Ben Sees It Through Page 17

  Now he was in the middle of the gap.

  ‘Corse, I didn’t catch nothink.’

  Now he was right in.

  ‘Barrin’ weeds.’

  Now the front door was closing behind him.

  ‘I know wot it is,’ he thought. ‘I’m bein’ mesmeridged.’

  Yes, that must be it. A hand was descending on the top of his head.

  Then, all at once, the fingers of the hand spread out in a sort of a spasm, and under the indignation of the fingers Ben woke up. He gave a jump, but the fingers flashed from his head to his arm, and held him in a fierce grip.

  ‘The cap!’ hissed a voice. ‘Say where it is!’

  It was Don Diablo’s voice.

  Even in the confusion of the moment and the pressing darkness, Ben began to understand. These fingers had been waiting to seize his cap. It was for his cap that the door had opened! But, above, a mind even cleverer had secured the cap, and had seen that Ben entered the house without it.

  ‘Where? Where?’ repeated the Spaniard’s voice, while the fingers dug into Ben’s arm like claws.

  ‘Wot cap?’ muttered Ben, thinking hard. Or trying to think hard. He didn’t know which.

  ‘You went for it—’

  ‘Go on!’

  A hand struck Ben’s mouth savagely.

  ‘I know! I hear! You think me fool? Say where, or—’ The hand struck Ben’s mouth again.

  He knew and he’d heard, eh? Then it was this Spaniard who’d been in the house after Lovelace had left it? This darned skunk who’d been creeping about the place, and listening outside doors, and—and—cutting off retreats by shoving corpses up chimneys? And who’d waited for Ben to return, expecting to pounce on him the moment he got back and seize the cap from his head!

  ‘Well, I ain’t got it, see?’ cried Ben, trying unsuccessfully to free his arm.

  ‘That is a lie!’ retorted the Spaniard.

  ‘Orl right! Search me! Yus, and wot’s wrong with a light while yer doin’ it?’

  The search materialised, though the light did not. Ben learned the reason later. He felt fingers prodding all over him like large electric needles.

  ‘Easy in the sarth-west!’ he muttered. ‘That’s where I’m ticklish.’

  A blow in the north-east silenced him.

  The search was fruitless. It may be noted that it omitted Ben’s left boot. Through the depressing darkness the Spaniard spoke again.

  ‘Then where is it?’ he demanded, standing very close. Ben felt his breath on the top of his head, and wished the cap had been there to protect it.

  ‘On Moosolini!’ he growled.

  ‘Say!’

  ‘’Ow can I?’

  He could, but he wasn’t going to!

  ‘Dios! But you went for it!’

  ‘Yus, you ’eard that, didn’t yer, yer heaves-droppin’ Nosey Parker!’ Then the solution dawned upon him. ‘Well, if you ’eard that, yer must ’ave ’eard somethink helse! Yer must ’ave ’eard as ’ow that hother bloke, Lovelice ’is nime is, gone arter the cap, too. Orl right, then. We both goes arter it, but we can’t both git it, can we? Orl right, then. He starts fust, and ’e got there fust, and ’e got the cap fust. Orl right, then. Now are yer satisfied?’

  There was a silence, while the Spaniard considered the story. In the silence Ben heard the clock. It was ticking again …

  ‘So! He got it?’ murmured the Spaniard, softly.

  ‘Yus!’

  ‘And—he will return here?’

  ‘Yus! Well, ’ow do I know?’

  ‘But I know!’

  ‘You know a lot!’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ In the blackness Ben felt Don Diablo smiling. ‘I know that you return!’

  ‘Didjer?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘’Ow didjer know?’ inquired Ben, with sudden curiosity.

  ‘Because I send for you,’ answered the Spaniard, and Ben felt the Spaniard’s smile expanding. ‘A little boy, eh? Who go to Southfield—I hear that, too—and say the lady sent him. But I sent him. And then I know you will come! The so brave Inglis!’

  The information rendered Ben speechless. He gulped. Speech may come and speech may go, but gulps go on for ever. Meanwhile the Spaniard went on.

  ‘Yes, you come. And you stay. You stay till Signor Lovelace come. He will have the cap, eh? Perhaps! But if he have not the cap—then, again, I search you! Compreno?’

