No. 17 Page 2

  Ben protested.

  ‘Wait a minit yerself,’ he said. ‘Ye’r’ actin’ silly.’

  ‘No, I’m not! Unless you mean I’m acting silly standing here, doing nothing.’

  ‘’Ere! ’Arf a mo’!’ gasped Ben, as she made another movement towards the locked door. ‘I’ll show yer ye’r’ silly, if yer like.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ she answered, pausing. ‘But be quick about it.’

  ‘It don’t tike two ticks. Fust, s’pose there ain’t nothin’ in that there room?’

  ‘I don’t suppose there will be.’

  ‘Orl right, then. Wot’s the use o’ wastin’ yer time, goin’ hin?’

  ‘But there might be something.’

  ‘Ah, then you’d be an idjit to go hin,’ exclaimed Ben, triumphantly crowning his point. ‘Get me?’

  ‘I get you that you’ve no pluck,’ she retorted, frowning.

  ‘Ah, you orter seed me in the war, miss. I was blowed up by a mine once, and come dahn singin’.’

  ‘Go on with you!’ she said, trying to remain severe, and finding it rather difficult. He was a queer card. ‘If that’s true, go in there singing!’

  She took hold of his arm, but he backed hastily away.

  ‘That’s dif’rent,’ he frowned. ‘We was orl together in the war like. But—wot’s ter say there ain’t a corpse in there?’

  ‘Here—enough of that!’ cried the woman.

  ‘Lummy!’ muttered Ben, following his new train of thought.

  ‘I’ll bet that’s wot it is. A blinkin’ corpse. That feller at the winder got in arter that Yank, the Yank murders ’im, and ’ops it.’ Gentle perspiration moistened the theorist’s brow as he added, ‘Nah, miss—’oo’s goin’ ter hopen that door?’

  ‘I am,’ responded the woman breathlessly.

  Ben’s theory terrified her, but it also decided her. The man in there might not be dead; he might be merely hurt, and require their aid. The utter silence of the inner room lent colour to these notions. Yes, yes—clearly, the door must be unlocked and opened without any more delay.

  ‘Orl right—yer will ’ave it!’ chattered Ben, as she turned the key. He looked round for a missile or weapon of some sort. A wooden chair was nearest, and he seized that. The door was flung open, and the woman entered.

  Some breathless moments went by. She did not reappear.

  ‘Oi!’ shouted Ben, in a sudden frenzy. ‘Oi!’

  Raising his chair high, he approached the door, but sprang back as the woman suddenly reappeared.

  ‘Lor’ luvvaduck!’ he gasped. ‘Wotcher wanter spring at a feller like that for?’

  ‘I wasn’t springing—you did the spring,’ she retorted, ‘and if you’re a specimen of the Merchant Service, then I’d sooner trust myself in a train!’

  ‘Yer carn’t do nothin’ when ye’r’ ’ungry,’ growled Ben. ‘Wotcher find in there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Wot! Nothin’ at all?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  Ben drank in this reassuring news. It put a new angle on things. He lowered his chair, and straightened his back—straightened it as far as it would straighten, that is. Then he said, impressively:

  ‘You was too quick, you was, miss. You didn’t give me no time, see? I’m a-goin’ hin!’

  He marched to the door, but even though he knew the room was empty, he hesitated for an instant on the brink. Almost pitch-dark, for the light that should have entered the window was practically fogged out, it looked a gloomy hole. He could just discern the outline of the table in the middle of the room, and of a chair that seemed to have been hastily shoved aside. Yes, a very gloomy hole—yet a palace of delight to another Ben was soon to enter.

  ‘I thought you were going “hin”?’ observed a sarcastic voice behind him.

  ‘So I am goin’ hin,’ retorted Ben, ‘but I ain’t no hexpress trine!’

  He entered cautiously. She had said the room was empty, but, after all, there might be somebody under the table, or behind that big arm-chair in the corner. He groped about, and suddenly, like a child anxious to get a nasty business over, he bent down and lifted an edge of the table-cloth. That he saw nothing was, at first, no proof that there was nothing to see, because in his terror lest he should see a pair of eyes staring out at him, he had instinctively closed his own eyes. But when he opened them, they met blankness, and he breathed again.

