Nordic and bewildered eyes frightened Entwhistle. They gave to Entwhistle, though he could not have expressed this, a curious uneasy feeling that perhaps there were no eyes behind them.
‘Where’s this damn letter? Come on, man, come on! Don’t keep me standing about here all day. It’s cold!’ The bulk of Mr Marsh shivered inside his dressing-gown. He thrust out an imperious hand.
Into this hand, Entwhistle put the letter. It was twitched from his fingers.
‘I’ll ’ave to trouble you for threepence, I’m afraid, sir.’
Mr Marsh made a noise in his throat; a savage animal noise; so fierce a noise that Entwhistle involuntarily backed two steps. But he stayed there. He stuck to his guns. He was, as he was overfond of saying, a man who knoo his dooty.
Mr Marsh was staring down at the envelope in his hands. A frown just showed above the tinted spectacles; white teeth below them glared out in a wild snarl. Mr Marsh was saying:
‘Damn greaser!’ and then a string of violent-sounding and most unpleasing words. He put his thumb, as Entwhistle watched, under the flap of the envelope and with a savage jerk freed its contents; a single sheet of typewritten paper. Mr Marsh read.
‘F. X. Benedik,’ growled Mr Marsh. And then another word. This time an English word which Entwhistle omitted when telling of the adventure to Mrs Entwhistle.
‘I’ll ’ave,’ began Entwhistle bravely, ‘to trouble you for …’ There was a flurry within the door. It slammed. The violence of the slamming detached a large flake of rotting timber which fell at Entwhistle’s feet.
Entwhistle pushed the postman’s hat forward on to the bridge of his snub nose. The stumpy fingers of his right hand scratched his back hair. What, he wondered, was he to do now? It did not, it must be noted, occur to him to knock at the door again. Mr Marsh might be good gossip, but Mr Marsh was most obviously not the sort of man for a peace-loving postman to annoy. But there was the excess fee and when he got to Fordfield he would have to account for that. Well, threepence isn’t much, but threepence is a half of Mild …
He was still debating within his slow mind when something—some hard, small, ringing thing—hit the peak of his cap with sharp violence. He started. The cap, dislodged by his jerk, fell off; rolled to the path. Bewildered, he looked down at it; stooped ponderously to pick it up. There beside it, glinting against a mossy flag, was a florin. Still squatting, Entwhistle looked up. The upstairs window was open again. From it there glared out Mr Marsh’s face. ‘It was,’ said Entwhistle to Mrs Entwhistle that evening, ‘like the face of a feen in ’uman shape. And,’ said Entwhistle, ‘he was laughin’. To ’ear that laugh would make any man’s blood run cold, and I don’t care ’oo ’e was. Laughin’ he was; laughin’ fit to burst hisself. What did I do? Well, I picks up the two-bob and me hat and I says as dignified like as I can: “You’ll be requirin’ your change, sir.” Just like that I said it, just to show him I wasn’t ’avin’ no nonsense. What does ’e say? When he’s finished laughin’ a few minutes later, he says; “You can keep the something change and swallow it!” Funny sort of voice he’s got—a violent sort of voice. That’s what he says; “You can keep the something change and you can something well swallow it!” What did I say? Well, I says, still calm and collected like: “D’you know, sir, throwin’ money like that, you might ’ave ’it me in the face,” and then ’e says: “Damn bad luck I didn’t!” just like that: “Damn bad luck I didn’t! You something off now or I’ll chuck something a bit heavier.”.’
Thus the indignant Entwhistle to his wife. Thus, later that same evening, the histrionic Entwhistle in the bar of The Coach and Horses. Thus the important Entwhistle in the Fordfield police station three days later.
2
James Wilberforce Burgess Junior was whipping his top upon the cement path outside Ockleton station booking office.
James Wilberforce Burgess Senior, Ockleton’s stationmaster, porter and level-crossing operator, watched for a moment with fatherly pride and then turned away to enter the hutch which was his booking office. He came out of the hutch a moment later a good deal faster than he had gone in. A sudden howl from James Wilberforce Junior had torn wailing way through the sunny morning.
James Wilberforce Junior was huddled against the wall with one hand at his ear and the other rubbing at his eyes. His top and his whip lay at his feet. Just within the doorless entrance was ‘that there Mr Marsh.’
The Ockleton Burgesses have not, for many generations, been renowned for physical courage. Some fathers—however big, however sinister-seeming, the assaulter of their innocent child—would have hit first and spoken afterwards. Burgess did not hit at all. He said, instead, a great deal. That there Mr Marsh stood in the shadow, the odd, pointed black hat tilted forward upon his head. The dark glasses made pits in his face instead of eyes; his white teeth gleamed when he smiled his savage, humourless and twisted smile. He seemed to Burgess, no less than previously to Entwhistle, ‘a feen in ’uman shape.’ He cut presently across the whiningly indignant outburst of outraged fatherhood. He said:
‘Cut it out! Cut it right out! I want a ticket for London.’ His deep, somehow foreign voice boomed round the tiny brick box.
‘Goin’ about,’ said James Wilberforce Burgess Senior, ‘strikin’ defenceless children! Don’t you know it’s dangerous to ’it a child on the yeerole?’
Mr Marsh took a step forward. Mr Burgess took three steps backwards. Mr Marsh pointed to the door of the ticket hutch. Mr Marsh said, and Mr Burgess swore afterwards that his teeth did not part when he said it:
‘Into the kennel you go, little puppy. And give me a ticket for London.’
Here Mr Marsh, Burgess reported, put his hand into his pocket and pulled out half a crown which, with a half-turn of his body, he threw to the still snivelling James Wilberforce Junior.
‘There,’ he said, ‘that’ll buy him a new ear! Blasted kid!’
‘All very well, sir,’ said Burgess, now speaking through the pigeon-hole, ‘walking about, striking defenceless children …’
Into the pigeon-hole Mr Marsh thrust his dark face.
‘Give me,’ said Mr Burgess afterwards, ‘a fair turn, sort of as if the devil was looking at you through a ’ole.’
Mr Marsh received his ticket. Mr Marsh was presently borne away by the 9.10 Slow Up from Ockleton. He had bought a day-return ticket.
Upon the Ockleton platform that night, there waited for Mr Marsh’s return not only James Wilberforce Burgess Senior but James Wilberforce Burgess Senior’s sister’s husband, one Arthur Widgery. This was a big and beery person whose only joy in life, after beer, was performing the series of actions which he invariably described as ‘drawin’ off of ’im and pastin’ ’im one alongside the jaw!’
But Mr Marsh did not take advantage of the return half of his ticket.
3
Mr Basil Musgrove, who had charge of the booking office of the Royal Theatre, was this morning presenting an even more than usually bored exterior to the world. Last night Mr Musgrove had been out with a set of persons to whom he referred as the boys. Consequently Mr Musgrove, underneath his patent leather hair, had a head which was red hot and bumping.
Mr Musgrove said into the telephone: ‘No, meddam. We do not book any seats at all under three shillings!’
Mr Musgrove said, to a purply-powdered face peering in through his pigeon-hole: ‘No, meddam, we have no stalls whatsoever for this evening’s performance. I am sorry.’
Mr Musgrove, when the face had vanished, put his head upon his hand and wished that the boys would not, quite so consistently, be boys. Mr Musgrove’s heavy lids dropped over his eyes. Mr Musgrove slept.
Mr Musgrove was awakened most rudely. Something cold and sharp and painful kept rapping against the end of his nose. Mr Musgrove put up feeble hands to brush