The Tiger In the Smoke (27 page)

‘I missed him. The albino meant me to. I wonder why.' Campion moved down the line of beds, stripping any suspicious-looking humps among the blankets. He worked with the peculiar thoroughness of one who is afraid of what he may find, but in spite of his care he might have missed the couch in the far corner. The ‘conference table' and its nest of crates pale in the shadows had been left in a disorder which hid the bundle swaddled in its dark blanket, and one box had been thrown on top of it by the resourceful Roly.

Having glanced into the alcove and peered into the recess under the stairs, Campion lifted his head.

‘Geoff!' he called aloud on impulse. ‘Geoff, where are you?'

His voice, characteristic as his horn-rims and pale face, echoed round the vast dim room still warm with the breath of the company which had fled from it.

The two stood listening and, from the open doorway above, the clatter of the traffic and the patter of feet on the pavement came floating down to them profitlessly. Then they heard it. It was not very loud, a stifled snort from the corner. And then, slowly, as the man on the bed heaved himself with an effort which tore his cramped muscles, the box on top of him tipped up, wobbled, and toppled on to the bricks.

—

WHEN MR CAMPION
telephoned Meg from the Crumb Street police station where Geoffrey had been taken to make his statement, she went down there at once. And just before four, on an afternoon of midnight gloom when rain had begun to drizzle through the fog and even Londoners were beginning to wonder why their ancestors had built a city in a marsh, she rang the rectory back and Sam Drummock took the call.

By that time the old journalist had got things organized. With the slightly theatrical efficiency of his great profession, he had rearranged his living-room, disconnected all the other telephones in the house, and set up with his own instrument as a news-room, general information bureau, and hub of family affairs.

He was also writing his piece, an article for a sporting weekly for which the copy had become mysteriously overdue, and his portable typewriter, which had historic associations and had been to the Peace Conference at Versailles, shared pride of place with the phone and his tankard on the kitchen table which Mrs Sam had loaned him so reluctantly. He was working like a slave, handling police, press, and anxious acquaintances, each with the same terse politeness, forgetting nothing, revealing nothing, and enjoying himself as much as ever in his life.

Emily Talisman was his runner, potboy, and audience. Without her the performance might have possessed an element of sadness, but so long as she sat there, silent on a piano stool, her long hair scraped back under a snood and her bare legs wound round the nobbly column of her pedestal, and watched him with the absorbed attention of worship, the exasperating task never lost its glamour.

Meg was talking for a long time. Emily could hear her voice, squeaky and artificial, the sort of voice a toy might talk in, from where she sat on the other side of the room, but she could not hear the words. She did not mind. She was watching Sam. He said very little. Magnificently collarless, his powerful forearms exposed, and the light glistening on his bald head, he sprawled across the table, note-book at his side. Emily knew it was exciting news because one of his small fat feet waggled in its soft red slipper, but outwardly he was superbly calm and laconic.

‘Aye,' he said at intervals, scribbling busily with a pencil as thick as a thumb, ‘aye, I've got that. Get away! You don't mean it? I see, go on.'

It was tantalizing but the child did not stir, indeed she hardly breathed. Her wide-eyed stare never left his face.

‘Right,' he said at last. ‘Leave it to uz. Steady, my old Queen, steady. Don't you worry. It's as good as done. I'll tell 'em. Leave it to Sam. The lad's all right though, is he? That's all that matters. Thank God for that. Right. In half an hour. Good-bye, love.'

He hung up and, wriggling back on to his chair, pushed his glasses up on to his forehead and looked at the child. He was thinking out something very difficult. Emily recognized the lively intelligence in the back of his round brown eyes. Something was worrying him. He was making a great decision, as he had to from time to time. She was most careful not to disturb him. He was always so right, was Uncle Sam, if only you gave him time. She loved him very much.

Presently she saw him thrust the worry aside and come out of his thought to meet her.

‘Now, pardner,' he said. They were both great readers of Westerns and in times of stress the phraseology of the prairie was liable to creep into their conversation. ‘Cut down to your Grannie and tell her – No. We'd better make the thing official. We don't want any accidents.'

