Run! (9 page)

“I shouldn't do anything in a hurry,” said James.

He had always found this a very safe thing to say. It had checked his cousin Kitty on the brink of an elopement with a Levantine dancing partner, it had prevented Hester from embarking upon marriage with a completely penniless commission agent, and it had gone down well on many other occasions. It was, in fact, an old and trusted friend. It went down well now. Miss Callender dried her eyes.

“I know what you mean, and I won't. I mean it's thinking you've got to make up your mind right away and decide things that are going to tie you up for the rest of your life that gets on your nerves and makes you read the European Travel advertisements and wish you were going on the whole lot of them. When I think about sitting down with Lenny and his mother in that back parlour of theirs, and never being able to get away any more, and Mrs. Rowbotham's curtains that she bought before the war hanging in the windows—olive-green plush, Mr. Elliot—and photographic enlargements of her and Mr. Rowbotham on one side of the room, and Lenny's grandfather and grandmother on the other side, her in a widow's cap like Queen Victoria and him in side whiskers—well, I really don't feel I can do it, and that's the truth, Mr. Elliot.”

“I should think it over,” said James. “You're quite sure it was the Rolls I took out for Colonel Pomeroy that Mr. Hazeby was asking about?”

“Well, he said so.”

“He used Colonel Pomeroy's name?”

“No, of course he didn't. But he said it was a Rolls—and that foggy day—the day before yesterday it was when he telephoned, which would make it the fourteenth—and he said Sussex, so I suppose I've got enough sense to add that up, and if it doesn't come out to the Rolls you took out for Colonel Pomeroy—”

“You're quite sure he said those things, Daisy—the fog, and Sussex, and the fourteenth?”

“Yes, I'm sure,” said Miss Callender crisply. “But I'm not going to say so to anyone but you, so don't you think I am, Mr. Elliot. And if you want your lunch, you'd better be going out for it, because that Mr. Hartley's coming in just after two, and I suppose he'll want to try half a dozen cars and go away and think about them like he did last time.”

James went out to lunch. He had a plate of cold beef and a cup of coffee, and he did a lot of thinking. Daisy Callender kept adding bits on to the telephone conversation she said she had overheard, but he didn't think she was inventing them. Girls were like that, you never got the whole story at once. They kept thinking of new bits and tacking them on, like trimming a dress, but it didn't necessarily mean that they were making them up. It was just the way their minds worked.

He thought Daisy Callender was speaking the truth. She had rather an open nature, and she had got into the way of telling him things. No, she wasn't making it up. She had been genuinely indignant with Jackson for representing himself as the driver of the Rolls.

And this was where James had to make himself face what he had been avoiding ever since Daisy Callender had told him that the police had found Jackson dead. He had to face the suspicion that Jackson was dead because he had claimed to have driven the Rolls into Sussex under a trade number on the foggy afternoon of the fourteenth. But it wasn't Jackson who had driven the Rolls, it was James Elliot. If the suspicion was true, it amounted to this, that Jackson had died instead of James Elliot. If it had been James who had taken the call, well, then it might very easily have been James who was picked up dead.

James reacted violently. Well then, it mightn't, because he wasn't such a mug as to go meeting strange girls and then go blinding off with them into the blue.

The most frightful thought went through his mind like forked lightning—“You mightn't have thought it was going to be a strange girl. You might have thought it was going to be Sally, and you'd have gone with Sally.”

For a moment after this everything crashed in confusion. Then his thoughts cleared again. That was nonsense, because when the telephone call came through he had already seen Sally. He wouldn't have needed any buttonhole to recognize her by. No, steady on—that was wrong. The call had come through just after he left work on the day before yesterday, and that was the night he had gone to Daphne's and met Sally. But if he had taken that call, would he have gone to Daphne's and met Sally there?

