Blindfold (2 page)

He left that. The immediate question was, what next? He supposed the police, and groaned in spirit. He foresaw an endless vista of the most devastatingly bromidic interviews in which he supplied earnest and well-meaning officials with his entire history from the cradle to what interviews call present day, while in return they assured him that they would do their best to trace his money—and his letter of credit—his passport—his luggage check.

He found himself presently in the middle of such an interview.

“My name is Miles Clayton. I am a British subject. I have just landed at Dover and come up by the boat train.”

The man whom he was addressing said, “Wait a minute, sir,” and melted away. He was a fat man with rather a sympathetic face.

After about five minutes he was replaced by a little ginger-headed man with a swivel eye. Miles began all over again.

“My name is Miles Clayton. I am a British subject. I have just landed at Dover and come up by the boat train.”

The little man stabbed an official pen into an official ink-pot, cast a large blob of ink upon the table at which he had seated himself, and called back over his shoulder.

“George, did you fill up those forms?”

There was a thick fog outside, and a good deal of it hung about the corners of this office. From one of its dingier recesses the voice of George made answer. It said,

“No.”

“Then get on with it!” said the ginger-headed man. He turned back to Miles, stabbed with his pen again, and said,

“Now, sir, what about it?”

Miles said his piece all over again. He thought this was the sixth time, if you counted the two porters and the ticket-inspector.

“My name is Miles Clayton …”

This time he got it all off his chest, and was edified by the sight of the official pen taking official notes.

“You see, it's damned awkward about my luggage,” said Miles.

The official pen travelled squeakily over the official paper.

After a short interval Miles repeated his remark.

The pen continued to squeak.

Miles went on talking.

“You see, it really is damned awkward, because I've got no hand-luggage. My suit-case gave up the ghost in Paris, so I chucked it away and booked everything through. Hotels don't smile on you if you arrive without any luggage.”

The ginger-headed man dipped his pen fiercely in the ink and went on writing.

Miles continued to talk. He had a friendly disposition, and he had been looking forward with immense pleasure to being in England again. He had had three very pleasant years in New York, but London was London, and old Macintyre's wild goose chase was a bit of all right as far as he was concerned. Just at the moment joyous reunion with his native land was not going quite as well as he had hoped. On the other hand if, as seemed probable, the ginger-headed man had a human heart somewhere under that official uniform, it might possibly be softened to the extent of permitting him to remove at least one of his trunks to an hotel.

It was a hope which perished in the cradle. The ginger-headed man broke suddenly into his conversation with a request for a signature.

“Name
and
address, sir, if you please.”

“But I haven't got an address. You know, you haven't really been listening—I thought you hadn't. Now look here—I arrived in Paris from New York a week ago. And I arrived in Dover from Paris this evening. You don't want my New York address. You don't want my Paris hotel. And if you'll tell me how I'm to scrape up an address in London when I haven't got any money and I haven't got any luggage, I'll be most uncommonly obliged to you.”

It wasn't any good, not as far as to-night was concerned anyhow. He could come back in the morning and they would see what could be done.

Miles went along to a telephone-box and rang up Archie Welling—that is to say he rang up the Wellings' house—only to be informed after considerable delay by an agitated and breathless female voice that Mr Archie was out of town.

Miles considered. He had never met Mr and Mrs Welling, but they must know he was coming over. He asked if he could speak to Mr Welling. The female voice, very flustered, said that Mr Welling was away, and saved him the trouble of asking for Mrs Welling by adding, “They're all away, sir.” Whereupon a second female voice said in a hissing whisper, “'Ush! You shouldn't ha' said that,” and the line went dead.

He stood in the box and tried to think of anyone else whom he could ring.… Mrs Brian?… Her name wasn't in the directory.… The Maberlys were in Egypt, and Tubby was in Scotland.… Gilmore—there wasn't an earthly chance of connecting with Gilmore till he reached office to-morrow.… He couldn't think of anyone else.

He ran through his pockets and discovered that a single penny represented his cash in hand. You can't get a bed for a penny. What an ass he had been to run himself out of change. If he hadn't—well, what was the good of saying that now? He had, and there was an end of it.

