Walk with Care (16 page)

CHAPTER XXIII

WHEN THE FRONT DOOR
had closed, Mr Smith strolled over to the telephone and dialled in. After a short interval Colonel Garrett's growl jarred the wire and evolved into words.

“What is it? What
is
it?”

“You do not sound very pleased,” said Mr Smith mildly.

“Oh, it's you, is it? I'm playing bridge. The telephone bell rang thirty-two times during the last rubber, and we finished by going down for a grand slam in spades!”

“Very afflicting,” said Mr Smith. “You should take up backgammon. I won't keep you, but I thought you would like to make an early—er—assignation. I am—er—several tricks up on you in the—er—other game. My—er—hand is positively crowded with kings and aces. For the moment the knave eludes me, but I have collected a most charming queen. Meanwhile I should like as soon as possible the address, other than Marsh Street, of Mr Geoffrey Deane, together with his full dossier and a great deal of information about everybody who lives, moves, or has any kind of being in or about Number One Tilt Street—the ostensible occupant being a Miss P. Dart. Good-night, my dear Garrett. … No, no—you really must restrain your language. Consider the innocent slumbers of Ananias.”

Rosalind took Jeremy back to her flat in a taxi. As soon as they had turned the first corner, he looked at the pale glimmer which was all that he could see of her face, and said,

“Now what's all this about a medium?”

He felt rather than saw that she started. Then she said in a cramped kind of voice,

“What medium? What do you mean?”

Jeremy felt sorry for her, but he also felt very determined. Their relationship had changed once and for all. She was no longer Mrs Denny to his Jeremy, with all that that implied of a pedestal on her side and kindly encouraged inexperience on his. It was Rosalind and Jeremy on equal terms, and a Rosalind from whom he was not going to stand any nonsense, though in some odd way he was fonder of her than ever.

He leaned back in the corner and squared his jaw.

“Now look here, Rosalind—what's the good of your saying ‘What medium?' You said Colonel Garrett told you not to trust me, and then you said, ‘That medium woman said so too.' You probably didn't mean to say it—you were worked up and let it out. You can't get it back again, so I'm asking you to explain. I thought you'd rather not explain before Mr Smith.”

“There's nothing to explain. Do you understand, Jeremy—there's nothing to explain.” Her voice had a trembling dignity.

Jeremy went on doggedly.

“What's the good of saying that sort of thing? Of course there's something to explain! I know why Colonel Garrett warned you against me. I don't like the man, but he's perfectly honest, and he had reason to think that you ought to be warned, because, as you've heard to-night, someone's trying to rig this game against me. But when stray mediums start warning you, I think it's time I knew a little more about it. Don't you see what it might mean? Mediums can be got at, you know.”

Her mind said it was all a trick, but at the back of her mind dumb, frightened thoughts huddled, stopping their ears. Suppose it were not a trick. Suppose Gilbert had spoken to her. Suppose he had warned her against Jeremy. …

She could have cried out when he took her hand, yet all he felt was a light shudder and a stiffening of the fingers.

“Rosalind, who was this medium? You'll tell me—won't you? Don't you see that it might be important? Why won't you tell me?”

After each short sentence he waited to see if she would answer him. No answer came. He let go of her hand, and was aware that it withdrew. He thought he heard a sigh of relief.

At the entrance to the block of flats he paid the driver, and turned to find Rosalind gone. He came through the hall to the lift and found her waiting for the porter. They went up in silence. Arrived at the third floor, they emerged upon a lighted landing. Jeremy said, “I'll walk down,” and as the lift sank away and Rosalind fitted her key in the lock, he said again and urgently,

“Rosalind, won't you tell me?” And, more urgently still, “Do you think it's fair not to tell me?”

The key turned and the door swung in. Some of Rosalind's panic slipped away.

“I can't ask you in, Jeremy. I'm so tired.”

“I don't want to come in—I only want that woman's name and address.”