  ‘Thank Gawd!’ he murmured. ‘This is a narsty bizziness, s’elp me it is!’

  His mind relieved, he now proceeded to examine the room with elaborate thoroughness. If the Merchant Service had lagged behind a little, it would at least prove that, when it once tackled a job, it tackled it properly. Ben examined the table, noting the half-finished meal (which in other circumstances he would very promptly have finished), and then he looked behind all the chairs—yes, even the big ones with the backs you couldn’t see round. He did take one curtain for granted, but he prodded the other one, and, as he did so, something slipped off the bottom of it.

  ‘’Allo—wot’s this?’ he queried.

  He stooped and picked up the object. In the gloom he could hardly distinguish what it was, but it appeared to be a small cardboard ticket or badge. He struck a match. The light flared abruptly upon a number, written large upon the cardboard’s surface.

  ‘Seventeen,’ muttered Ben, staring at it. ‘Wot the ’ell’s that mean? Number Seventeen!’

  He dropped the match suddenly. Someone had entered the bar parlour from the road. He could hear the steps. Lummy!

  Then he smiled.

  ‘Idjut!’ he thought. ‘’Er father come ’ome, o’ course!’

  He strode out of the room, making a brave show, and nearly fell into the arms of a policeman.

  ‘Hallo!’ exclaimed the policeman. ‘Wot’s this?’

  For a moment, Ben was wordless—he never did feel really comfortable with policemen—and the woman explained.

  ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about him. But I’m glad you’ve come—there’s been funny goings on here, I can tell you.’

  ‘Yes, that’s why I’ve come,’ answered the constable. ‘This is pickpockets’ weather, and I’ve seen some funny characters round about here.’ He looked at Ben suspiciously. ‘I ain’t too sure this isn’t one of ’em!’

  ‘’Oo? Me?’ expostulated Ben indignantly. ‘Well, if that ain’t sorse! ’Ere I stays, ter proteck a gal, and now you comes along—’

  ‘Steady, steady!’ interposed the constable. ‘There’s funny people about, I tell you, and I’ve seen some of them about this place. One ran out of this inn just now, but I couldn’t catch him.’

  ‘Yes, there was something funny about him,’ agreed the woman. ‘He left in a hurry, without even finishing his meal.’

  ‘And I expect this man would have left in a hurry too,’ observed the constable, ironically. ‘Open your hand! What have you got there?’

  ‘Wot, this?’ answered Ben. ‘Picked it up in that room there jest now. ’Ere—don’t snatch!’

  The constable whipped the piece of cardboard out of Ben’s hand.

  ‘Hallo!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘My age,’ replied Ben.

  ‘Now, then, don’t be funny,’ frowned the constable.

  ‘Well, ’ow do I know wot it is,’ retorted Ben. ‘You ain’t give me time to look yet. Got it off the floor—’

  ‘Yes, so you say,’ interposed the constable, and turned to the woman. ‘Have you seen this before?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘He says he picked it off the floor in the next room.’

  ‘Well, he may have done so.’

  ‘Were you in the next room before him?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘And you didn’t see anything on the floor?’

  ‘No. But it was dark. I didn’t look everywhere. I expect it belonged to that other man.’

  ‘Oh, you do? Well, that’s got to be proved, and meanwh
ile it’s on this man—’

  ‘Yes, but what is it, anyway?’ asked the woman, trying to get a peep at it.

  ‘Something—mighty queer,’ replied the constable darkly. ‘Don’t ask no questions, and you won’t be told no lies. But I dare say our friend here—’

  He turned to Ben. But Ben was gone. He had decided to forgo his Carlton luncheon.

  3

  Ben Finds His Port

  Swallowed completely by the fog, for the first time Ben appreciated it. Perhaps he had left the inn more hurriedly than wisely, and the sacrifice of a good square meal certainly rankled in his hungry breast. But Ben liked a quiet life—he had only chosen the sea because it took him away from the land—and it had seemed to him that he had been caught up in a network of uncomfortable matters which were no concern of his, and for which he was in no way responsible. That being so, he argued that the best thing he could do was to cut quite clear of them, and to begin, so to speak, afresh.

  The constable may have been talking through his hat, of course. He may have been saying more than he meant. But, contrariwise, he may have meant more than he said, and Ben did not see why he should take any chances. Particularly with a nice, comfortable, all-concealing fog just outside.

