put the idea into your head. My name is Sutcliffe. No relation to the Yorkshire Sutcliffe. Cricket tires me. Stanley Sutcliffe. Sometimes our hostess calls me Mr Sutcliffe. Then I call her Miss Warren. Sometimes she calls me Stanley. Then I call her Helen. sometimes—in strict private—she calls me Stan. What I call her then is not for your ears. Are we better acquainted? I hope so. I am feeling rather tired, and want to get back to bed. I hope you like my dressing-gown. But what I am asking you is whether you like your hostess?’
‘She’s a good looker,’ replied Ben.
‘She is certainly a good looker. She has one look that is so good it melts me. Be careful.’
‘It ’asn’t melted me.’
‘I don’t expect you have seen it yet.’
‘It won’t melt me when I does!’
‘I wish I could still paint. I used to, you know. Futuristic. But I gave it up. I found the brushes so heavy. I’ve given up a lot of things.’ His pale blue eyes grew sad. ‘I would like to paint you. I am sure we could startle Art between us. Your face must be preserved somehow!’
‘Yus, well, we’re torkin’ of Miss Warren’s fice,’ Ben reminded him, secretly grateful for the valuable information of her name.
‘Ah—Miss Warren’s face,’ murmured Stanley Sutcliffe. ‘Yes. Miss Warren’s face.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Dangerous, Mr Lynch. Dangerous. Why, even—’ He paused, and opened his eyes. ‘But it will not melt you, eh?’
‘Nothink melts me,’ asserted Ben. ‘Not even when me victims ’oller!’
‘Mr Churchyard made the same boast,’ smiled Mr Sutcliffe sympathetically. ‘Standing in the very spot you are standing in. “She can’t make me do what I don’t agree to do,” he said. And he would agree to most. Then she came in—’ He paused again, and turning to the door, directed his torch towards it. ‘Well, well, we shall see. Of course, Mr Churchyard was not the first. In my own case, I made no boast. I just gave way at once. Much the simplest. I believe in ease. One day—if we’re allowed the time—we must discuss philosophy.’
‘P’r’aps yer could do with a bit,’ suggested Ben.
‘Perhaps I could, and perhaps I could not,’ replied Mr Sutcliffe thoughtfully. ‘And perhaps, after all, it would be a mistake to discuss it. Discussion is rather fatiguing, though, of course, one can always train. Well, now I have seen you and know what is on the other side of the wall, I shall return to my room. Good-night.’
‘’Ere, ’arf a mo’!’ exclaimed Ben, quickly. ‘If you’ve done, I’ve got a few things I’d like to ask!’
‘Be sure they are few,’ said Mr Sutcliffe, ‘and don’t count on getting answers.’
‘Well—corse, I knows a lot,’ began Ben, cautiously feeling his way. ‘I knows I’ve bin engaged fer a job—’
‘But you don’t know what the job is,’ interposed Mr Sutcliffe, helpfully. ‘No. And you won’t, till she chooses to tell you.’
‘Meanin’ you won’t!’
‘I certainly won’t.’
‘P’r’aps yer can’t?’
‘Perhaps I can’t. Perhaps is such a useful word. It means nothing.’
‘Oh, well—I can wait!’
‘Since you will have to, that is fortunate. I have no doubt, Mr Lynch, that in your own slum, or castle, or service flat, or Soho restaurant, you are the monarch of all you survey—but there is only one monarch here!’
‘Meanin’ Miss Warren?’
‘Meaning Miss Warren.’
‘Well, I’m ’ere to do ’er instrucshuns,’ said Ben, ‘but she can’t twist ’Arry Lynch rahnd ’er little finger!’
‘She can twist Stanley Sutcliffe round her little toe,’ confessed that individual.
‘Then why ain’t you doin’ ’er job?’
Mr Sutcliffe seemed intrigued by the question. He considered it as though this were the first occasion it had occurred to him.
‘I expect I am too gentle,’ he replied, at last. ‘I only know two or three ways of killing people, and of those only one is a certainty.’
‘Oh! Well, what’s wrong with the certainty?’
‘No one knows anything about that but myself.’ He suddenly frowned. ‘And we don’t talk about it … But the real reason,’ he went on, changing the trend of the conversation, ‘is that Miss Warren has other uses for me and likes me to remain at the flat. Do you know, Mr Lynch, I haven’t been out for five months.’
‘Go on!’
‘It’s the truth. And it’s a pity. Or isn’t it? Ease. Comfort. The pleasant passing hours. Omar Khayyám.’ He held up a soft hand and moved the fingers contemplatively. ‘I wonder whether I could still hit the ball?’
Ben spent one of the most unpleasant nights of his experience, and the extent of the unpleasantness may be gauged from the circumstance that his nocturnal experience was vast, including coal-bunkers, luggage-vans, dustbins, water-tanks, and once a coffin.
When Mr Stanley Sutcliffe left the room, his strangely flabby atmosphere remained, hanging on the darkness like a nauseous scent. The possibility that his pale blue eye might at any moment be plastered against some invisible peephole assisted the illusion of his continued presence. Helen Warren, at least, was physically beautiful. She could give satisfaction to the senses if not to the soul. Mr Stanley Sutcliffe could not give satisfaction, in Ben’s view, to anything. Not even to a golf ball.
‘Wonner why she ’as ’im arahnd?’ he reflected. ‘Is ’e one o’ them conternental giggerliots?’
Ben had been to Paris, and at a dance-hall had watched anæmic young men perform amorous revolutions with jewelled ladies, the latter usually stout and elderly; and when he had asked what these curious male creatures were, he had been informed. He liked a bit of French, so he had memorised the word.
‘That’s wot ’e is, a giggerliot,’ he decided, ‘and she keeps ’im shut ’ere case ’e runs away. Five months—lumme, no wunner ’e looks like Monday’s cod!’ A nasty thought followed. ‘’Ope she ain’t goin’ ter keep me ’ere five months!’
The probability was happily reduced by the reflection that he would make a very bad giggerliot.
After creeping to the door and discovering that Mr Sutcliffe had relocked it, Ben turned to the bed. The time had come to test it, because he did not want to spend the whole night—or what was left of the night—on the floor. If the spy-holes were used, the procedure would not reflect much credit on Harry Lynch, while even if the spy-holes were not used, the morning light, revealing a comfortable empty bed, would produce humiliation. So he felt his way carefully towards the spot where he believed the bed was, screwed up his courage, raised his fist, and brought it down hard. If anything was on the bed, he was going to get in the first whack.
He whacked air. A second effort, however, was more successful. He whacked a pillow. It yielded with pleasant obedience to his attack, as did the rest of the bedding when the attack was continued rapidly down its complete length … Good! Just a bed. Nothing nasty in it. That was all right, then!
He took off his boots. Or, rather, somebody else’s. They had