Part 33

“No, no, not at all,” the large man shouted. “We’ve ten minutes yet. Plenty of time for another. What is it? Same again? Three double Scotches, miss. I ’aven’t told you yet what ’appened the other night, ’ave I? I mean, with Jack Pearce and old Joe, down at Staines--oh dear!--splooch-ooch-ooch-ooch-ooch!”

“He seems to be enjoying himself all right,” said Turgis. “I don’t know how some of these chaps do it--spending money all day, no work, knocking about all the time, and not giving a damn for anybody. How do they do it, Mr. Smeeth?”

“Don’t ask me,” replied Mr. Smeeth, a trifle irritably, as if he too had felt a sudden spasm of envy at the thought of this rich careless life, but would not admit it to himself. “Racing chaps, I suppose. Easy come and easy go--that’s their motto. All right while it lasts--but how long does it last?”

“How long does anything last?” Turgis muttered.

“Now that’s silly talk from a young fellow like you,” said Mr. Smeeth. “It’s that sort of talk that lets you down with everybody. Now listen to me. I believe if you’ll only smarten yourself up a bit, don’t be so gloomy, look as if you didn’t hate the sight of everybody----”

“I don’t, Mr. Smeeth, honestly I don’t.”

“--and settle down to your work properly, there’s a good steady job waiting for you with Twigg and Dersingham. As Mr. Dersingham said, only this morning, what with all this new business, the firm’ll be growing and expanding, and that’ll be just the opportunity for a young fellow like yourself.”

Turgis swallowed desperately. “I’m not so sure about that,” he declared.

“What d’you mean?” cried Mr. Smeeth, staring at him.

“I don’t think it’s all so rosy as all that. I’ve been thinking it over. All this new business--and as far as I can see, it’s about all the business we’re doing--came with Mr. Golspie.” He brought out this name with a sudden jerk.

“Well, what if it did? You’re not telling me anything now, Turgis. I know that as well as you do--and better.”

“If he goes, what happens then, Mr. Smeeth?”

“If he goes? That would depend. A lot might happen, or nothing might happen. But, anyhow, Mr. Golspie’s not going.”

“I think he is--soon, too.”

Mr. Smeeth stared at him. Turgis was obviously quite serious. “Where did you get that idea from?”

“I think he is.”

“What’s the good of talking like that! You think he is! Why should he now? What’s the object? He’s making plenty of money out of the business, as I know better than you do. He’s making a surprising amount, for a trade like this--I don’t mind telling you. He’d been a fool if he did go, unless, of course--well----” And Mr. Smeeth thought of several possibilities, but kept them to himself. “No, that’s silly talk, Turgis. What put that into your head?”

“It isn’t silly, Mr. Smeeth,” cried Turgis, goaded into saying more than he had ever intended to say. “I _know_ he’s going. At least, I know he’s not staying with the firm long. I know he doesn’t think much of Mr. Dersingham either. I know that, too.”

“But where have you got all this from?” Mr. Smeeth was more angry than alarmed. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. How did you learn it? You’re not trying to be funny, are you?”

“Well,” roared the large man. “Get a move on, eh? You coming to eat with me, Charlie? That’s right. See you Monday, Tom, eh? Course I’ll be there. You betcher life, boy! Wouldn’t miss it. Am I what? Oh--you wicked feller, Tom, you wicked feller! So long, boy. Morning, miss. Morning, Sam.” And the silence he left behind him was almost startling.

In this silence, Mr. Smeeth and Turgis looked at one another. Then Turgis turned his eyes elsewhere, but Mr. Smeeth continued looking at him.

“I don’t make head or tail of this, Turgis.”

Turgis frowned, shut his mouth tight for once, and moved uneasily. Finally, he said: “I--heard something, Mr. Smeeth, that’s all. I can’t tell where I heard it or anything. I’m sorry I spoke now.”

Mr. Smeeth saw that Turgis was terribly in earnest. There could be no doubt about that. “Do you mean to say you won’t tell me where you heard it, how you heard it, or anything?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Smeeth. I oughtn’t to have said anything. I can’t tell you any more, honestly I can’t. Don’t mention it to anybody, please, Mr. Smeeth. If you do, you might get me into trouble, though I haven’t done anything really wrong, I haven’t, honestly. Only I did hear that about Mr. Golspie.”

“When was that? You can tell me so much, anyhow.”