Rosalind moved wearily. She could not shut the door, because Jeremy stood against the jamb. If she let him come in, he would make her tell him everything. They couldn't stand talking here; the servants would think it strange. The thought of Perry daunted her. And she was tired. She was so tired that the light on the landing looked like a misty yellow cocoon, and the jamb against which Jeremy leaned leaned in and wavered. She kept her hand on the door, and thought that if she told him what he wanted, he would go. She said,

“If I tell you, will you go?”

And Jeremy said, “Yes.”

“If I tell you her name and where she lives, you'll go away?”

Jeremy said “Yes” again.

“You won't ask any questions? You'll go at once?”

“I'll go at once.”

Rosalind straightened herself.

“Asphodel,” she said, and saw Jeremy move away from the jamb. “Number One Tilt Street,” she said, and shut the door.

CHAPTER XXIV

JEREMY WALKED BACK TO
Nym's Row. It was a dark, thick night with rain not so far away and a wind getting up.

He would hardly have noticed the weather if there had been a typhoon blowing. Asphodel—No. 1 Tilt Street. … Rosalind had gone to No. 1 Tilt Street to see a medium who called herself Asphodel, and Asphodel had warned Rosalind not to trust Jeremy Ware. … Now why had Rosalind bottled all this up? If she hadn't let slip a half sentence about that medium woman when she was so upset that she hardly knew what she was saying, no one would have heard a word about Asphodel who lived at No. 1 Tilt Street and warned people against Jeremy Ware. Yet it must have been perfectly obvious to her after hearing Jeremy's story that any evidence about the people who lived in No. 1 Tilt Street was of the utmost importance. She had heard that Rachel had disappeared in the direction of the house. She had heard Jeremy repeat Rachel's words: “
She
said, ‘Leave it open. Put the letter there and leave it open. You can say he took it.'”
She had heard Mr Smith quote these words. She had heard him ask Jeremy whether he had any idea to whom they referred. She had heard them discuss the question of who lived at No. 1 Tilt Street.
And she had said nothing.
It was all very interesting.

Jeremy thought that he would go and have his fortune told. He felt the strongest possible desire to have his fortune told by Asphodel. He wondered what she would say … “A danger threatens you—you will shortly take a long journey—beware of a dark woman and three wet Fridays.” He laughed, and then stopped laughing rather suddenly. Wasn't there something about Gilbert Denny being told by a fortune-teller that he was going to go round the world? And a month later he was dead—drowned off Talland in a smooth sea. The thought struck cold. Who had told him about Gilbert and the fortune-teller? You would have thought that Gilbert Denny was the last man on earth to get mixed up with that sort of thing.

He frowned as he walked, and suddenly the thing came back. Rosalind in a blue dress with her coffee-cup in her hand. They were going to the theatre. Gilbert had cried off at the last moment and given Jeremy his ticket. The picture came back stroke by stroke until it was complete. There were irises on the mantelpiece. Rosalind asked for more sugar in her coffee, and then she said, “A fortune-teller says we're going round the world. You'd better come too.” She smiled with her lips, but her eyes looked past him to Gilbert, and Gilbert Denny put down his cup and went out of the room. Jeremy heard himself say, “It would be awfully jolly. When do we start?” And then all of a sudden Rosalind's hand was shaking and she went over to the mantelpiece and put her cup down and said with her back to him, “She told Gilbert he was going round the world. She didn't say anything about us.” And then she exclaimed that they would be late and hurried him off. It was extraordinary how vividly it all came back. And Gilbert's dark look. … Gilbert had taken a longer voyage than round the world. Was it Asphodel who had told him that he was going on a journey?

It was just short of eleven when he reached the mews. The Walkers' room showed no light, but in the corresponding room to right and left the blind had a golden edge. Mr and Mrs Evans were not asleep, nor was Mr John Brown.

