Fear to Tread (25 page)

“Help!” said Sammy.

“Could have been burglars,” said Mrs. Cameroni.

“Let me go,” shouted Sammy. “Leave me alone. Fetch the police.”

“There’s a lot of it goes on. I don’t know that you can blame the police. It’s the films.”

Both of Sammy’s wrists were locked excruciatingly behind his back, and one of his legs was pinned to the desk by Mr. Holloman’s knee. His other leg was free and he stamped on Mr. Holloman’s foot.

Mr. Holloman grinned crookedly and said something between his teeth.

Mrs. Cameroni’s button eyes had been swivelling busily round the room.

“Look at all that money,” she said. “Lying about. It’s a temptation.”

“Help!” roared Sammy. “Help, help, help, help!”

“You ought to keep it in the bank or the post office savings.”

“All right,” said Mr. Holloman. “You can get along now.” He jerked his head towards the door.

“I come back to see if you was short of tea.”

“Fetch the police,” screamed Sammy. He got one arm free for a moment and knocked a desk calendar flying. But Mrs. Cameroni had at last realised that she was not wanted. She was already making for the door. When she got there she paused for a moment, looked back, said something that sounded like “young blood” and went out carefully, shutting the door behind her.

They listened to her steps shuffling off down the passage towards the kitchen quarters, and heard another door shut.

Sammy thought: “She’s still in the house. She hasn’t gone away altogether. She’s still here.” And again: “She’s seen me and Mr. Holloman together. She’s seen I’m alive. He’s not going to be able to do—what he said he was. He’ll have to be more careful now.”

Some such thought seemed to have occurred to Mr. Holloman. He was sitting, holding both of Sammy’s wrists easily now, in one big hand. The boy’s arms were twisted up behind him to such an angle that it seemed improbable that they could go any further without something snapping.

Mr. Holloman used his free hand to restore some order to the desk and his person. He seemed to be thinking.

“You let me go,” said Sammy.

“Keep quiet.”

“Let me go.”

Mr. Holloman exerted a slight upward pressure. The tears stood out in Sammy’s eyes.

“Any more out of you,” said Mr. Holloman, “and I’ll break both your arms, and glad to do it.”

Sammy opened his mouth, then decided to shut it again. It was a good moment for saying nothing. That left the next move to Mr. Holloman.

They could still hear the sounds of Mrs. Cameroni banging round in the kitchen.

At last Mr. Holloman seemed to make up his mind. He moved off towards the door. Sammy moved with him. Any variation in the position of his arms was torture.

They marched along to the end of the passage and Mr. Holloman opened a door.

Sammy knew what it was. He had been in and out of it before. It was the store cupboard where the ingredients for Mr. Holloman’s medicines and ointments were kept. It was a large cupboard, a small room almost, with a great number of shelves up and down either side. It had a stone floor and no window. The door was a thick one. It might almost have been designed as a lock-up.

Mr. Holloman pushed the boy in and then let go of him. Suddenly released he stumbled forward and finished up, half squatting, half kneeling, against the far wall.

Mr. Holloman stood in the doorway and looked down at him thoughtfully.

When he spoke there was a detached coldness in his voice that warned Sammy that he had made up his mind to do something evil.

“If you shout or make any attempt to attract attention, or break out,” he said, “I shall tie you up and gag you. I shall tie your arms and feet together in the middle of your back. It’s a method invented by the Japanese police.”

Sammy said nothing. He was gently flexing his misused arms.

“It won’t be comfortable. In fact, it will be very uncomfortable. There was a man once – I had to leave him tied like that for twelve hours. Do you know what happened? We never got his arms or legs straight again. Think of that. Just twelve hours. He was crippled for life.”

Still Sammy said nothing.

Mr. Holloman went out, slammed the door and turned the key in the lock. His footsteps went softly away down the passage.

Todd felt an immediate twinge of uneasiness when Sammy failed to ring him up by six o’clock that Friday evening. It was the first time he had missed doing so. For Todd had spent some time that afternoon talking to Mr. Wetherall; and although the fact that they were using a public line had dictated a certain discretion, he had picked up enough to realise that, in Mr. Holloman, they might be trying to cast their net over a very dangerous animal.