“Not long before Christmas, a week or two.”

“Mr. Golspie was away then, was he?”

“Yes,” Turgis admitted sullenly. “It was while he was away.”

“Then somebody told you while Mr. Golspie was away,” said Mr. Smeeth sharply, not taking his eyes off the unhappy Turgis for a second. He thought quickly. “It must have been his daughter, that time when you took the money to her. You got talking and then she told you. Is that it?”

Turgis said nothing, but he had no need to, for his face replied for him. “Well, what did she say exactly?” Mr. Smeeth continued, far more concerned now that he knew Mr. Golspie’s daughter was the informant. “Come on, Turgis, you might as well tell me now. What did she say?”

“I don’t remember any more,” Turgis mumbled miserably. “That was all. It was nothing. I oughtn’t to have said anything. Mr. Smeeth, please don’t you say anything, please don’t, will you? Promise.”

“All right. I don’t suppose there’s anything in it. I know what these girls are. They’ll say anything. Well----”

“Yes, I must be getting on now,” said Turgis. “And thank you for telling me--you know about what Mr. Dersingham said. I’ll do my best, Mr. Smeeth. I’m a bit worried just now, that’s all.”

As his tram climbed the swarming City Road, Mr. Smeeth considered this Golspie gossip. It made him feel uneasy, although he was still ready to dismiss it as girls’ nonsense. It seemed unlikely that Mr. Golspie would leave them, but then it seemed unlikely that Stanley would be spirited away by an uncle in Homerton and that Benenden would be lying in Bart’s Hospital. There was no connection between these events, as Mr. Smeeth knew very well, but the sudden disappearance of Stanley and Benenden had left him with a feeling of insecurity. They made him realise the fact that things simply happened and that he had no control over them, no more than he would have if the tram suddenly left the lines and charged the nearest shop. In the dark hollows of his mind, apprehension stirred again. He decided to talk all this over with his wife, who, perhaps because she was so unreasonable, had got something that he had never had, a large confidence in life. With all her faults, there was nobody like Edie for him at these times, when he felt a bit down in the mouth. Then he remembered that they were still not on proper speaking terms, and that, in her present state of mind, he could no more talk to her about what he felt than he could talk to the strange woman sitting in front of him in the tram. “We just would be quarrelling now, wouldn’t we!” he cried to himself, with that gloomy satisfaction, that faint sweetness which comes with the last bitter drop, known only to the pessimist. Life could do many dreadful things to Herbert Norman Smeeth, but it couldn’t take him in. He was one of those people who are always there first, who are standing at the grave before the doctor has even begun shaking his head.

III

This treacherous Saturday, however, was still capable of giving him another shock, from an unexpected quarter. Mrs. Smeeth was out when he arrived home, and he had a solitary dinner, with Edna flitting about and trying to keep out of his way. After dinner, he smoked his pipe and pottered about for half an hour or so, and then, as the afternoon sent some gleams of pale sunlight creeping, like a returned convalescent, into Chaucer Road, he went out for a walk. Fate, which had for once an easy task, directed him to Clissold Park, where his shock was awaiting him.

The fifty green acres of Clissold Park are surrounded by miles and miles of slates and bricks, chimney-pots and paving stones, and so, in the middle of it, placed there perhaps as a sign that the round green world of mountains, forests and oceans still exists somewhere, or at least once had an existence, there are a number of animals and bright birds. If you are a Stoke Newington ratepayer, you have only to turn a corner or two to catch the soft shining glances of deer, to meditate upon the spectacle of birds so fantastically fashioned and coloured that it is impossible to believe that both they and North London are equally real, that one or the other is not a crazy dream. You stand there, a litter of peanut shells and paper bags all round you, with a Stoke Newington dinner inside you struggling with your digestive juices, and you suddenly hear a scream from the jungle and a green and scarlet wing from the Orinoco is flashed at you.

There are links, however, between these two worlds. One of them was standing beside Mr. Smeeth, and wore a short grey beard and a dusty bowler. “Yus,” he remarked, looking at the gorgeous birds, then at Mr. Smeeth, then at the birds again, and doing it masterfully, as if to keep both the birds and Mr. Smeeth there, “yus, I been where them things comes from. Common as sparrers there, yer might say. Bigger than these, too--yus, and brighter colours on ’em. Yus, I been where them birds comes from.”

“Is that so?” said Mr. Smeeth. “And when was this? Not lately, I’ll bet.”