The testimony of the blind was scarcely needed in the case of the Evans, since no sooner had Jeremy turned the corner than the voice of Mrs Evans impinged upon his ear. It ran rapidly up the scale and split on a cracked note somewhere about E in alt. By the time he came level with the window, a flood of angry sobs had succeeded the scream, whilst, quite in the best manner of grand opera duet, Mr Evans burst in at intervals with resonant baritone “language.” The euphemism was Lizzie Walker's, and, still according to her, “what no lady ought to put up with.” She had discoursed to Jeremy on these lines no later than that morning—“And how any woman does put up with it is more than I can say—and keep their windows shut is the least they might, with words a-flying which a respectable woman didn't ought to know there
was
any such—and I'm sure I might have been married to Walker fifty years or more without hearing worse from him than a bit of a damn, which is neither 'ere nor there and no' arm meant, so 'ow that Evans woman can put up with it passes me.”

The Evans woman, at the moment, was not putting up with it. She was being extremely voluble, and the window being open, Jeremy got good value. A face was smartly slapped, after which there was a really horrible explosion from Mr Evans followed by a blood-curdling shriek.

The blind of Mr John Brown's window went up with a click, the lower sash followed suit, and Mr John Brown leaned out in his shirt-sleeves.

“Preserve us!” he said with a strong Scottish accent, “Is that you, Mr Ware? Has he killed her, do you think?”

A blended shadow upon the Evans' blind, combined with the sound of a hearty kiss, enabled Jeremy to say dryly,

“Not this time.”

“Aweel,” said Mr John Brown in a disappointed tone, “I had my hopes. Good-night to you, Mr Ware.” He closed the window and drew down the blind.

His room was, as Mrs Beamish had testified, full of books. There were a couple of cheap bookcases with scalloped strips of imitation leather on the edges of the shelves, which had been picked up cheap in the Caledonian Market. The top of the chest of drawers was piled with surplus volumes. The room was a little better furnished than Jeremy's. The bed had a coverlet of cheap crimson stuff, and there were crimson curtains at the window. Mr John Brown drew these across the blind, slipped his arms into an old jacket, and sat down in a very comfortable arm-chair. A small oil-stove burned on the other side of the room, and the atmosphere was warm, if slightly tinged with paraffin.

Mr Brown took up the book which he had been reading, and after a very few moments laid it down again. Without rising from his chair he leaned sideways and pushed the book back into the space which yawned for it. He remained in this position for a minute or two, scanning the shelves and occasionally touching or partly withdrawing a volume. In the end he leaned back again. The coat which he had taken
off
lay over the arm of the chair. He slid his hand into the pocket and took out a plain dark pocket-book, which he opened. From an inner flap he withdrew a letter folded small. This he unfolded and spread out, turning so as to get the light full upon it.

The letter was dated October 1st '29, and it was in the handwriting of the late Gilbert Denny. It had no beginning. It said:

“Quite frankly, the game isn't worth the candle. You've got to raise your offer
,
or there's nothing doing. After all, you're asking me to stake a perfectly good career, and I'm certainly not going to do it for nothing. I don't ask what you expect to clear, but I'm certain you can pay my price. In fact, like Clive, I'm surprised at my own moderation. Financial arrangements as I suggested
—
a thousand to my account, and the rest in cash
—
no big notes.”

There was a bold and characteristic G.D. by way of signature.

Mr John Brown gave this letter his full attention for perhaps five minutes. Then he folded it and, once more stretching sideways, selected a book from the bottom shelf. He placed the letter between the leaves, took from his pocket a strip of stamp-paper, and carefully gummed the pages together, after which he put the book back upon the shelf. It was a copy of Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations,
and there was no reason to suppose that it would be likely to interest Mrs Beamish. After this for the space of nearly an hour he lay back in his chair and smoked a pipe.

Shortly after twelve o'clock he turned out the gas and went downstairs. He was wearing house-slippers and he made no sound at all. When he drew back the bolt of the scullery door it moved as silently. It moved in fact as if it had been recently oiled. It is possible that Mr John Brown had oiled it.

He closed the door behind him and disappeared into the darkness of the yard.