He gave it fifteen minutes more, than scribbled a message for his second-in-command, seized his hat and coat, and set off up Fetter Lane.

It was an unpleasant evening, raw and airless at the same time, with low cloud overhead and hardly a stirring of wind. It promised a very dark night, with fog as well, perhaps. He boarded a trolley bus at the terminus beside Smithfield Market. The evening rush was over and he was bowled quickly northwards, past the Mount Pleasant sorting office, through the squalid jungle of King’s Cross, along the Caledonian Road past the dark fortress of Pentonville Prison and back again to the lights of the Holloway Road.

Here he got out.

He found Strudwick Road without difficulty and seven o’clock was striking as he stopped outside the gate of No. 5. For the first time since he had started out it occurred to him to wonder just what he was going to be. Schoolmaster, salesman, welfare worker, political canvasser, pools tout. In his shabby raincoat, his indeterminate, friendly face under the ruins of a trilby hat, he might have been almost anything.

His experience as a reporter had taught him that it was generally a waste of time to make up any story in advance. Wait and see who opens the door was the best rule.

He advanced cautiously up the path, between the bushes. There was a light in the hall. It shone dimly out through the stained glass of the door. The front windows on either side of the door were dark. He pressed the bell, then stopped and listened.

There was life somewhere at the back of the house. Someone was moving about. He waited hopefully, but nothing more happened. He put his finger on the bell-push again and kept it there for a full minute.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Cameroni had almost finished what she had come to do. She was packing something into the bottom of an old black bag. When the bell first sounded, she was actually inside the larder and heard nothing. On the second occasion, a faint thrumming did assail her unresponsive eardrums. The sound was familiar and she glanced up irritably at the box of tell-tales above the sink.

Someone at the front door now!

First it was one thing, then another. What an evening. She laid her black bag carefully under the dresser and threw a dishcloth over it. Then she started off down the passage.

From inside the storeroom Sammy heard her coming. He took a deep breath. Ten minutes before he fancied he had heard Mr. Holloman go out. He had been moving very quietly, but the front door had a distinctive squeak and Sammy was pretty certain that he had heard it open and shut. On the other hand, his experiences that evening had already taught him the important truth that because you hear a door open and shut it does not necessarily mean that anyone has gone through it.

He had no desire to be tied up in a Japanese bundle, but this might be the last safe chance that he was going to get of attracting attention.

As against that, even if Mr. Holloman
was
out, the person who had just rung the door bell might easily be a friend of Mr. Holloman, and therefore evilly disposed.

He thought he would compromise.

As Mrs. Cameroni came opposite his door, he put his fingers to his lips and gave one piercing whistle.

Outside in the passage Mrs. Cameroni scarcely slowed down.

She certainly heard something. A faint but distinct tintinnabulation. Since she knew she was alone in the house, the only conclusion she could arrive at was that the impatient person outside the front door had started whistling. Let him whistle. What did he think she was? A canary?

She flounced forward, flung the street door open, and said: “Well?”

“Good evening, madam,” said Todd, raising his hat and switching on the full power of his smile. “I’m so sorry to have bothered you.”

Mrs. Cameroni, of course, did not hear a word, but she was sensibly mollified. She had a weakness for young men who smiled that way.

“It’s no good,” she said, “I can’t do anything for you. Barring me, there’s no one in the house.”

“I was looking for a young friend of mine, Sammy Donovan.”

“He’s gone up to town. Goes every evening about now. He goes up to his club.”

Todd felt baffled.

“Just a boy,” he said. “Red hair.”

“I expect it’s medicine you want,” agreed Mrs. Cameroni. “Urgent, too, I suppose.”

Again Todd’s professional experience came to his rescue. He felt in his pocket, got out an envelope and wrote in block letters:

WHERE IS SAMMY?

Mrs. Cameroni glanced out of the corner of her eye at what was written and said: “I heard you right enough the first time. He’s gone out.”

“Where?” Todd shaped the word very carefully with his lips.

“Not long ago,” said Mrs. Cameroni. “Can’t have been gone long. Quarter of nour I should say. Can’t be more than twenty minutes ago he was in there”—she jerked her head towards the study—”playing with Mr. Holloman.”