He began to write in a large schoolboy hand, amplifying the note aloud as he did so.

‘Mrs Elginbrodde and her young man and a couple of police bigwigs, and maybe more, will be coming round in half an hour. Albert will be there. Got that?'

She nodded, her thin hand held out for the paper, her lank gold hair falling on his shoulder, her breath sweet on his cheek.

‘And Geoff will want a bath, a good hot one. Meg's insisted on that. Oh, she's a grand girl, my old Queen. They couldn't shut her oop, I'll lay a pound. She's looking after her man as she ought, so she's going to be happy. Tell your Grannie that they'll all be hungry, and as you go by ask my old darling if there's plenty of beer, because if not your Grandad had better hop out and buy some, just as soon as the pubs open. If there's no money in the kitchen box, I've got some. Don't bother Miss Warburton whatever you do. We've got enough trouble as it is. See?'

He ripped the sheet from his book. It bore the uncompromising legend: ‘Meg, Geoff, Police, Albert.
BATH
. Food.
BEER
. Half an hour.' ‘Just give that to the old lady with my compliments and tell her it's important. Oh, and love, take my razor – not the best one, the
second
best – and leave it in the bathroom. He'll need it. Off you go! Shorten your leathers. What do you say?'

She paused in the doorway, dancing on her thin legs, her demure face breaking into mischief and her heavy-lidded eyes embarrassed but shining.

‘Yippee,' she said, but softly, so that no one but he should hear.

‘Atta-girl!, Sam bellowed. ‘And then back to action stations, mind. We've got work to do. The copy must go in.'

As the door closed behind her he shook his head. His little Queen (as distinguished from his old Queen, who was turning out so well) was too quiet altogether. Sam feared repression like the plague. ‘It led to trooble,' in his opinion. He had a lot to do, he saw that.

As soon as he was alone he got up and went over to the fireplace. Above the tiled grate there was a glass and mahogany overmantel whose natural sombreness was enlivened by a festoon of invitation cards, press cuttings, letters, and spills, which stuck out all round it like a halo of curl-papers on a dowager. He surveyed these doubtfully for some time and then, fetching a chair, mounted upon it and peered over the top of the collection. As he knew perfectly well, there was a considerable space between the wood and the wall. He rubbed the heads of the screws which kept the whole contraption in place, shrugged his plump shoulders, and after a while went back to his typewriter.

In common with most writers, he had evolved his own technique for making bearable the drudgery of his abominable trade, and after long experiment had settled on a method whereby he dictated his work aloud to himself, taking it down in a highly personalized variety of typewritten shorthand, unreadable to all save half a dozen psychic compositors who had been dealing with it for years. For real comfort he required, in addition, an unlimited supply of malt liquor and a fascinated audience, so that he was very glad when Emily slipped back into the room and climbed quietly on to her perch.

‘Thirteenth of January, nineteen twenty-one, full stop. The Albert Hall was packed to capacity,' he began, one blunt forefinger twinkling among the little keys. ‘How well I remember that fateful night. But for the presence of His Royal Highness – a slender boy we all loved – Wilde would never have fought. Some, and there are those who should know, will tell you that Herman's weight – but enough of that. So much water has flowed under the bridges of Old Father Thames since then that it behoves us ill to remember old controversies. But who amongst us on that night, when we sat, our hearts swelling under our white shirtfronts, would have believed that after seventeen gruelling rounds in the gamest exhibition the Ring has ever known, we should see our great little champion gathered up in the strong arms of my old friend “Peggy” Bettinson – '

‘Jack Smith, Uncle Sam. Don't you remember?'

‘Eh?' Sam blinked at his page, x-ed out one name testily and put in the other. ‘Eeh, I'm daft,' he said shocked. ‘My God, if that had gone through they'd say old Sam was finished, they would and all. And my God, Emily, they'd be right. You remember me telling you about that night, do you? There was Jack Smith of Manchester, one of the finest referees – '

‘Oh yes,' she breathed the words earnestly. ‘Oh yes, I always remember that bit.'

