The Tiger In the Smoke (24 page)

‘That's right,' said Roly.

‘Is it?' Doll's angry shrug warned him to keep out. ‘I figure 'e's a gonner any time now, and that won't suit nobody. Anyway, 'e's ‘armless, Gaffer.'

‘Who is he? One
of
you?' Havoc sounded as if he were being forced to listen to the troubles of children.

The countryman hesitated. As they would have explained in Tiddington, he felt he was on ‘the shaky lands'.

‘No,' he said finally. ‘'E ain't, more's the pity. 'E's a fellow 'oo was brought down 'ere when 'e was blind drunk. 'E 'ad a bit o' money on 'im and he lorst it, and then 'e turned nasty. We shook 'im up and there 'e is, and that's the gospel truth.'

The tale was such an ordinary one that it convinced even the two who knew it to be a lie. To them it appeared to be, as it were, a better truth. Havoc did not question it but he disliked inefficiency.

‘Why keep him?' he demanded. ‘Take him out and stick him in a doorway. In the fog you can't go wrong.'

‘We know.' The albino was humble. ‘We were going to. It's my fault we ain't done it yet. I figured 'e'd come round a bit, so we shouldn't 'ave to carry 'im. Now 'e don't look as if he's going to. Besides, we were a bit windy. We didn't know if 'e'd bin missed.'

‘So that's why one of you went down early to get a paper?'

‘That's it, that's it, Gaffer. That's 'ow we come to see your picture.' Bill was hopping with delight at the fortuity of the story. ‘It gives you the creeps, don't it, how it all fits in?'

The flat blue eyes rested on him darkly. ‘Something has slipped.' There was superstition as well as resentment in his voice. ‘Someone has gone soft. I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't the whole darned town. It's a pity about Duds. I could use him.'

‘You've got us.' Bill was jealous and moved closer. Havoc fanned him away.

‘You're right. My God I have! You want us over there, do you, Corporal?' He got up and swaggered across the room, a sound and even splendid animal in every rippling muscle.

In the darkness under the blanket Geoffrey lay still. He had not been able to hear a word of Doll's explanation and had no idea what was going to happen to him as the men trooped over. One thing he did know was that he was helpless. His feet and hands had been numb for some time, and although this meant that his cords no longer burnt him, his legs and arms ached dully and frighteningly as though they could never regain their use. The gag was nauseating, but he could breathe, for the blanket, although covering his head, was carefully loose about him.

His heart sank when they ignored him and sat down. He had not under-estimated Doll.

Havoc sat with his back to the bed, with the albino on his right and the other two on his left. The wide sweep of the cellar lay before him.

‘They're quiet because they're windy.' Tiddy Doll's voice sounded in the prisoner's ear, it was so close. ‘They're all right, Gaffer. They don't look much, but I don't want 'em to. I picked 'em for their looks. It's their looks that bring the business. They're all right if handled right.'

Havoc made an impatient gesture and Roly intervened nervously.

‘You can't tell the Gaffer nothing about men, Tiddy. He could always size a bloke up. That's what we noticed in the army. There'll be no trouble with our lot, Gaffer, so long as they get their grub.'

‘That's what I was coming to.' Tiddy took over firmly. ‘It ain't long now before we'll be thinking of a bit of breakfast. Breakfast is important for morale, like they used to say. Usually we all go down to a little place just at the back of the market 'ere. There's an old couple keeps it and they expect us. My idea is we'd better go same as we always do. No one will look at us then, but if we don't turn up people might start thinking. Why don't you come with us? You'd be lorst amongst us if you changed your clothes, and if you wanted to 'ide your face with a bit of bandage, well, there'd be nothing out of the ordinary in that, would there, not among us? It could be a reccey, a sort of try-out.'

‘What kind of place?' The smooth voice was interested.

‘Small,' Doll said quickly, ‘but there's three doors.'

‘There's so much steam in the room you can't see across it.' Bill giggled self-consciously. He was growing a dreadful new refinement in imitation of the newcomer. ‘No one there would recognize you. But are you going to trust
us
, that's what it comes to?'