“Playing!”

“Romping. He was sitting on Mr. Holloman’s knee.”

“Good gracious.” It didn’t sound sense to Todd. There had been nothing kittenish about the Sammy he remembered.

“You don’t know
where
he went.
Where?”

This was over her head. He took the envelope and wrote it down.

“Nothing to do with me,” said Mrs. Cameroni. “I was in the kitchen. Minding my own business.”

It was clear that the interview was drawing to a close. Todd seized the paper again and wrote: “If you want help, ring me at Central 96999.”

Mrs. Cameroni looked surprised.

“Why should I want help? No one’s doing anything to me.”

“You’re lucky,” said Todd pleasantly. “Really I can’t think why someone hasn’t strangled you a long time ago.”

He waved his hand to her. She stood staring after him. His last message seemed to have upset her.

Todd walked quickly down the road. He made for the call-box which he had noticed at the corner and put a call through to Mr. Wetherall. As he heard the bell continuing to ring he imagined the flat must be empty, but at the last moment the instrument gave a “clunk” and Mrs. Wetherall came on the line. She sounded out of breath.

“I heard the bell as I was coming upstairs,” she said. “Who is it? Oh, it’s you, Alastair. I didn’t recognise your voice.”

“It’s the fog,” said Todd.

“I’m afraid Wilfred isn’t in.” She sounded faintly upset. “He telephoned me about an hour ago from the school. He had to go round to see the Donovans. I thought he’d be back by the time I got home.”

“The Donovans? Did he happen to say why?”

“No. What’s it all about?”

“I wondered if Sammy might have turned up. No one up here seems to know where he is.”

“I don’t think it was anything to do with Sammy. Something about Sergeant Donovan.”

“I’ll ring again in an hour,” said Todd.

The fog had been getting thicker as he was speaking. When he came out of the box he could no longer see across the road.

Back in the kitchen at No. 5 Strudwick Road, Mrs. Cameroni had rescued her black bag from under the dresser. The contents still showed a tendency to clink as she moved, so she took a newspaper, rolled it into a ball, and crammed it down inside. Then she turned out the light and walked to the front door. She sniffed at the fog, which was not yet quite as thick up at that end of the road, and pulled a scarf over her head and ears. Then she went out, banging the door behind her.

She was half-way down the path when she saw the figure coming along the pavement opposite, passing under the lamp. There was nothing wrong with her eyesight.

With remarkable agility she hopped off the front path, into the shrubbery.

The gate slammed and Mr. Holloman stalked up the path, passing within a few feet of where she was standing. He seemed to be in a hurry.

His key clicked in the lock and the door opened and shut again.

Mrs. Cameroni came out of the shrubbery and shuffled away, out of the garden and down the road.

It seemed to her an awful lot of trouble for two tins of bacon.

It was Peggy who conducted Mr. Wetherall to Ratcliff Lane that evening. When it came to squeezing through fences and climbing over walls she seemed even more agile than her brother. Mr. Wetherall did not give his full attention to what he was doing. He was beginning to feel a distaste for what lay ahead.

He recognised the necessity of it, but he could not be happy about what he was letting Sergeant Donovan in for. Three weeks ago, he might not have minded so much. Three weeks ago, he had not been subjected to that particular treatment himself.

“Mind the wire,” said Peggy. “They put it up since you came here last. It’s meant to stop the cats.”

The Donovan kitchen looked somehow warm and homely. Ratcliff Lane was suffering under an electricity failure and Mrs. Donovan had lighted an old, oil-smelling lamp. She had also made some tea, for which Mr. Wetherall was thankful. It was a damp, unpromising night.

Whilst he was drinking it Mrs. Donovan said: “Show Mr. Wetherall that letter you had from Sammy.”

“Seems all right,” said Mr. Wetherall when he had read it.

“He was bound to be a bit homesick to start with. Hullo, wherever did you get that?”

He was staring in astonishment at the strip of photographs that had fallen out of the envelope.

“It was in Sammy’s letter,” said Peggy. “He didn’t say anything about it. He must have put them in after he had written it.”