“And you’d win, mister. Forty years ago, that was, in good old Queen Victoria’s time. Ah, yer little devils!” he cried, addressing the birds now. “What d’yer think o’ that, eh? Forty years ago. I left the sea thirty-five years ago, mister, but I’d stopped going to them places five years before I left the sea for good an’ all. Yus, the last five years I was on the North Atlantic run, and you don’t see any o’ them little dazzlers up there--fog and icebergs is what you see up there, mister. But I’ve seen the time when I’ve brought them things ’ome, proper old sailor style. Yus, I have. If yer don’t believe me, ask the pleece; they know everything there is to know, isn’t that so, Sergeant?”

Mr. Smeeth discovered that an acquaintance of his, a Stoke Newington man and a very good hand at a whist drive, Sergeant Gailey of the local division, had strolled up. “Now then, Mr. Lee, telling lies again! Dear, dear, dear! Oh, it’s you, Mr. Smeeth, is it? You’re the victim, this time.”

“That’ll do, Sergeant,” retorted Mr. Lee amiably, “yer only giving away your ignorance. Yer’ve seen nothing yet, and I don’t think yer ever will now. Good afternoon.” And off he toddled.

“You know him, don’t you, Mr. Smeeth?” said Sergeant Gailey. “Oh, he’s a rum old devil. Keeps a second-hand shop--furniture and curios and all that stuff--down by the Green. His daughter runs it now, but it’s his shop, and he’s better off than you’d think, that old devil is. Won’t part with nothing, you know, but his reminiscences and good advice. He’s a character.”

“When he started, I thought he was going to try and cadge a bob,” said Mr. Smeeth, moving away slowly with the sergeant.

“He’d have it all right if you offered it him, though he could buy you and me up, Mr. Smeeth, a good many times. But how are you getting on, these days? Here, what’s the name of that boy of yours?”

“You mean George?”

“That’s right. George Smeeth, Chaucer Road--eh? I saw the name a day or two ago, and thought it must be that boy of yours. We’re having him up at the North London next week, Tuesday, I think.”

“At the North London!” Mr. Smeeth stopped, and gaped at him. “Do you mean the police court?”

“That’s right. Case comes on on Tuesday, I think. What, didn’t you know?”

“No, of course, I didn’t know,” cried Mr. Smeeth in horrified amazement. “Do you mean--my boy George?”

“Here, steady, steady, Mr. Smeeth! We’re not charging him. He’s only up as a witness.”

Mr. Smeeth breathed again, but he was still puzzled and worried, and the sergeant, noticing this, began to explain.

“I don’t know why he’s not told you. It’s one of these car stealing jobs. We’re always getting ’em now. What with cars running over people and then skipping off, and cars in these smash-and-grab outfits, and cars being lost and pinched--coo!--we get a proper packet of cars! I don’t know what the Force did in the old horse traffic days. ’Owever, this is one of the car stealing jobs and by a bit o’ luck _and_ judgment, we traced this particular car to that garage where your lad’s been working lately. Chap o’ the name of Barrett runs it, and between you and me, we’ve had an eye on him for some time. Well, he bought this car--a good car, nearly new; I don’t remember the make, but it was a _good_ car, worth money--for fifteen quid. He doesn’t deny it. Now we’re taking the line that he bought that car knowing it to be stolen, not the property o’ the chap that offered it to him. It’s our belief he’s done this before, and a good many times, too. As I say, we’ve had an eye on him. If he’s not a wrong ’un, I give it up. Whether we’ll get him this time or not, I don’t know. I wasn’t on the case myself. But that fifteen quid’ll take a bit of explaining. They’ll be saying they get cars given ’em soon.”

“But where does George come in?” said Mr. Smeeth, who did not care what happened in the car-stealing world, but cared a great deal about his son.

“Oh, that’s nothing. He worked there, see, and was there when the car went into the garage, and so on. We’ve nothing against him, of course. He’ll only be asked to say what he saw.”

“Thank goodness for that! You gave me a fright, I can tell you, Sergeant. I don’t mean by that, mind you, that I thought for a minute my boy’d be mixed up in anything dishonest. I don’t see as much of him as I ought these days, and he just goes his own way, but I know the boy’s as straight as you like.”

