Hue and Cry (11 page)

What can you do with three and ninepence farthing, when the police are after you and you have simply
got
to get away and hide? How far can you get with three and ninepence farthing?

Mally bit her lip, because the answer was certainly, “Not nearly far enough.”

When her pennyworth was up, she got out of the bus, and watched it go rumbling and clattering away, with something of the same feeling with which a marooned sailor watches his departing ship. She was at the junction of two streets—one dark and quiet, the other more brightly lighted and full of the roar of traffic. She did not know the names of either of these streets, and she had no idea where she was.

She began to walk down the darker street because it occurred to her that if she stood still, people would notice her and wonder what she was doing. She walked as far as the next crossing, and then turned back again because the road ahead had a deserted look and instinct turned her towards the lights. She walked slowly and tried to think. It was raining, with the sort of icy rain which might turn to snow at any moment; it was very cold.

Mally reached the lighted corner, turned it, and walked on down the street. It was about seven hours since she had had anything to eat. Every time she began to think about her plans, irrelevant visions of hot soup, and penny buns, and muffins, and buttered eggs, and mince pies, kept bobbing up and down and interrupting her train of thought.

It was because of this confusion in her mind that she did not at first perceive that she was being followed. She was waiting on the curb to let the incoming traffic from a side road go by, when some one whispered in her ear. The whisper was sound, not words, to Mally. She said involuntarily, “I beg your pardon,” and turned her head.

A man was standing quite close to her, smiling; and at the sight of his smile Mally ran in front of a taxi, dodged round a bus, collided violently with a stout old gentleman, and narrowly missing a private car, arrived breathlessly on the opposite pavement and fled along it without looking back. She was angry, but she was also frightened. No one had ever looked at her like that before, and it filled her with a shuddering rage.

When she had run about twenty yards, she took a pull on herself and slowed to a walk. “You little fool—little
idiot
! You're not to run. You'll make every one look at you. Stop at once and walk properly.”

She stopped, and began to walk properly. It wasn't very easy, because she was feeling creepy-crawly all down her back with the thought of what might be coming up behind her. “You're not to look round—it's the worst thing you can do—you mustn't do it.” And at once she did look round. The man with the smile was about a dozen yards behind. Mally's heart gave a loud, hard thump, and she began to run again.

This part of the street was rather empty. There were houses on either side, which showed no lights; the shops were all shut; and there did not seem to be a policeman anywhere. Mally was fleet of foot, and the man behind her not desirous of making himself conspicuous by running. His idea was to wait until she was out of breath and then come up with her comfortably. It was quite a good idea, but Mally spoiled it by taking cover just as her breath really did begin to fail. She saw, on her right, three steps leading up to an open doorway from which a light was shining. A light meant people, and people meant safety. That, at least, was the way in which it looked to Mally.

She ran up the steps and into a paved and empty hall from which a stone stair wound upwards. There was no one there, and there was no sign of a lift. But it was at least a place where she might take breath. Perhaps the creature who was following would think she lived there and go away.

The thought had hardly come and gone before he was peering round the door. Without an instant's hesitation Mally ran up the stairs. Once started, she was quite unable to stop. The stair went up and round, and round and up, and up and round again. There were doors with names on them, but Mally never paused to see what the names might be. She ran with all the desperate energy of panic until she had reached the very topmost floor, and there—oh, joy!—was a door that stood ajar.

Mally leaned against the jamb and panted. Her legs felt like the dangling legs of a marionette; they shook and threatened to give way beneath her. She held on to the jamb, and from inside the room she heard a murmuring voice repeating strange words in a sort of fervent whisper. It was a man's voice, and the words sounded, as Mally said afterwards, “utterly balmy.”

“Spatial,” said the voice in earnest tones. “Spatial; glacial; racial; facial; palatial.” A deep groan followed.

Mally pushed the door a little wider and beheld an attic room, a littered table, and a young man in his shirt-sleeves sitting before a pile of smudgy manuscript. The right-hand cuff of the young man's shirt was in an extremely disintegrated condition, and would certainly have fallen off if it had not been secured to the sleeve by no fewer than three black safety pins.