‘That's what I was coming to,' Doll cut in. ‘The Gaffer's a judge of men, you say. Well then, 'e'll know I'm right. We all know too much about this 'ere Treasure no one 'as spoke out about yet. We've been thinking of it, dreaming of it for years. The Gaffer 'as shown 'e knows we know. “Living like a lord”, 'e said. Well, that's what we all want to live like.' He made a sudden movement. ‘We've got to be in on it, Gaffer, ain't we? We've got to be in on it.'

‘But I always meant that you should.' Havoc was graceful even when giving ground. ‘You can take the place of Duds, Corporal. I always felt that the men who were there ought to share. The rest – '

‘I ain't thinking about the rest,' said Doll, keeping his voice down. ‘They'll do what I say, and I'll look after 'em, same as I always do. They'll live like lords' pals,' he added sardonically.

‘So I imagine.' The faint drawl was amused. ‘I let Roly into this thing long ago. He and Bill and Tom were with me, serving under me. I chose them.'

‘That's right, Gaffer. You was never one to let your mates down.' Roly spoke with hearty sententiousness and was unprepared for the reaction, which was instant.

‘Cut that.' There was an alarmed note in the outburst. ‘Of course I was, and so is any man who isn't mental. I never got taken in by that sort of cant. I chose you because I darned well needed you. I need you again, so I choose you again.'

The words slid over one another and the lisping accent of the smarter East End appeared with all its ingratiating warmth. He had become the Big Boy, the Clever Brother.

‘You don't often hear me praise myself,' he announced, sweeping them into his confidence, ‘but that's how I've got on, see? I face things. I know that if it didn't suit you to be trusted, I couldn't trust you. You'll hear grown men tell you straight that they trust someone because that person loves them, or thinks they're little tin gods or something. They're mad, aren't they? They're round the bend. Keep your feet on the ground. See straight. That's what I say every time.'

All trace of exhaustion seemed to have left him. He was getting energy back, sucking it out of his listeners apparently, in great vitalizing draughts.

‘Take the Doc who got me out without knowing what he was doing,' he went on. ‘He didn't face the fact that was under his nose and yet he knew. He
knew
, mind you. He said something one day which made me stare. He said “Oh, I see, Havoc. You believe with one of our great Prime Ministers that interest never lies.” You could have knocked me down! He knew it and then he couldn't see it. Naturally he had to pay, didn't he? He was asking for it. It wasn't me. I was only giving him what was coming to him.'

Only the man from Tiddington understood what he was saying and he did not like it.

‘That's sense,' he said cautiously. ‘As long as it's worth my while to go along with you I'll go along. That's me, Gaffer. That's fair.'

‘It's the living truth,' said Havoc. ‘You can forget the fairness.'

‘Did you
see
the stuff, Gaffer?' Despite himself, Roly could not keep quiet. ‘You never said. Did you see the stuff all lying there?'

The immemorial romance of treasure trove, gold in bars and jewels in bucketfuls spilling out over a cave, shone out of his ridiculous mind in glorious technicolor.

Havoc clicked his tongue against his teeth.

‘You sound like a kid dreaming of ice-cream,' he said. ‘No, of course I didn't see it. It was well hidden. That's why it's still there waiting for us, if we can pick it up quickly. Listen, this is what happened on the raid. After we'd done the job we were alone, Elginbrodde and me, in the house. The orders were that I was to do the necessary and he was to verify they were dead. He didn't like it, he wasn't that sort. He'd had his mind filled up with all sorts of fancy stuff the world has never had time for. He wasn't yellow, but he hadn't got what I have and wasn't expected to have. He got into the house and made the recce, and I went into the bedroom and did the job while he waited. When I came out he went in. He came back white as a paper bag, but quiet, as he always was, and gave me the okay. We had one or two things to do, and when they were done instructions were that we were to come out at once and get back to you on the beach before anyone came up the road. It was dead quiet. You could have heard a petrol engine coming five miles away. When we reached the little garden behind the house he stopped me.'

As he listened, Geoffrey caught some of the stillness of the spring night, the scent of the herbs in the little French close, the noise of the sea, soothing and for ever, and behind the two, in the bedroom still warm, the dreadful necessary thing.