“I’ll bet he is,” said Sergeant Gailey with a certain forced heartiness, which he immediately dropped for a more serious, cautionary tone. “But, all the same, Mr. Smeeth, he ought to have told you, you know. And another thing. You get him away from that garage and that chap Barrett. He’s in bad company there. Doesn’t matter if Barrett walks out of that court next Tuesday with the case against him in bits; never mind about that; you get your boy out of it and away from that chap. If we can’t prove it this time, we’ll prove it next time, and there always is a next time with those cocky birds. I wouldn’t let a boy of mine put his nose in a dump like that.”

“Don’t you worry about that, Sergeant,” cried Mr. Smeeth, his voice trembling with excitement. “George doesn’t stay there another day. I should think not! And I’m very much obliged to you for telling me, Sergeant, very much obliged.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Smeeth. Thought you ought to know. Which way you going now?”

“Straight home. That’s my way now,” replied Mr. Smeeth, and he went as fast as he could go to Chaucer Road. He was still rather alarmed and astonished, for police court affairs were remote from his experience and he had a horror of them, but he was chiefly indignant, indignant at the thought that this business, which took George to court and might take his employer to gaol, should have been kept from him. Did his wife know all about it, and had she deliberately hidden it out of his sight? He could hear her saying to George, “Now don’t you say a word to your father about this. You know what he is.” Yes, something like that. If she really had done that, then they _would_ have a quarrel. This was serious. My word, what a life! You never knew what was happening.

He arrived home to find his wife still absent and Edna and her friend, Minnie Watson, screaming with laughter in the dining-room. “Just a minute, Edna, I want you,” he said sternly. She followed him into the other room.

“Where’s George?”

“I don’t know, Dad. Working, I suppose, down at the garage. What’s the matter?”

“Did you know anything about this police court business?”

Edna stared at him, her chocolate-stained mouth open. “What police court business? What are you talking about, Dad? Has it something to do with George?”

“Never mind about that. You don’t know anything about it, eh?” It certainly didn’t look as if she did, but Mr. Smeeth told himself wearily that you could never tell, not with children like these, such a strange secretive lot. “All right, it doesn’t matter. Where is this garage? You can tell me that, I suppose?”

She gave him precise directions, and ten minutes later he was there, confronting a queer George in greasy overalls, who was doing something incomprehensible to the inside of a car. He was probably astonished to see his father, but he only raised his eyebrows and grinned. George had ceased for some time to show any signs of surprise.

Telling himself that this was his son, who had been a child only yesterday, Mr. Smeeth looked sternly at him, and summoning all the forces of parental authority, he said curtly: “Just clean yourself up and get your hat and coat on, George.”

“What d’you mean, Dad? What’s up? Anything wrong at home?”

“No, there isn’t, but just do what I tell you.”

“Well, I don’t understand.”

“Oh, come outside if you’re going to argue about it,” said Mr. Smeeth impatiently, and led the way out into the street. “It’s the police court business. I’ve just heard all about it.”

“Oh--I see,” said George slowly.

“I’m glad you do see. I’d like to have seen a bit earlier,” said his father bitterly. “Why didn’t you tell me? Have to have a police sergeant telling me what’s happening to my own son!”

“Well, you needn’t go at me, Dad. I’ve done nothing, and they’ll tell you I haven’t.”

“I know all about that. And you’re not going to do anything either. That’s why I came round. You’re finishing here now, George. I was warned not to let you stop on--though I didn’t need any warning. I’m not going to have you mixed up with this sort of business. So you can just tell them you’re finishing now, this minute.”

“Oh, I can’t do that, Dad. We’re busy.”

“I don’t care how busy you are, George. You’ve got to stop.”

“Oh, all right--if you feel like that about it. But look here, Dad, I must finish that job I’m doing now.”

“How long will that take you?”

“Ten minutes. Quarter of an hour. Shouldn’t be longer.”

“All right,” said Mr. Smeeth grimly, “I’ll wait.” And he waited twenty minutes; but at the end of that time George came out, washed and brushed and without his overalls.

“I might have lost the week’s money, walking out like that,” he told his father, “but they paid up--like good sports.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“There’s another chap running this besides Barrett, a chap called McGrath--proper motor mechanic, he is.”

“And is he a wrong ’un, too?”

“Not more than most. McGrath’s all right.”

“Tell me this, George,” said Mr. Smeeth, halting and looking very earnestly at his son, “did your mother know anything about this police court business?”