  Ben comprenoed. He comprenoed that Molly might then be searched, too. Lummy, he must put this Spanish devil off the track of Molly … ‘Yus, and I know ’ow ter do it!’ he suddenly thought.

  ‘Look ’ere, yer dirty bit o’ Europe, you!’ he muttered. ‘Yer bit o’ the map that ain’t wanted! If Molly—if the gal didn’t send me that there messidge, wot ’ave yer done with ’er? She ain’t still ’ere, is she?’

  Not bad, that, for a simple sailor!

  ‘You do not know where she is?’ queried the Spaniard.

  ‘Yus, I’ll tell yer where she is,’ retorted Ben, continuing with his subtlety. ‘She’s at a pleece stishun—yer don’t seem ter ’ave ’eard that—and in a cupple o’ ticks she’ll be ’ere with the ’ole of Scotland Yard!’

  It was a good move. If Don Diablo believed that Ben imagined Molly out of the house, the idea that Ben had seen her at the window and had passed his cap on to her could not occur to him. Anxiously Ben waited for confirmation that his ruse had been successful. He had to wait for several seconds. At the end of them the Spaniard said:

  ‘Well, well, I must risk your Scotland Yard. Perhaps—who knows?—Scotland Yard is too busy. Or—perhaps—she is not there, eh? Now, please, come!’

  ‘Come?’ exclaimed Ben. ‘Where?’

  ‘You see, when I show you.’

  ‘If yer don’t switch on a light I shan’t see nothink.’

  ‘Light? But there is no light! Watch!’

  With his free hand—the other was still holding Ben—the Spaniard stretched towards the hall switch. Ben heard the click that should have preceded a flood of illumination. There was no illumination. The click was repeated several times. The hall remained in darkness.

  ‘Signor Lovelace, he very careful of his lights,’ said the Spaniard. ‘He turn all off somewhere, before he go. Well, what matters? I receive him in the dark just as well—like I receive you, eh? And, now—come, Signor Ben! It is time to—how is it said—put you away.’

  ‘Yus, but I got a few questions ter ask afore yer put me away!’ cried Ben. ‘Wotcher want the blinkin’ cap for, any’ow?’

  Don Diablo did not reply. Instead, he propelled Ben towards the back of the hall. Ben knew it was towards the back of the hall because he heard the clock ticking louder as they advanced.

  ‘Is the cap wotcher left yer ’appy ’ome for?’

  They reached the stairs.

  ‘Is it wot yer follered that chap White for?’

  They were mounting the stairs. The clock was ticking very loudly now.

  ‘Is it wot yer killed White for?’

  They paused. They were on the wide half-landing, and the clock was ticking more loudly still. He’d never heard it so loud before! Lummy—the case was open!

  ‘So! I killed White?’ murmured the Spaniard. ‘You think that, eh? You think too much, Signor Ben! It is quite time—yes—that you were put away!’

  Then a comet bounded out of the sky and struck Ben. And, a moment later, the clock was closed again and the pendulum had ceased to tick.

  But Ben did not know this, for the simple reason that he did not know anything.

  26

  The Cap’s Secret

  During the rare and peaceful moments of his life Ben sometimes amused himself, to dissipate the dullness of comfort, by thinking of all the unusual places he had been in. These included a well, a coal-bunker, a coffin, seventeen cupboards (but they were nothing), a couple of dozen cellars, a Spanish garret, a precipice (hanging over, head downwards), a ship’s side (hanging over, head downwards), the world’s prickli
est bush, and two or three thousand other specially selected locations.

  ‘But ’ave I hever bin dahn a drine-pipe?’ he asked himself during his last inventory. He thought hard. ‘That’s funny! I’ve never bin dahn a drine-pipe!’ For such a far-travelled man, it was almost humiliating.

  Doubtless the drain-pipe would come, and a waterfall, and an oven. Meanwhile, though for a considerable time he was quite unconscious of the fact, he was now adding the inside of a grandfather clock to the catalogue.

  Tucked away inside the clock, he presented a double anomaly. It was anomalous that he should be in the clock at all, and it was anomalous that he should be both so close to time and yet so far away from it. But time had stopped in the clock as well as in Ben, and both stayed stationary as the seconds and the minutes flowed heedlessly by outside them.

  The blow that had knocked Ben senseless had been a particularly vicious one. ‘I almost felt it,’ Ben said, later. ‘’E’d mike ’is forchune at hox-killin’.’ He slid down limply beside the harassed pendulum, and was not even conscious that, after a fit of indignant trembling, the pendulum came to roost in his open mouth and acted as a stopper.

