ideal bibliographer.” His mouth snapped on another chocolate. “Take that very modern gambit, the Allgaier, for instance. You know it, of course?” He did not wait for an answer, but began to move the pieces on the board rapidly. “Pawn to king four,” he said. “Black replies pawn to king four. Pawn to queen four. Does black accept or decline? To the player of the Allgaier that is irrelevant. He advances pawn to king’s knight three to free his bishop. The pattern is built up. Bishop to rook three, advance the knight, queen to king two – every piece must play its part, every contingency must be provided for.” His hands fluttered over the board, moving the chessmen. “A bibliographical training has been invaluable to me in playing such a gambit as the Allgaier. Do I make myself clear, Miss Evelyn?”

Ruth sat as if petrified. “Quite clear.” In the distance, very far away it seemed, a bell sounded. Cobb listened to it with his head slightly raised, like a dog. Another chocolate popped into his mouth.

“I thought so,” said the old man. The expression on his face changed to a cold, hard stare. He levered himself slowly to his feet with the aid of his malacca cane, and then a sudden sweep of the cane sent the chessmen rolling on the ground. “The Allgaier gambit, my dear Miss Evelyn, is not a modern one, and is never used today – a fact which anyone interested in chess would know. Nor does it bear any resemblance to the farrago of nonsensical moves that I was showing you just now.” Ruth sat staring up at him, speechless. “Nor does
Chess News and Views
acknowledge the existence of a Miss Evelyn upon its staff, as I discovered when I telephoned them after I had had the opportunity of reflecting on the curious reason for your interview mentioned by the accomplice who telephoned me. Whatever game the two of you are playing – the man who wrote to me called himself Shelton – it is up.”

Ruth stood up. She talked desperately. “Look, Mr Cobb, we’ve been foolish, I know, but I had to get in to see you about those forgeries. A man’s been killed, Mr Cobb – murdered – and the forgeries have something to do with it.”