CHAPTER XXV

MR GEOFFREY DEANE WAS
back at work next day. He sat in the library and stuck press cuttings into an album. Mannister kept all his press cuttings. At intervals Mr Deane swivelled round in his chair and read selections aloud.

Jeremy bore the first extract with patience, after which he passed rapidly through boredom to visible unrest.

“Look here, Deane, I've got work to do if you haven't!”

Geoffrey Deane looked at him reproachfully through his steel-rimmed pince-nez. They were always a little crooked, which imparted a slightly rakish look to his neat clean-shaven features and the well brushed hair which was almost too fair and smooth to be true.

“He really is a great man, you know,” he said. “I feel very fortunate in being his secretary. I like to feel that his speeches are appreciated and well reported.”

Jeremy burst out laughing.

“The last bit you read is particularly jammy—isn't it?” He slapped his chest, “It ought to be—it's pure Jeremy Ware. Alone I did it! ‘Millions applaud who never heard my name'! But do we work for applause?” He rose and struck a Mannisterian attitude. “Is it for recognition or the hope of reward that we strive along the stony ascent?” He dropped suddenly back into his chair as the door opened upon the authentic Mannister.

“Good-morning, sir.”

“Good-morning,” said Bernard Mannister in a voice so like the one that Jeremy had been using that it very seriously imperilled his gravity.

He bent his head and drove a furious pen, whilst Geoffrey Deane, his look of offence changing to an admiring smile, approached Mannister with the album of cuttings.

“I'm getting these up to date, sir. I don't know if there was anything else that you wanted me to do?”

“No,” said Mannister—“no. There is a lull for the moment, and I shall not require either you or Ware this afternoon. By all means bring the cuttings up to date. Ware can take the answers to the last batch of letters.”

Jeremy took shorthand notes for an hour and then typed them out. The half holiday was a bit of luck. He would collect his pass-book. Then he would get his hair cut and his fortune told. And if Mannister wanted him to open the safe, he was going to see to it that locking, unlocking, and whatever lay between them, took place under Mannister's own eye. As it happened, the safe remained shut, and the key presumably on the key-chain in Mannister's trouser pocket.

Jeremy lunched at home because Mrs Walker had more or less ordered him to do so, she having stewed a rabbit—“which Joe and me don't want to go on 'aving day in day out for the rest of the week. And don't you start saying as you don't like rabbit, because there's rabbits
and
rabbits, and this one's fresh from the country from my sister Em'ly's 'usband that farms his own land near Ollington, and it's been broke up proper and soaked in brine and done lovely with onion, with a bunch of 'erbs and some rice and potater and just the least taste of curry powder—and if that's not good enough for King George 'imself, I'm a gipsy, which I never did 'old with, though Em'ly, 'er that sent the rabbit, was all for going and living in a caravan when we were gels together, and I says to her, ‘Em'ly,' I says, ‘'Ow you can talk so ridiculous when everyone knows that you 'ate getting your feet wet and don't like the dark, and such a scumjumblum if your bed isn't just so, passes me'.”

The rabbit stew was certainly very good. Having partaken of it, Jeremy had his hair cut, and then from a public call-office rang up No. 1 Tilt Street.

A thin, vague “Hullo!” came to him along the wire.

In a sort of mumbling whisper he said,

“Can I have an appointment with Asphodel?”

He did not know that anyone in the house would recognize his voice, but he thought he would be on the safe side.

“Who is speaking?”

That was what Jeremy would have liked to know. The thin voice had an uneducated sound. He said the first name that came into his head—

“Cheeseman.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to have my fortune told.”

There was a dead, blank pause. Then the voice said,

“Madam doesn't tell fortunes.”

Jeremy continued to mumble. He said,

“Well, whatever it is she does do. Can I have an appointment?”

The line went dead again, this time for so long that he wondered whether he was going to be left high and dry.

Then the voice again, a little out of breath:

“If you can call about four—”

Jeremy said, “Very well,” and rang off.