  It is possible that this pendulum saved Ben’s life. Your own years of joy or of sorrow may be due to some tiny inanimate cause. A button has won a war by stopping a bullet, and now the pendulum may have preserved Ben for his war, as yet unwon, by stopping his mouth. For when your mouth is stopped, what happens?

  Nothing, if you are utterly, utterly unconscious, and still possess your nose. Nothing, if you gradually return to consciousness, and your nose still functions. But a nose in a clock collects the dust of ages, and becomes, at last, oppressed. Then it protests—quietly at first, loudly subsequently—and calls upon the stopped mouth to help it.

  That is exactly what happened to Ben. For a while he lay uncomplainingly where Don Pasquali had put him. During this period he raced five two-headed lions, spanked a star for getting in his way, and exploded on to the throne of England, from which he immediately gave an order for a large plate of gooseberry tart. Then everything faded into the Great Blackness out of which it had sprung, and the Great Blackness was replaced by a Great Greyness—the greyness that faintly colours the borders of consciousness.

  Into this greyness grew a ticking. Time coming back, eh? Ben was not in a condition to explore the theory, but we, who are, can prove its fallacy. The pendulum was not ticking, although it was the cause of the sound. Ben’s nose was ticking.

  Outside, in the hall, someone heard it. But a sound so much more ominous had recently preceded this new ticking—the sound of a dead body falling plop on to a floor—that for several moments only the echo of that horrible plop filled the listener’s ears.

  Then, as the front-door was reached, the ticking claimed attention, and the listener paused, hand on door-knob.

  Was it the clock? Surely not! The clock had stopped again.

  ‘Click! Click!’ Pause. ‘Click! Click!’ Pause. ‘Click-click!’

  Click, not tick. Clocks went tick. What went click?

  The figure by the door, revolving this theory, delayed departure. The clicking went on. It was the only sound in the silent, gloomy house. It came, obviously, from the staircase. It might be a rat or something. A board creaking. A window-frame rattling. Not that it really sounded like any of these things … but what else could it be?

  Suddenly the clicking changed in character. It became more violent. It wheezed. It whistled. It choked.

  With a gulp, the figure darted from the door. Across the hall, and up the stairs. The figure was almost sobbing. As it reached the turn at the half-landing it stopped, clutching the bannisters.

  ‘Kerchaw-wahgug! Click-click!’ said the clock.

  In a trice the case was open, and Ben was falling out of it into Molly’s arms.

  ‘Ben!’ she murmured. ‘Ben! Ben!’

  There was nothing else to say. She lowered the spluttering form, easing it to the ground with a strength that seemed impossible from one so frail and frightened. The form became still, and she bent over it in agony.

  ‘Ben!’ she whispered, close to his face. ‘Ben!’

  ‘’Sall right,’ came the very faint response. ‘Don’t worry. I’m dead.’

  She shook him gently.

  ‘Oi!’ protested the form, feebly. ‘’Eaven’s rockin’!’

  Heaven ceased to rock. It now began to pat. This seemed to be more welcome to its temporary inmate. But he still rebelled.

  ‘Git away, Noah!’ he gasped. ‘I got somethink helse ter do yet! I’m goin’ ter jump!’

  There was a terrible convulsion on the floor. Molly jumped, too, as the form rose galvanically to a sitting posture.

  ‘’Old me,’ said Ben, and lay down again.

  A minute went by. Then Ben spoke again. His eyes were tightly closed.

  ‘Is that you, Molly?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Ben,’ she answered.

  ‘Let’s feel a bit of yer!’

  She touched his face with her hand.

  ‘Lummy, that’s nice, that is,’ murmured Ben. ‘Keep it there. Funny, ain’t it?’

  She kept it there. Another minute went by. Then Ben sat up a second time. Now his eyes were open.

  ‘’E must ’ave give me a crack,’ he said. ‘Oi! Where are yer?’

  ‘Here,’ she replied, touching him again. ‘Take it easy. There’s plenty of time.’

  She didn’t think there was, but for the moment she had to pretend it.

  ‘Ain’t there a light?’ murmured Ben. ‘This dark’s fair gettin’ on me nerves!’