“Course she didn’t, Dad. I wasn’t going to tell _her_.”

“I see,” said Mr. Smeeth, relieved to find there had been no general conspiracy. “But why didn’t you tell _me_, boy? I can’t understand you keeping a thing like this to yourself.”

They were walking on again now. “Oh, I didn’t want to bother you about it,” replied George coolly. “I knew there’d be a lot of gassing and fussing if I did. And there was nothing to get excited about. I hadn’t done anything. They weren’t running _me_ in, were they?”

It was incredible. Mr. Smeeth gave it up. Here was this boy of his, who had been playing with clockwork trains on the floor only the day before yesterday, so to speak, and now he could talk in this strain, as cool as you please, as if he were Sergeant Gailey or somebody! Mr. Smeeth waited a minute or two, then said very quietly: “About that car, George--did you know it was stolen?”

George grinned; no wincing, shrinking, anything of that kind; just a plain grin. “I didn’t _know_, but I had a few ideas of my own about it. And about one or two others, too.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you’d a good idea of what was going on there and you didn’t do anything about it?” Mr. Smeeth was shocked and astounded.

“What could I do about it, Dad? If I’d been dragged into it, that would have been different. But they didn’t try. And you needn’t worry--I wouldn’t have had it. Buying cars that have been pinched like that is a mug’s game, if you ask me. Barrett’s a fool, though he’s not a bad sort, really, and he’s treated me all right. Doesn’t know anything about cars though, not like McGrath does. I believe he _had_ to take over some of those cars. I saw one or two fellows who called to see him, and I didn’t like the look of them at all--real toughs, they were. But mind you, Dad, I don’t _know_ anything about those cars, don’t forget that.”

The boy talked about buying stolen cars as if it was simply a little weakness on Barrett’s part, a silly hobby. He didn’t seem to be in the least shocked or frightened. Mr. Smeeth could not make it out at all. It was just as if he had brought up a boy who had suddenly turned into an Indian. The boy was all right, really; he had left the garage without making a fuss; but, nevertheless, his point of view appeared to be whole worlds away from anything his father could understand. “I must say I don’t like to hear you talking like that, George,” he said. “Seems to me you don’t understand the seriousness of this business. It’s criminal, this is, work for the police, and you talk about it as if it was a tea-party or something. Talk like that, and you don’t know where you’ll land yourself.”

“That’s all right, Dad,” said George tolerantly. “Don’t you worry. I can look after myself.”

“Well, you’re going to do it outside that place now,” Mr. Smeeth told him.

“Oh, I meant to leave there soon, anyhow,” George remarked airily.

“I should think so! And the next job you find for yourself, I hope, will be in a concern that the police aren’t interested in. You’d better tell me something about it, first. Easy to get yourself a bad name, y’know, boy, even if you don’t do anything wrong yourself.”

George, who seemed to live in a world in which bad names didn’t count, a world his father didn’t know, made no reply, but merely whistled softly as he walked along. When they arrived home, tea was waiting for them, with Mrs. Smeeth sitting behind the teapot. She was surprised to see George walk in with his father. Mr. Smeeth gave her a look that said “Quarrel or no quarrel, you’ve got to recognize that this is serious,” and cut short her inquiries by remarking, “We’ll have a talk about this afterwards, Mother.”

As soon as the two children were out of the room, he told her what had happened, and she gave him all her attention, realizing at once that this affair transcended any quarrel.

“You did right, Dad,” she told him, when he had finished.

“I hope you realize,” he added, not without bitterness, “that this means the boy may be out of a job for some time, and that means both of them earning nothing. It’s all right, of course, but still--we’ll have to be careful.”

“George’ll soon get something. He always does,” she said confidently. “I shouldn’t wonder if he hasn’t got a better job in his eye now. You were right to do what you did, but you leave him alone now and don’t worry. He’ll find something.”

This seemed a good opportunity to tell what had happened during the earlier part of this eventful day, with special reference to the disturbing rumour about Mr. Golspie. But she wouldn’t listen. She turned herself again into a woman who had quarrelled with him, merely listened to a few words with a distant politeness, excused herself and then gathered up the tea things in a very grand, dignified manner, rather like a duchess visiting a poor cottager. Mr. Smeeth was left to smoke his pipe, alone, a solitary little figure in a huge, dark, mysterious world of cracking walls and slithering foundations, with echoes and rumours of catastrophe in every wind.

IV