The oddness of seeing three black safety pins together had an extremely calming and reassuring effect upon Mally. She stepped into the room, closed the door behind her, and said “Please.”

The young man lifted his head. He bore an astonishing resemblance to a half-grown sandy cat, and it was out of eyes of a milky blue that he looked vaguely at Mally and repeated tentatively:

“Peaks glacial; æther spatial; torrents facial.”

There was a slight tinge of defiance about the last word; the pale-blue eyes held a hint of obstinacy.

“Torrents
what
?” said Mally. She was now feeling completely reassured. This was an authentic poet in an authentic garret, and poet and garret were both as harmless as could be.

“Facial,” said the young man. “I
said
facial.”

“I know you said it. But what on earth does it mean?”

“It means torrents that run down the face of rocks.”

Mally sat down on a very rickety chair and began to laugh.

“Torrents do run down the face of rocks,” protested the injured poet.

Mally groped in her coat pocket for her handkerchief. It was still soaking wet with the tears of rage which she had shed in the flat. She made it a little wetter still with tears of pure laughter. Then she shook her head.

“Ah,” said the poet moodily. “It's always the same. Anything original, anything distinctive, and the disintegrating tooth of destructive criticism battens on it—positively battens.”

“Don't!” said Mally.
“Don't!”
She clutched her side. It was better to laugh than to cry. But she didn't really want to do either; she wanted something to eat.

The young man took up his pile of manuscript and cast it passionately on the floor.

“All right—have it your own way—
have
it your own way! Why do I write? Why does any one write? What's the good of it? Why didn't I go into an office?”

“I don't know,” said Mally politely.

With startling suddenness the injured poet became a humanly inquisitive young man. He looked at Mally as though seeing her for the first time, said “Hallo!” in a puzzled tone, and inquired:

“I say, do you want anything?”

“Yes,” said Mally, “I want something to eat.”

“Something to eat?”

Mally repeated her remark in tones of most creditable firmness:

“Something to
eat
—E—A—T,
eat.”

The poet's mouth dropped open on one side. It was ten o'clock at night; Castleby was out, and wouldn't be back this side of midnight; he, Wilfrid, was alone, absolutely alone and unprotected; and here was a strange girl blowing in from nowhere at all and wanting something to eat. It was a most extraordinary situation. It was so extraordinary that the glacial peaks, the spatial æther, and all the rest of it faded away and were not.

For one insane moment Wilfrid Witherby actually wished that his Aunt Judith were present. His nerve failed him and, reverting to the stammer so severely checked by Aunt Judith in his childhood, he said:

“What s-s-s-sort of thing t-to eat?”

A hopeful gleam brightened in Mally's eye.

“Anything.
I'm
starving.”

“St-t-tarving!”

“
Yes.
I
am.
Have you any soup—or coffee—or sardines—or—or bully beef—or buns? Because I could eat them all.”

“B-b—buns?”

“Anything,”
said Mally desperately. She began to have a low opinion of his intelligence.

“We haven't got any b-b-buns.”

Mally sprang up and beat her hands together.

“Don't keep on saying buns, or I shall scream.
Have
you got anything to eat, or haven't you?”

“C-c-castleby has some b-b-biscuits.”

Mally uttered a cry of joy.

“Where are they?”

As in a trance, Mr. Witherby rummaged in a corner of the room and produced a tin box without a lid. He set it on the table.

“They're g-g-gingernuts. Castleby likes ginger-nuts. Personally I think they're foul.”

Mally drew the rickety chair up to the littered table and began to eat gingernuts. They were not good gingernuts, being soft and no longer in their first youth; but there were plenty of them. Mally ate about a pound and a half, and then demanded something to drink.

“There isn't anything to drink.”

Wilfrid had recovered his speech, but was still conscious of feeling rather dazed. Whilst Mally ate biscuits, he watched her with a fixed stare and the feeling that the whole thing was probably part of one of his odder dreams, and that at any moment Mally might melt into thin air or dissolve into somebody else.