They sat silent for a moment, lost in the remote romantic world, half science, all courage, which was so largely the creation of old Sam and his confreres, whose hero-worship, schoolboyish and pure, had enveloped the prize ring in a glory far brighter than any arc lights of Yankee Stadium or Harringay. To Emily, who got it from the fountain-head, it was a realm of chivalry.

Finally Sam slapped his knee. ‘It's no use, love,' he said, ‘my mind's not on it. There's something I've got to do first. I thought I shouldn't have to attend to this for a day or two, because I believe in sticking to the letter of my word, and that word was “wedding day”. But, as Mother always said, circumstances alter cases. Never forget that, Emily. There are times, pardner, when a man has to use his joogement. Fetch me a screwdriver.

—

THE ‘MURDERER IN
the Fog' story, which had excited Londoners at breakfast, had shocked and startled them by noon when they had digested it. As there was no arrest, the public mood changed swiftly, and by the time the evening papers were on the streets people were frankly uneasy. For obvious reasons, the police had not released Geoffrey's story, and to the ordinary Londoner the affair remained a man-hunt for an escaped convict berserk in a city, a wanton knife striking casually and recklessly in the mist. It was very unnerving.

If the fog had only cleared, tempers might have cooled, but now, at the end of the second day, it had become the father of fogs, thicker and dirtier and more exasperating than any in living memory. The only people who were not astounded by it were visiting Americans who innocently supposed the capital to know no other weather and took its inconvenience in their good-natured stride.

Everybody else was affronted and nervous. In the streets passersby walked quickly, hugging the lights. Children were hurried home from school. Doors which were never locked in daytime were fastened by lunch, and men were glad to seek company in club and pub. Business at the theatre box offices fell abruptly, and the outgoing suburban trains were crowded from four o'clock on. No one talked of anything else. The police came in for much undeserved criticism, and the Under Secretary spoke to Oates several times in the day.

Scotland Yard reacted in its own way. Its odd, elastic organization stretched out to embrace the emergency with smooth purposefulness. Chief Superintendent Yeo, who was in charge of the Number One Division of the Metropolitan force, stepped out of his snug little office overlooking the river to become Investigating Officer, and Luke, his normal duties delegated, became his second-in-command. Behind them, keyed up to serve and dying for the opportunity, was the whole beautiful mechanism of detection. Each department, working tirelessly and with experience, examined every false report, sifted every piece of incoherent evidence, and gave polite and careful attention to every frightened telephone call.

Of these last there were a great many and as the night wore on there would be more. Already messages were coming in from as far away as Whitby in the north and Bath in the west. Havoc, or someone remarkably like him, had been seen everywhere, all over the island, and the Scots police were on the alert.

For convenience, the Crumb Street station remained the headquarters of the inquiry, but the police were keeping the St Petersgate Square angle dark, and so far no one from the newspapers had discovered the inner story behind the prison escape. The quiet close remained deserted, therefore. No morbid sightseer risked his neck groping round the dark pavements, and there was no sound save of dripping water falling from the branches of the tulip tree.

Inside the rectory the atmosphere was curious. Old Avril's home had a personality as definite and comfortable as his own. It was a place so loved and lived in that violence in any form was apt to seem so out of place there as to become downright incredible when viewed from its quiet precincts. Now, however, it had come too close to be discounted, and the whole house had developed a startled and piteous appearance. Amanda summed it up when she said it was as if one suddenly saw water seeping through a painted ceiling. Irreparable damage was being done to a lovely thing and there was no telling when it would stop.

She and Meg were on the rug before the fire in Meg's sitting-room, leaning as close as they dared to the comforting blaze, and Mr Campion stood beside them, one lean elbow on the mantelshelf. They were not talking as freely as they might have done, because of young Rupert swinging idly on an armchair in the background. He was very much in the way and had been so for over ten minutes, but no one had the heart to send him down to the basement. It was not very far, two flights only, but in the last few hours they had become very long and lonely stairs.