  ‘Mr Lovelace switched them off before he went out,’ she told him.

  The name whipped his sluggish mind.

  ‘Lovelice! That’s right. That’s wot the Spaniard ses. Oi!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘’As Lovelice come back yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wot abart the other chap? Don Diablo?’

  ‘He’s gone out.’

  ‘Wot for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps—’

  ‘Wot?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone to wait for Mr Lovelace at the gate, or in the lane.’

  ‘Wot! Leavin’ us two ’ere?’

  ‘But he thinks you’re safe in—in the clock,’ she pointed out.

  ‘One day I’ll mike ’im sife in the clock!’ growled Ben. ‘Yer know, I’m torkin’, but I feel sick.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better not talk?’

  ‘No, I gotter tork. Me marth keeps me mind orf me stummick, like. Besides, miss—Molly—I gotter know wot’s ’appened. Wot abart you? I was in the clock, but you wasn’t. You—’

  ‘I was locked in the room upstairs, so he thought I was just as helpless. If he couldn’t get in, I couldn’t get out.’

  ‘Oi! Is that a shadder dahn there?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Now it’s movin’! Oi!’

  ‘Nothing’s there, Ben!’

  ‘No more it ain’t. It was you. Yer seem ter keep bobbin’ abart, like. Fust a mile orf and then a hinch. Yer know, bein’ a penjulump tikes some gettin’ uster. Where was we? Oh, yer couldn’t git aht of the room hupstairs. Well, ’ow did yer git aht?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter—’

  ‘I wanter ’ear!’

  ‘All right. But—we ought to be going.’

  ‘So we ought.’

  He jumped to his feet like a rocket and fell down again.

  ‘That’s funny,’ he reflected. ‘Me joints ’ave gorn orl jelly.’

  He felt Molly’s arm under his neck. He had never been happier and more wretched in the whole of his existence. Queer, how life mixed it. In his ear Molly’s voice whispered.

  ‘Lie still! Don’t try to move any more. Wait till you know you can.’

  ‘’Fraid I gotter wait,’ he muttered. ‘But—look ’ere! You better pop orf!’

  ‘You say some funny things sometimes, Ben,’ answered Molly, ‘but that’s about the funni
est I’ve heard! Me pop off? And leave you here? Off your nut, Ben, aren’t you?’ She changed the conversation quickly and determinedly, reverting to her interrupted story. ‘I got out down the chimney, Ben. I broke a chair up till I got a long, narrow bit and—shoved.’ She shuddered. ‘Then I went over the whole house trying to find you.’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘I’d just given you up—I thought Pasquali must have taken you out with him or something—when I heard you in the clock.’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘And thank God I did! Just think, Ben! If I hadn’t—’

  ‘I vote we don’t think,’ he suggested. ‘Wot I wanter know is ’ow you knew Don Diablo ’ad gorn?’

  ‘I heard him close the front-door, though he did it ever so softly.’

  ‘Not like the bang ’e give that hother time?’

  ‘No, Ben. He meant us to hear the other time—and that’s how I got caught.’

  ‘Wotcher mean?’

  ‘Why, he never left at all that other time. It was just a trick. I don’t know whether he let you get away on purpose or not, but when I began to get out of the window—you remember, I gave you five minutes start—he was standing at the bottom!’

  ‘Lummy!’

  ‘Yes, it was lummy! He meant to nab me as I got to the ground. But I just spotted him in time, and nipped back as he got hold of the rope and tugged.’

  ‘’E might ’ave killed yer!’ gasped Ben, indignantly.

  ‘He might,’ Molly nodded, ‘but life’s full of might’s. He didn’t kill me. He got the rope, though—and so, just now, there was only the chimney left. Ugh! That was the nastiest job I’ve ever tackled.’

  ‘Yer know,’ said Ben, ‘wot I’m livin’ for is ter put ’im up the chimney.’

  ‘And what I’m living for is to get miles away from it!’ retorted Molly. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Like a bit o’ skin rahnd a jig-saw.’

  ‘Do you think you can move?’

  ‘Yus, with a bit of ’elp. Funny, it was you larst time, wasn’t it? We’re takin’ turns.’ He had been lying flat. Now he sat up shakily. ‘’Allo—I’ve jest thort o’ somethink. I fahnd a match in the trine comin’ back. A ’ole one. It’s in me pocket. Let’s ’ave a light.’