he nearly bumped into the pale Mr Sutcliffe. Mr Sutcliffe smiled, and put his finger to his lips.
‘Yes, I was listening,’ he whispered, without shame. ‘I always do.’
‘Corse, you don’t know wot walls are for, do yer?’ frowned Ben.
‘I’ve heard,’ smiled Mr Sutcliffe. ‘They are to conceal us. To imprison us. To protect our little secrets. Terribly in the way. You did quite well, Mr Lynch. I wish you were staying longer. You can do my egg four-and-a-half minutes. Safer. And please, please cut the crusts off the toast.’
He slipped back along the corridor to his bedroom.
Trying to dispel an unpleasant idea that he had strayed into a lunatic asylum and that his job might be to polish off the worst cases when they arrived, Ben made his way across the hall to the first door on the right beyond the lift. The door led to the kitchen, the suit, and the pound note, as predicted.
Thoughtfully, he changed. In spite of the fact that the suit he changed to had holeless pockets and almost made him look respectable, he parted with his old clothes with regret. It seemed as though he were shedding the final remnants of his familiar personality.
The pound note in one of the holeless pockets soothed him a little. He felt he had earned it already, and if things got too hot and he had to escape, it would keep him for a month. Ben could live royally on eightpence a day. But he had no present intention of escaping. Imprisoning him more securely than locks and keys was the ghost of the dead detective, to which he was attached by an invisible chain.
He found the eggs in a small larder. Also tea, bread, butter, condensed milk, and other breakfast accompaniments. In a few minutes, the gas cooker was busy.
‘’Allo—wozzat?’ he muttered suddenly.
A faint, buzzing sound had come from the hall. The lift?
‘Well, it ain’t my bizziness,’ he reflected. ‘I ain’t on the door!’
He stared at the eggs reclining placidly in their hot bath, envying their placidity. He tried to think only of the eggs, but found he was thinking more of the lift. The buzzing sound came again.
‘Ain’t nobody goin’?’ he wondered, nervily.
The eggs recaptured his attention for a few moments. How long had they been in? One minute or two? The lift had confused the count. Actually it was three.
Then he forgot the eggs again. Someone was in the hall; he heard a faint, filmy rustle. He also heard the dim whirr of the lift’s ascent. Somebody was coming up?… well, why shouldn’t somebody come up?… Only he hoped it wasn’t another lunatic …
He crept to the door. The eggs continued boiling perilously. Curiosity beat him when he heard the lift stop and the gate slide aside. He opened the door a crack, turning the handle very softly, and peeped through.
At first he could see nothing but the back of a blue dressing-gown. Miss Warren was standing between Ben’s nose and the lift, obscuring his view of the person who was just stepping out of it. But after a second the blue back made a little movement that was suspiciously like a start, and the movement altered its position. Now it was no longer between him and the lift, and he could see the person who had just stepped out.
Ben closed the door swiftly, his heart thumping. The visitor was a policeman.
The arrival of the policeman spelt the ruin of the eggs. They were now entirely forgotten in the graver problem that had suddenly presented itself.
‘Wot’s ’e come for?’ speculated Ben anxiously. ‘Yus, and ’oo ’ave I gotter be now? Lynch or meself?’
If the policeman had merely called to make inquiries he had called too soon. Apart from identifying the gang responsible for the detective’s murder (with the actual murderer himself still absent), Ben could not assist, for he had not yet discovered the secret behind the crime. If, on the other hand, the policeman had called to make an arrest, would Ben’s attempt to dissociate himself from the crime be successful? Was it not far more likely that he would be regarded as one of the gang, assuming the role of innocence to save his own skin?
‘This is goin’ ter be narsty,’ decided Ben.
It was easy to guess how the police had got on the track. The chauffeur Fred had been caught, and had given away the address.
‘’Ere, git busy!’ he instructed his numb mind as he stared at the door waiting for it to open. ‘Wot am I goin’ ted say when ’e arsks, “’Oo are you?”’
He imagined the policeman putting the question. Then he imagined himself replying, ‘Bloke called Ben, see?’ As that information did not appear enough, he had to carry the conversation a little farther.
‘Oh, and who’s Ben?’ inquired the imaginary policeman.
‘Chap wot’s tikin’ on a detective’s job,’ answered the imaginary Ben.
‘Who’s the detective?’ asked the imaginary policeman.
‘Well, I don’t know ’is nime,’ said the imaginary Ben.
‘What’s the job?’
‘I can’t say ezackly. See, I’m findin’ aht.’
‘When did the detective give you the job?’
‘Lars’ night.’
‘Where?’
‘On a bridge.’
‘The detective wasn’t murdered, was he?’
‘As a matter o’ fack, ’e was. We was jest fixin’ things up when ’e was shot, so when the people wot shot ’im come along I pertends ter be one of ’em, like wot I was goin’ to any’ow, so’s I could git to know wot they shot ’im for. I’m pertendin’ now, lumme, yer can twig that, carn’t yer?’
Ben tried hard to make his imaginary policeman twig, but he failed miserably. Instead of twigging, the policeman responded:
‘You’re pretending all right, but it won’t wash, Harry Lynch. You’ve got to come along to the station with the others.’
‘’Ere, don’t be silly!’ retorted the imaginary Ben. ‘’Ow can I be ’Arry Lynch? ’Arry Lynch was killed on the bridge afore the detective was!’
‘Oh, no, he wasn’t,’ answered the imaginary policeman. ‘The fellow called Ben was killed on the bridge before the detective was, and you killed him!’
Ben’s brain reeled. He had imagined the conversation to the dizziest limit! Suppose the dead crook was really taken for himself—suppose he had got into the skin of Harry Lynch so tightly that there was no getting out of it? Well, in that case he would have to keep in it, until he had completed the job that would make the Big Five touch their hats to him, and could reclaim his own carcass!
‘Yus, that’s wot I gotter do,’ he decided. ‘I gotter go on bein’ Lynch, and Gawd ’elp me!’
He donned a Lynch-like expression as the door suddenly opened and the policeman walked in.
The policeman was disappointingly large in the close-up, and his own expression, aided by a bristling moustache, was quite as forbidding as Harry Lynch’s. Behind him stood Helen Warren and Stanley Sutcliffe, exchanging anxious glances.
‘Now, then, let’s hear your story!’ began the policeman, without ceremony.
‘Wot, ’ave I done somethink?’ inquired