He came out of the box and stood beside it considering a plan of campaign. He was half sorry now that he had given a false name. He ought to have mumbled something unintelligible. If he went there as Cheeseman and was recognized as Jeremy Ware, it was rather more of a give-away than he was prepared for. Of course he might not be recognized, but as he passed the house at least four times a day and, on Rachel's evidence, someone who almost certainly resided there not only knew him by name but was anxious to get him into trouble, it didn't seem very likely. The alternative was to go the whole hog and substantiate the hypothetical Cheeseman. He was young enough to enjoy the idea of dressing up.

He looked at his watch, found that he had plenty of time to catch the bank, and went back to the shop where he had had his hair cut. He knew just what he wanted—a slightly grizzled wig, bushy eye-brows, a black moustache, and a touch of colour on the cheeks. His mind went back to a big jolly Christmas party three years ago—his first Christmas with the Dennys, and they had taken him with them to the Mallabys, who kept open house in old-fashioned patriarchal style, with sons and daughters, grandchildren, and nephews and nieces. Gilbert Denny was a nephew. They got up a play which was a huge success, with Gilbert as the star performer, so good that Barrington the producer had said to him, and only half in joke, “When you're out of a job, Mr Denny, you come along to me, and I'll sign you on.” Jeremy had played a family solicitor in a grizzled wig and bushy eyebrows and a little black moustache, and nobody had recognized him, so he knew just what he wanted now.

He found he would have to leave a deposit, so he hurried off to the bank, cashed a cheque, asked for his pass-book, and having picked up his parcel at the hairdresser's, returned to Nym's Row.

His first glance at the pass-book put everything else out of his head. Exactly a fortnight and two days ago he had opened this account with £20. He had drawn nothing out until to-day, and he had certainly paid nothing in.

His balance was shown as £70.

Jeremy stared at the figures, which were of the plainest. He looked at the right-hand page and saw a credit entry of £50. On one Monday he had opened the account with £20, and on the following Monday there was a further credit entry of £50—net balance £70, against which he had just drawn a cheque for three guineas. Through his astonished mind there floated the pleasant cultured voice of Mr Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith: “Do not forget to examine your passbook. Do not put off doing so.”

Everything in him sprang sharply to attention.
What did he mean?
A purely rhetorical question. The pencilled figures of his balance answered it.
And how did he know?
There wasn't any answer to that except that he
did
know. The sense of being in a dark place came strong on Jeremy. It was a black place, and the air was heavy—a closed in place with hidden falls, pits lightly covered into which you might go crashing down, to end miserably in a broken huddle. He came out of this waking nightmare, and found himself sweating in spite of the cold. He looked at his watch. It was twenty to four.

He put the pass-book into a drawer. It was too late to do anything to-day, but to-morrow he must try and find out who had paid the money in.

Twice, years ago, old Cousin Emily had given him a present in this way—a tenner the first time, twenty-five pounds the second. It was possible that she had done it again. But how did she know that he had just reopened an account? For the matter of that, there was no reason why she should have known that the account had ever been closed. If it was old Cousin Emily—and it might be—he was getting cold feet about nothing. Only if it was Cousin Emily, where did Mr Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith come in? He debated whether he would ring him up. He didn't want to be a nuisance, but it might be safer. Meanwhile Mr Cheeseman had an appointment.

He rang the bell of No. 1 Tilt Street at four o'clock precisely. He did not think it possible that he should be recognized. In addition to the wig, eyebrows and moustache he had assumed a forward stoop and a large invalidish muffler. A change of voice was assisted by a wadge of chewing-gum. Not that anyone in this house would be likely to know his voice, but the chewing-gum had been part of the original make-up, and the resultant mumble belonged to the rôle and gave him confidence.

A most severe female opened the door, respectable to the point of rigour—black dress, neat hair, brooch with locks of departed relatives, and a horrid lipless mouth. Jeremy's heart went out to Rachel, who loved squirrels. This woman looked as if she might be a very efficient jailer.