The re-created atmosphere was all the more startling because Havoc had not found it terrible. It was his absence of emotion, his impersonal picture of the appalled young officer carrying out orders with a perfect but unfeeling weapon, as it were a living knife, which produced the horrific effect.

Havoc was still talking. ‘Elginbrodde said to me, “Keep a look-out a minute, will you, Sergeant? I just want to have a squint at something to see it's still all right.” He left me standing there, but presently I saw where he was from a glimmer from his pencil-torch. He had gone into a sort of stone hut there was by the wall. I went after him, naturally, because I didn't want to miss anything. The way he'd spoken had interested me, see? There he was, letting the little light spot over the stone. The place was empty as a poor-box. He told me afterwards it was an ice-house, a thing they had before fridges to keep the food in. It was just a bare hole with a decorated drain running through it, and a garden image at one end of that. There was nothing else so I said “They've got it, sir, have they?” He laughed. I just saw his teeth before the light went out. And he said “No, it's safe, thank God. They'll never find it now unless there's a direct hit, and then it'll hardly matter.”'

‘But he brought some of the stuff.' Roly's anxiety was pathetic. ‘He give us all a Souvenir. Don't you remember, Gaffer? 'E give us each – '

‘That was from the house.' The voice was soothing. ‘We'd got to make the Jerry think it was a burglary. That was the big idea. No one was to know it was enemy action. It was to look like a civvy job. The place was full of lovely stuff so I knew that if there was something hidden it must be damned well worth hiding. We just made a mess and cleared the gilt cabinets in the front room. Some of the bits Elginbrodde kept for you chaps, and we chucked the rest in the hedge. I kept one or two, but we were practically naked and we'd got to get back down that ruddy rock-face.'

‘You was a long time getting back.' Roly's resentment sounded across the years.

‘Of course we were. But that's how I came to know what I do. If you've forgotten the moon, I haven't. One minute the sky was like a featherbed and the next the blasted lamp shone out like a searchlight, and there was me and Elginbrodde on the brow of the cliff looking like a couple of lighthouses ourselves. We dropped and lay there. There was nothing for it but to wait. Elginbrodde kept thinking he heard a car coming up the lane. It was his windiness which made him talk. I saw I could handle him and I started asking him about the ice-house.

‘“What have you got down the well, sir?” I said. “The family plate?” He shook me. He wasn't thinking of me as another man at all, see? I was just his chap, an object he'd got to get back safely. It made him talk to me as if I was his rifle or something. “No, Sergeant,” he said, “that's the Santa Deal treasure there, and it's still all right. I didn't know about it until I was twenty-one or I'd have got it out of the country. By then it was just too late, and I had to hide it. I'm the last of us. No one knows now but I.” I did my best to make him repeat the name, but he wouldn't. It sounded like a ship's treasure to me.'

The secret of a ship's treasure handed down in a wealthy family to an orphan boy at twenty-one; technicolor was inadequate for that fantasy. It lit up the cellar with a radiance which was more enchanting than moonlight itself. Roly was past speech and Doll's mouth dry.

From the street above the sounds from the market were beginning to float down to them. The men on the other side of the room fidgeted a little but they did not move. Havoc's murmur, forceful with the weight of six years' dreaming, held his listeners spellbound.

‘Then I asked him what was going to happen if he got hit. “In that case it stays there for ever, I suppose?” I said.'

‘What did he say?' Roly was trembling.

‘He said the damnedest thing I ever heard a man say. He said “Then it'll be up to the man my wife marries. I've left full instructions in a sealed envelope, and he'll get it on his wedding day. She couldn't manage it alone, but she'll choose someone like me, always.”'

Lying on the sacks, his head not three feet from the speaker, Geoffrey felt his heart turn over slowly and painfully in his side.

This was the key. He heard the incredulous rumble from the others, like mutterings from another world, but he had recognized the unmistakable ring of truth in the reported words. Of course that was what Elginbrodde had done. When one knew Meg and old Avril, one realized that it was the only thing he could do. Moreover, it was exactly the bold, simple but unobvious step which in similar circumstances he must have taken himself.