  So into the fog he had slipped, and through it he now ran, in the innocent belief that his troubles were over. He managed to steer an uninterrupted course for a full ten minutes, and then the person he bumped into was nothing more alarming than an elderly gentleman with a bad corn.

  ‘Where are you going to?’ barked the elderly gentleman.

  ‘Sime spot as you was,’ replied Ben, hunger and the fog rendering him something of a daredevil.

  As he hurried on, he recalled the gleam of the elderly gentleman’s gold watch-chain, and he wondered how many square meals that could have been converted into.

  ‘It’s a lucky thing fer gold watches,’ he reflected, ‘that me mother taught me ter say me prayers reg’lar!’

  Presently, feeling secure, he slackened his pace; and indeed this was necessary, for although he could not see London, he felt it beginning to envelop him. Houses loomed up, when he hit one side of the road or the other. People became more frequent, and meetings ceased to be events, or bumpings to surprise. Traffic groped and hooted along the road, lamp-posts dawned—a mile away one moment and upon you the next—and, every now and again, voices were suddenly raised in warning, or anxiety, or irony.

  The fog entered Ben’s brain, as well as his eyes. Soon, he was walking in a sort of a trance. If you had stopped him and asked where he was walking, he could not have told you, and he might have had difficulty, also, in telling you why he walked—until, at any rate, he had had several seconds to consider the matter. He was travelling very much like a rudderless ship, borne by the tide into whatever port, or on to whatever rocks, that tide decreed.

  But, at last, Ben’s dormant will did assert itself for a brief instant, though even here Fate selected the particular restaurant into which he turned, to add another link to the strange chain that was binding him. It was, of course, a cheap restaurant, for an out-of-work seaman can patronise no other, and it was nearly empty. Ben shuffled to a pew-like seat with a high back, sat down, and ordered a cup of tea and as much bread-and-butter as would be covered by fourpence. Then he settled himself to his simple meal, comparing it regretfully with the more lavish repast he had missed earlier in the day.

  He was seated near the end of the long, narrow room, and only one table lay beyond—a table completely hidden by the high back of his bench. He had vaguely imagined this end table to be unoccupied, but suddenly a word fell upon his ears, and he paused in the act of conveying a substantial piece of bread-and-butter to his mouth. For the word he had heard was ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘That’s rum,’ he thought. ‘Seems as if I can’t git away from the blinkin’ number terday!’

  He cocked his ears. Soon, another voice made a remark—a girl’s voice this time. The first voice had been a man’s.

  ‘Isn’t there any other way?’ asked the girl’s voice.

  It was sullen and dissatisfied, and the man’s voice replied somewhat tartly:

  ‘What other way do you suggest?’

  Apparently the girl made no response, for the man repeated his question, as though nervous and irritated.

  ‘Oh, I don’t care,’ said the girl’s voice, in accents suggesting the accompaniment of a shrug. ‘It’s all the same in the end.’

  ‘That’s where you’re a fool!’ rasped the man’s voice. It was kept low, but Ben had no difficulty in hearing the words. ‘It’s not the same in the end. There’s a hell of a difference!’

  ‘To you, I dare say.’

  ‘And to you, to. Why—’ The remark was interrupted by the dull sound of a train. Evidently, there was a line running past the back of the shop. ‘That’s a bit funny, isn’t it?’ exclaimed the man’s voice.

  ‘What’s funny?’ demanded the girl’s voice.

  ‘Why—that train.’

  ‘I can’t see where the fun comes in.’

  ‘’Ear, ’ear,’ thought Ben. ‘Wot’s funny in a trine—hexcep’ when it’s on time?’

  The voices ceased, and the piece of bread-and-butter completed its postponed journey to Ben’s mouth. While it was followed by another, and another, Ben tried to visualise the owners of the voices. It may be mentioned that he visualised them all wrong. The man developed in his mind like Charlie Peace, and the girl like Princess Mary.

  He began to fall into a reverie, but all at once he cocked his ears again. The conversation behind him was being resumed.

  ‘Well, well, we needn’t decide this minute,’ muttered the man, ‘but the only thing I can see is Number Seventeen.’

  ‘Blimy, and it’s the on’y thing I can ’ear,’ thought Ben.