He looked at his wrist-watch. Just on eleven, and a beast of a foggy night. If it hadn't been for the fog, they'd have been in hours ago.

Eleven.… By ten o'clock next morning he could start looking up Gilmore at his office and all would be well. Meanwhile he had eleven hours to put in, and a penny in hand.

He walked out of the station into the fog.

CHAPTER III

A church clock some-where in the fog struck three. The strokes sounded dead and far away. Miles Clayton wondered whether it wouldn't have been better to have kept on moving. If it hadn't been for the fog, he would rather have enjoyed seeing what London looked like at night. But where were you to go when you couldn't see a yard before your face? He had found himself on the Embankment, felt his way to a bench, and stayed there until a policeman came and moved the whole benchful on. He was now in some sort of niche or embrasure behind a group of statuary. He knew this because he had barked his shin on the stone plinth and, groping, had encountered a horrid mass of monumental drapery. He was cold and stiff, and most unutterably bored.

A small whispering voice said in the dark beside him,

“They might leave you be!”

The voice didn't seem to be addressing anyone; it just complained out loud because it had been moved on, and the night was long, and the fog was cold, and the stone of the seat was so hard. It was rather a pretty little voice, a girl's voice. It sounded young. Miles found himself speaking to it.

“It's not so long to morning now.”

“They keep moving you on so!” said the voice. “A shame, I call it!”

“Well, it stretches one's legs.”

Someone on the other side of him, a man, gave a ghastly hollow groan.

The girl's voice said, “Ooh!” and came a little nearer. Miles could feel its owner pressing up against him with a shiver. After a moment she said, “D'you know why they move them on? Bound to do it they are, every two hours regular. I've got a friend that's got a cousin in the p'lice, and he says it's in case anyone goes and dies afore morning—that's what he says. He says he'd get into awful trouble if anyone was found dead on his beat and they'd been dead more than two hours, so they just keep moving them along. But I call it a shame all the same.” She gave another shiver. “I've never been out all night before. Have you?”

“No, I haven't.”

Flossie Palmer hesitated. His voice sounded nice—quite like a gentleman's voice. Oh well, there were all sorts out of work nowadays. Aunt 'ud have a fit—but then Aunt would have a fit anyway if she knew that her own sister's daughter was spending the night on the Embankment along with a lot of tramps. She gave her head its little characteristic toss and said with a sort of whispering eagerness,

“My name's Flossie. What's yours?”

“Miles.”

“That's funny. D'you mean that's your Christian name?”

“Yes. It means a soldier.”

“Are you a soldier?” Aunt had always warned her specially about soldiers.

“No, I'm a secretary,” said Miles Clayton.

“Out of a job, I s'pose?”

He laughed a little.

“No—I've got quite a good job. It sounds awfully silly, but I've just come over from America, and someone pinched my pocket-book, so I haven't any money, and they won't let me take my luggage away, and I can't get hold of anyone I know until to-morrow.”

“Ooh!” said Flossie on a soft breath of sympathy. “What's it like in America?”

He laughed with real amusement.

“Oh, I like it.”

“Then why've you come back here?”

“To look for a needle in a bundle of hay.”

“What's that?”

“Well, that's what I call it. I've got to look for a girl no one's heard about since she was ten days old. I don't know her name and I don't know where to look for her. Don't you call that hunting for a needle in a bundle of hay?”

“Sounds a bit like it,” said Flossie. A quick shiver ran over her and she edged a little nearer.

“Are you awfully cold?” said Miles.

“No—I got my coat.” She shivered again, because when she said that, it all came over her. The coat snatched down from its peg. The bolt on the area door—it had pinched her finger, but she hadn't felt it till afterwards. And then the panic-stricken flight up the steps and down the foggy street. She'd got to have someone to talk to, or she'd be seeing that black hole in the wall again, and the man's head with the blood running down. She drew in her breath with a shuddering sound, and heard Miles say in a voice of concern,

“I say, what's the matter? Are you ill?”