“There isn't anything to drink,” he said.

“Nonsense!” said Mally. “There must be.”

“There isn't.”

“Don't you
wash
?”

“Oh,
water.”

It was quite obvious that Wilfrid did not regard water as something to drink. Mally looked at him reprovingly; she even reminded him for a moment of his Aunt Judith.

“Get me some water—please.”

The water, when it came, was not very nice; it had a vague, far-off taste of shaving soap about it. Thirsty as she was, Mally did not drink it all. When she had set down the cracked tumbler, she heaved a sigh and smiled a sudden, dazzling smile.

“Thank Mr. Castleby for his biscuits—won't you?” Then, quite shamelessly, she put half a dozen in her pocket. “Will he mind?” she asked, and smiled again.

Wilfrid decided that this was an agreeable dream and that he would like it to go on.

“He'll be d-d-delighted. He's an awfully good f-fellow—he really is. He's not a bit like what you'd expect a detective to be like.”

A nasty little cold shiver ran all up one side of Mally and all down the other. She picked up another gingernut and looked at it fixedly.

“Is Mr. Castleby a detective?”

“I should think he was. I should hate it myself, but he seems to like it. He's dashed off to-night on a v-very special job looking for this girl who's gone off.”

Mally, staring at the gingernut, saw it as a very large brown disc with a wavering edge. This was only for a moment. Then it was its natural size again; but her fingers had closed on it so hard that they had bent it out of shape. She put it thoughtfully into her pocket with the others, sucked a sticky finger, and smiled for the last time upon Wilfrid Witherby.

“Thank you so much for my kind supper,” she said, and was gone.

CHAPTER XIV

It may be said at once that Mr. Castleby's errand had nothing whatever to do with Mally Lee. If Mally had seen an evening paper, she would have discovered that the world of yellow journalism was concerning itself with the simultaneous disappearance of a certain Miss Ellen Marshman and the contents of her employer's till. Her own affair, nevertheless, was receiving the expert attention of Mr. Alfred Dawson, one of the brighter minions of Messrs. Makins and Poole.

Messrs. Makins and Poole were not a firm who suffered the grass to grow beneath their feet. On receiving Mr. Paul Craddock's telephoned instructions, they acted with commendable promptitude. Expense being no object, their Mr. Alfred Dawson departed for Lady Catherine Cray's flat in a taxi. It was not his fault that he arrived too late to see Mally get into her bus; but he certainly had a stroke of luck in encountering an injured lady who would have liked the seat which Mally took. She was a stout and voluble lady, and when she had a grievance, she wished the whole world to share it.

“Little bit of a chit of a thing, and me the mother of fifteen! Smacking—that's what girls want nowadays. And all mine had it and lived to be grateful for it when they'd got 'usbands of their own. Don't you take no lip from nobody, man or woman, not without you give back as good as you get. That's what I says to them all—‘I never took no lip from any of you, and well you knows it.' And—where was I, mister?”

Mr. Alfred Dawson, waiting for the next bus on the curb beside the voluminous lady, responded with professional politeness:

“You were telling me about the young lady who took your seat.”

The stout woman snorted.

“Lady indeed!
Lady
!” she snorted again. “I 'ope I'm a lady myself. And I 'ope I knows a lady when I sees one. Lady indeed!” She paused, and then went on with extreme rapidity and bitterness. “And as for that there conductor, if you want to know what I think of 'im—a squit of a fellow, the very moral of a rabbit, that oughter 'ave been drowned when 'e was born, instead of being dragged up by the scruff of 'is neck to insult respectable women at my time o' life, with 'is ‘Houtside—plenty of room houtside!' And I says to 'im—and I only 'opes as 'e 'eard me—‘
Houtside
yourself,' I says, ‘you and all such whipper-snappers.' And ‘make room,' I says, ‘for ladies that weighs double what you ever did or will do and isn't a-going to risk their necks a-climbing your back stairs.'”