He thought this out. If Mr. Hazeby of Hazeby, Meredith & Hazeby—or purporting to be of Hazeby, Meredith & Hazeby—had got him on the telephone and asked him (a) had he driven a new Rolls under a trade number-plate into Sussex on the afternoon of the fourteenth, and (b) would he meet the girl he had there encountered, would he or would he not have said yes in both cases? The chances were that he would. He would probably have gone as far as the steps of the B.B.C. at any rate. It seemed a long way from there to the lane where Jackson had been found. Whether he himself would have taken that way or not he had no means of knowing. He wasn't as conceited as Jackson, and conceit always makes you gullible, but there was no knowing. You don't go about thinking that someone is trying to do you in.

He had another sharp reaction. The thing was absurd. Jackson had met with a perfectly ordinary accident. He heard Sally say, “It might be safer—for you,” and “They mightn't know—how much—you had seen.”

He sat quite still for ten minutes frowning at his empty plate. Then he drank his coffee, which had got cold, and went to the nearest call-box, where he looked up the number of a very well known firm of solicitors. When he got through he asked if Mr. John Poltney was in.

“No, not Sir John. I don't want Sir John. I want Mr. John Poltney. Is he in?… Hullo—hullo!… Hullo, is that you Jumbo? James speaking. I want some free information.”

“You would!” said Mr. John Poltney alias Jumbo.

“Well, I do. I want to know about a firm called Hazeby, Meredith & Hazeby.”

“What do you want to know about them?”

“I want to know if they're respectable.”

Mr. John Poltney was heard to choke at the other end of the line.

“Oh gosh! I wish old Hazeby could hear you! No, I don't, for he'd certainly have a stroke, and he's not a bad old buffer.”

“You know him?”

“Intimate friend of the guvnor's.”

“Then he is respectable?”

“As the Bank of England. Firm's been going about a hundred years.”

“They wouldn't handle anything shady?”

“Good lord, no! Steady, old-fashioned, highly lucrative connection. They don't touch criminal stuff.”

“Thanks,” said James.

“Is that all?”

James did not speak for a moment. Then he said,

“If I wanted to see Mr. Hazeby, could you arrange it?”

“How do you mean arrange it?”

“I might want to ask him something. If I did, I'd like him to know something about me first.”

“All right—can do.”

“Thanks,” said James, and hung up.

XII

Hazeby, Meredith & Hazeby certainly did not sound the sort of firm who would ring up a young man in the motor trade and tell him to put a flower in his buttonhole and step along lively to meet a young lady friend of theirs who wanted to make his acquaintance. James put it with this vulgar baldness, but even wrapped up in the most beautiful high-toned phrases Hazeby, Meredith & Hazeby as described by Jumbo Poltney was hardly the kind of firm which would be found dealing with that kind of business. The Bank of England (Jumbo's comparison) does not unbend to arrange assignations.

He had been prepared from the first to find that Hazeby, Meredith & Hazeby were entirely bogus and nonexistent, because from the first he had been sure that the appointment made for Jackson was a bogus one. Now that he had discovered that the firm was not only real but ultra-respectable, it was clear that somebody had been taking its name in vain. He would make sure of this, but he was already convinced.

The appointment was most certainly bogus. Sally was already meeting him at Daphne's. Daphne had insisted on his coming when he hadn't wanted to come, and when she introduced him to Sally she prefaced the introduction by saying “Here he is.” Sally therefore knew that she was going to meet him—had probably asked Daphne to get him there in order that she might meet him.
And Sally knew his name.
Knew his name—knew that Jocko had been his fag—knew that Daphne Strickland was his cousin—had known all these things from the moment—in the hay-loft—when he told her he had been at Wellington. He was quite sure of this. Sally, therefore, apart from other intrinsic improbabilities, had no need to hire a firm of solicitors to find out who it was that she had been talking to in the fog.

But the person who had fired at them in the empty house—he or his associates—might have had pressing reasons for wanting to discover the driver of the car which had been parked on the grass verge. Sally herself had suggested a reason. “They mayn't be sure—how much—you had seen.” He thought that they had wanted to be sure, and they had made a cast and caught Jackson. And Jackson was dead.