She said, “No—I got my coat.”

He could hear that her teeth were chattering. Then, between those chattering teeth, she said,

“I got a fright.”

The man who had groaned had made no sound since then. Miles was vaguely aware of him, slumped down in a heap. He and the girl might have been quite alone. They
were
alone. The fog shut them in. He could feel her shivering and trembling against him. She sounded very young. He said,

“What frightened you?”

“Ooh!” said Flossie. “It was awful, Mr Miles—it was,
reelly!”

She didn't care what Aunt or anyone would say. If she didn't tell someone, she'd go potty, and even Aunt couldn't say that he wasn't behaving like a perfect gentleman. Come to that, she could have done with a bit of an arm round her—it 'ud have been company in the dark and no harm done. She slipped her hand inside the arm she was leaning against and her teeth stopped chattering.

“It was awful, Mr Miles—it was,
reelly!
I just run out of the house like I was, in my cap an' apron, only I took off the cap and put it in my pocket, and if I hadn't grabbed my coat as I came through the passage, I wouldn't have nothing round me and I'd have got my death as like as not.”

“What frightened you?”

She really had a pretty voice. The London accent struck pleasantly on his ear. It went with that breathless whispering way she talked.

“What frightened you?”

Flossie settled down to enjoy herself. Holding on to his arm like that made her feel quite safe. Coo! Wouldn't Ernie be wild if he could see her now? The thought of Ernie's probable state of mind imparted a pleasant glow. Ernie was all right, but he'd better not start any of that sheikh stuff with her.

“Well, it's like this,” she said. “I got a girl friend, Ivy Hodge her name is, and she was all fixed up to go to a place—house-parlour with an old invalid lady who doesn't hardly ever come out of her room. Leastways I s'pose she's old, but Ivy never seen her, and no more did I.”

Miles felt a very languid interest in the affairs of Ivy Hodge, but he liked the little whispering Cockney voice at his shoulder. Hard lines on a kid like that to be out all night in this fog.

He put in an encouraging “Well?”

“Well, it was a bit funny, don't you think? No one seeing her, I mean. They just rang up the registry in an awful hurry, and they took up her reference on the 'phone, and would she come in to-morrow? And my girl friend said she would. You see, she'd had the worst row ever with her fiongcey. The banns was up and all, but she said to me, ‘I don't care, dear—if I was half-way through the marriage service and he demeaned himself to speak to me the way he spoke to me yesterday, I'd say no and I'd mean no, same as I've said it now. And if he thinks he can come smarming and making it up, he'll find out where he's made a mistake, because I've just been to the registry and there's a place all ready for me to step into, and a pound more than I've had yet.' Kind of proud and independent Ivy is, and she was all worked up. See?”

Miles said he saw.

Flossie was feeling better every moment. She went on eagerly.

“That was yesterday, and this afternoon she come round and told me they'd made it up. You could have knocked me down with a feather—you could reelly. Seems he went down on his knees and said he'd drown himself—and of course she didn't want him to do that. So then she put it to me, what about me taking the place instead of her? And I said, ‘Well, I might, but I haven't got a reference only as a general, and I've been out best part of a year because of Aunt being ill and wanting me to help at home.' And she says, ‘Well, dear, why not go as me? It's no odds to anyone what you call yourself that I can see.' And so that's how we fixed it up.” A slightly dubious tone came into Flossie's voice. “It wasn't hurting anyone, you see.”

“You might have got into rather a mess,” said Miles.

Flossie shivered.

“I s'pose I didn't ought to have done it—but I'd had a row too—with Aunt. Threw it up at me she did that I hadn't been earning. And how she'd the face, when it was her that made me leave because she'd fell downstairs and broke her leg! Well, I didn't feel like staying after that, so I told Ivy I'd take her place for her, and I put my brush and comb and my night-things in a parcel and my coat over my uniform, and I went round to 16 Varley Street and said I was Ivy Hodge. Just about nine o'clock in the evening it was, because Ivy'd let me have her black dress and I'd had to take it in.”