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ retorted the girl. ‘You’re getting nervy.’

  ‘Nervy, is it?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing’s happened to worry about yet. Why, we’ve only just—’

  ‘Quiet!’ whispered the man fiercely. ‘Haven’t you got any sense at all?’

  After a short silence, the girl’s voice remarked, with irony:

  ‘I haven’t had much up till now. But it’s coming.’

  ‘A bit cryptic, aren’t you, my girl?’ observed the man.

  ‘Then here’s something else cryptic,’ she answered. ‘Why will some people persist in wearing blinkers?’

  ‘Now we’re goin’ ter ’ave a little dust-up,’ thought Ben. ‘Two ter one on the gal!’

  The dust-up did not materialise, however. Instead, a bulky form materialised, walking up the shop. It was the bulky form of a policeman, and the policeman entered Ben’s pew, and sat down opposite him.

  ‘Well, I’m blowed!’ thought Ben. ‘This is my lucky dye! Thank Gawd, the bobbies don’t turn hup in seventeens!’

  The policeman looked at Ben, and nodded.

  ‘Pretty thick outside there, isn’t it?’ he remarked.

  ‘Yus,’ answered Ben.

  ‘Worst fog I ever remember,’ continued the policeman. ‘Looks as if it’s going to last a week.’

  ‘Yus,’ said Ben.

  The policeman smiled. ‘Putting something warm inside you, eh?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, tea’s better than beer.’

  ‘No. I means, yus.’

  ‘How would you like another cup?’

  Ben began to grow suspicious. People were not usually kind to him unless they had some ulterior motive.

  ‘No, thanks, guv’nor,’ he mumbled, rising abruptly. ‘I got an appointment.’

  The policeman looked at him rather hard.

  ‘Where are you going to sleep tonight?’ he asked.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw the waitress approaching.

  ‘’Aven’t reely decided yet,’ he answered. ‘Is the Ritz any good?’

  ‘Fourpence,’ said the waitress.

  While Ben forked out, t
he policeman seemed to be looking at him rather harder. In fact, he was so interested in Ben’s pockets, that Ben turned them inside out.

  ‘No deception, guv’nor,’ he remarked. ‘There goes the end of it.’

  ‘Then it don’t look much like the Ritz for you,’ observed the policeman. ‘But, of course, if you’d done a little post-office robbery today, now, you’d keep your notes in some other pocket, wouldn’t you?’ Ben stared at him, and the policeman laughed. ‘Your face tells your story, mate, as well as your pockets,’ he said. ‘Here’s a shilling for that bed at the Ritz.’

  Ben began to readjust his ideas about the police force.

  ‘Wot’s this?’ he asked. ‘A catch?’

  ‘That depends on you,’ smiled the policeman, and tossed him the coin.

  Ben caught it. It occurred to him that, if he stayed any longer, he might grow sentimental, or the policeman might want his shilling back. Both events would be pitiable. So, slipping the coin into his pocket, he murmured, ‘Toff, guv’nor, yer are—stright!’ and shuffled out of the shop.

  Through the fog once more Ben resumed his strange way, drawing nearer and nearer every moment to the unseen port that was waiting for him. Warmed by the tea, and cheered by his unexpected affluence, he groped his way along while the short day began to slip unnoticed into evening. The death of the day was not marked by gathering darkness, but by a change in the texture of a darkness already present.

  ‘Wunner wot it’s orl abart?’ reflected Ben. ‘Fust that there ticket I picked up in that there pub—Number Seventeen—and then that there tork in that there restrong—Number Seventeen agin. And then them bobbies. And then that feller leavin’ in the middle of ’is meal like that. And then that fice at the winder—Gawd, that give me the creeps, stright! And then those two quarrellin’ quiet-like, and then that bobby torkin’ ter me abart a post-orfice robbery, and then givin’ me a shillin’ becos’ o’ me angel-fice … It’s rum, ’owever yer looks at it … ’Allo. Steady, there!’

  He had swerved against a parapet, and as he collected himself and began to swerve away again, a faint, muffled sound rushed by on the other side of the wall.

  ‘Trine,’ thought Ben, and his mind harped back to the reference to the train in the restaurant. ‘Wot’s funny abart a trine?’