As he mumbled, “Cheeseman—I have an appointment,” and stepped into the hall, he was wondering whether Rachel was behind one of those shut doors. There were two of them on the left, and one beyond at the end of the passage. That would be the way to the kitchen—and the cellars. The stairs went up on the right to a half-landing.

The woman went first. When she came to the landing she stopped, and Jeremy saw what Rosalind had seen on her way down, a table with some half dozen sketches lying on it. The woman blocked his way and indicated the water-colours. She said her piece as she had said it to Rosalind.

“Do you care to take one of these sketches, sir?”

So that was it. Asphodel was a shrewd woman. There was no law against selling bad sketches if you could find a purchaser.

He said, “How much?” and saw the woman look sharply at him out of her colourless eyes. He thought she was sizing him up, and was glad he had dressed Cheeseman in his oldest clothes.

After a scarcely perceptible delay she said,

“They are two guineas each.”

Jeremy paid his two guineas with an ill grace which was all in Mr Cheeseman's character. He had thirty shillings in his note-case and made up the amount with loose silver. He hoped he was going to get something out of the visit, because what with the hire of the wig and this two guineas, it was going to pretty well clean him out.

The woman bundled his sketch into a piece of paper, tied it perfunctorily with an odd piece of string, and going on up the remaining stairs, ushered him into what had evidently been intended to be the drawing-room of the house. The room was as Rosalind had seen it. Light came through an alabaster bowl which hung from the black ceiling. It lost itself on black walls and an inky carpet. The place was like the inside of a catafalque.

Jeremy was shepherded to a chair that faced the hangings, and sat down with the light just over his head. The woman went out of the room and shut the door. Jeremy sat forward and allowed Mr Cheeseman to have a nasty fit of coughing. After his second cough he was aware that the hangings in front of him did not screen the wall but an L-shaped extension of the room. He thought the arrangement a clever one. You stuck your client in a chair under the light and had a good look at him before getting on with the song and dance. He blew Cheeseman's nose, sighed heavily, and slumped in his chair. And then, with his hand holding the handkerchief on his knee, there came the sudden realization that he had forgotten to take off his ring. It had been his father's, and his grandfather's before that—a heavy old-fashioned signet ring with the Ware crest, a mailed fist and the words “Be Ware.” It was on the little finger of his left hand, and the shield stuck up and caught the light. He turned his hand and let the handkerchief cover it. He cursed himself for a fool. But after all what chance was there that anyone would know the ring?

A nasty heavy silence settled on the room. Presently he allowed Cheeseman to clear his throat, and, as if it had been a signal, a voice spoke from behind the curtain—a thin, faint voice. It said,

“Will you give me your hands?” And with that the curtain was parted a little, as a stage curtain parts for an actor to take his call.

Mr Cheeseman cleared his throat again, hitched his chair a little nearer, and put his right hand through the gap. It was taken in a hard, cold grasp and lightly held. The voice said,

“Please give me your other hand.”

Jeremy had just one second to make up his mind. It was possible that someone on the other side of that curtain wanted a close-up of his ring. It might rouse suspicion if he took it off, but on the other hand people on these occasions did remove anything that would be likely to provide a clue to their identity. He put his hand to his mouth, pulled off the ring with his teeth, and pushed it, with the handkerchief, into his breast pocket. Then he hitched his chair nearer still and put his left hand through the gap in the curtain. It was taken in the same cold clasp and turned palm upwards, whilst the hangings fell together against his wrists.

There was a pause. Then the voice said,

“Do you want me to tell you the truth?”

Mr Cheeseman coughed nervously.

“Er—yes—yes, certainly—that is to say—”

“Why did you come to me?” said the voice.

Mr Cheeseman coughed again.

“I—er—have been thinking—well, in point of fact I've been thinking of getting married, and I wondered—well, I rather thought I would like to find out whether the indications were—er—favourable?”

“There is marriage in your hand,” said the voice.

Jeremy had a moment's indecision. Should he declare himself to be a widower? He resisted the temptation to give Cheeseman his head.