For the second time that day a nasty jag of forked lightning stabbed among his thoughts. Jab—stab—crash—and James left dizzy with the realization that Sally was in the most frightful danger. Was, must be, couldn't help being, because if they had found the car and taken the trouble to track it down and get hold of the driver, they would certainly have followed up Sally's bicycle too. They might have missed the car in the fog, because it was well off the drive and on the grass, but he didn't see how they could possibly have missed the bicycle. He hadn't missed it himself, he had as nearly as possible taken a header over it.

He tried to remember exactly how he had left the thing. He had picked it up. Yes, he had certainly picked it up, because that was when he had discovered that it was a woman's bicycle. And he had leaned it up against the step again. No, not against the step. There was a sort of balustrade thing, and he had leaned it up against the pillar of the balustrade. If it had been well away to one side, it was just possible that the First Murderer might have missed it. On the other hand, Sally obviously hadn't, because that was how she had cut her foot. She was running in her stocking feet and she had cut herself as she ran, probably on the pedal. He had tripped over it himself.

He frowned heavily and wondered what had happened to the bicycle. She might have sent it flying. He didn't remember a crash, but then he hadn't been bothering about crashes. There had been another shot just then. The bicycle might have fallen, and he might not have heard it. And it might have fallen in such a way as to pass unnoticed when the First Murderer came bounding down the steps. He wouldn't have been expecting a bicycle. It was just possible that he hadn't seen it, and if so, Sally was safe, but if he had seen it, she must be in the same danger as he himself was. Bicycles are not so easy to trace as cars, but the F.M. might have put some sort of mark on it. James thought of several ways in which you could mark a bicycle for identification.

By this time his lunch hour was up and he had to go back and dance attendance on that notorious time-waster, Mr. Hartley.

The afternoon seemed interminable, because what he wanted to do was to get on to Daphne and wring Sally's address out of her, and then get on to Sally and tell her he must see her at once, and he couldn't do either of these things in business hours.

Mr. Hartley was a car-taster. He didn't like buying cars, he liked trying them. When he had worn out the patience of one firm he passed easily to another, all the time interlarding his conversation with such remarks as, “The Daimler I tried yesterday—” or, “I had one of the new Rollses out, and they're a pretty good proposition.” By the time James got away he was feeling quite murderous. Mr. Hartley knew a great deal more about cars than anyone in the trade. Mr. Hartley was prepared to give driving hints to any expert alive. James reflected gloomily that Mr. Hartley was the sort that wanted his face pushed in.

All through the afternoon his mind was most dreadfully weighed down by the thought that something might be happening to Sally—now, at this very minute, whilst he was talking to that ass Hartley about automatic chassis lubrication, pre-selector gears, and down-draught carburettors. Of course he had no personal interest in the matter, but in common humanity you had to be horrified at the idea of a girl, any girl, being put out of the way. And if anyone had seen that bicycle, he thought Sally stood the same chance of being put out of the way as Jackson did when he claimed to have driven the Rolls on that foggy afternoon.

James's mental horizon brightened suddenly. The fog—he had been forgetting about the fog. The F.M. couldn't possibly have seen the bicycle, and it was most improbable that he had noticed it unless he had trodden on it or fallen over it. He'd have been in a hurry too, because he wouldn't have been sure whether the people he had fired at would go for the police. He would have been all set to get away as quickly as possible. And right there James began to wonder how he had got away—and how he had come. He probably had a car, rather craftily parked. Well, if he hadn't seen the bicycle or fallen over the bicycle, Sally was all right. But if he had … That was what it all came back to—suppose he had.

James's humanitarian feelings kept on getting stronger and stronger. He dashed back to the Mews as soon as he could get away and rang up his cousin Daphne. That is to say, he rang up his cousin Daphne's house. Daphne, he discovered, was at a cocktail party. Beyond the fact that she was dining but, and so, presumably, would return home to change, no one could give him any idea of what time he would be able to catch her. He rang again at a quarter to seven, at seven o'clock, and at a quarter past. He was still talking to a footman who sounded inexpressibly bored, when he heard Daphne say “Who is it?” The footman's cautious “Mr. Elliot” brought her on to the line.