Part 36

“Yersh,” said Mr. Pelumpton, as he shuffled into the conjugal bedroom, three-quarters of an hour later, “e’sh jusht come in, proper blue look on ’im, too. No, I didn’t arshk ’im where ’e’d been. I like ter get a shivil arnsher when I arshksh a man a shivil queshen, I do. ‘Leave you alone, boy,’ I shaysh to myshelf. ‘You go your way an’ I go mine. Yersh.’ What you shay, Mother?”

“I say it’s a pity, too,” replied Mrs. Pelumpton, above the bedclothes. “Worries me, it does, to see a quiet young feller goin’ the wrong way like that. ’E’s got a nasty broodin’ look. And if you want _my_ opinion, ’e’s got ’imself into trouble with some girl--one of these flappers, as they call ’em. My words, I’d give ’em flapper if I’d anything to do with ’em!”

“Oh, I dare shay, I dare shay,” said Mr. Pelumpton, with philosophic melancholy. “If it’sh bother yer want, that’sh where to find it, that’sh my ecshperiensh. Oo, I got a narshty pain in my back to-night. It’sh the cold, yer know.”

II

“Is that Mr. Levy?” Turgis cried down the telephone. “Yes, this is Twigg and Dersingham’s. It’s about the next delivery--you know, you were asking. Well, I’m sorry, but we can’t manage it for Tuesday. No, they say they can’t do it. I’ve been on to them. But they’ll manage it for Thursday--yes, the whole lot. Yes, Thursday certain, Mr. Levy--you can depend on that. Yes, I’ll advise you. All right.”

He put down the receiver and returned to his desk. He was shaking a little. There had been something queer about his voice when he had been speaking to Levy. As he left the telephone, he had noticed both Miss Matfield and little Poppy Sellers glancing curiously at him. Let them look, silly fools, and then mind their own business! He had come to a sudden decision, and the very thought of it made him shake with excitement, though that was not very difficult, because he was not feeling at all well. That great hollow inside his head was filled now with jagging hot wires; his bones ached vaguely; his hands shook a little as he wrote; and his face kept twitching, as if it disliked the feel of his heavy burning eyes. Yet he had not the least desire to go to bed or to see a doctor; he did not feel ill in the ordinary way at all; it was only nerves, he concluded, just imagination. He had only to sleep better and eat more and all would be well.

His decision was to see Lena and have it out with her that very night, if by chance he could find her in the flat. He knew that her father would not be there, because when he had gone to the telephone to ring up Levy, Mr. Golspie had put a call through from the private office, and it had been to book a table for two at a restaurant. On this the cunning shadower in Turgis pounced at once. Mr. Golspie sometimes took his daughter out for the evening, but Turgis was certain that he would not trouble to book a table for her. He had not sounded like a man who was spending the evening with his daughter. If Lena was out, then she was out, and Turgis would have to wait, but he knew she did not go out every night and this was a chance not to be missed. At eight o’clock or just after, when Mr. Golspie was well out of the way, sitting down in his West End restaurant, he would go to the flat and, if Lena was there, he would see her and talk to her in that room of theirs again. He would see her, whatever happened. _Whatever happens, whatever happens_--a voice inside him said it over and over again as the Friday afternoon, fussy and irritable because of its week-end rush of things-that-must-be-settled-at-once, dragged on, with the last dripping traces of snow fading outside the window.

“Finished that copying, Miss Sellers?” said Mr. Smeeth, as he began to put away his books. “That’s the way. We’ll have that new boy here on Monday, and then you’ll have it easier, eh? You cleared up, Turgis? Did you have a word with Ockley and Sons--y’know, I mentioned it to you this morning?”

“Yes, I did, Mr. Smeeth. It’s all right.”

“You’re through, then, eh?”

“All I can do to-night, Mr. Smeeth. One or two things I’ve had to leave till to-morrow morning--couldn’t help it.”

“Quite so,” said Mr. Smeeth, taking out his pipe and pouch. “Well, I don’t think there’ll be much fear of you not turning up here to-morrow morning. What do you say? Pay day, eh, Turgis? That’s one of the days we _don’t_ like to miss.”

Turgis smiled faintly. “No, I’ll be sure not to miss that, Mr. Smeeth. You can count on me for that.”

“It’s as well we can count on somebody for something these days,” Mr. Smeeth remarked jocularly, “Well, you can get away now, Turgis--you, too, Miss Matfield, of course--and I’ll see you in the morning.”

“That’s right,” said Turgis. But as he was taking down his hat and coat, he said to himself, for no particular reason: “How does he know he’ll see me in the morning? He doesn’t want to be so jolly sure about it.” Then as he was putting his overcoat on, he looked across at Smeeth, who was now lighting his pipe, and said to himself: “Old Smeethy there, with his eyeglasses and his pipe and his nice clean collar every day and his nice home with his wife and kids and his walk round to the bank and his seven or eight quid a week, he’s all right and he deserves it, for all his fussing about, ’cos he’s not a bad old stick. But he’s a bit of a dreary devil for all that, and he thinks everything’s settled the way it is with him, and he knows no more really about what’s going on than an old charwoman. Still, if I got on a bit and Lena married me and we’d a nice little home the same as his, I’d like to ask him in sometimes with his wife and we’d have a smoke and a drink.”

And Mr. Smeeth, looking up from his pipe and catching Turgis’s eye, said to himself: “That lad’s looking bad, my words he is, worse than ever to-day. He ought to knock off for a day or two, even if we are short-handed. Doesn’t look after himself, that’s the trouble. And nobody to look after him--in lodgings. Bit miserable that. But then he’s no responsibilities, no worries, only himself to provide for, and he could have a good life--go to concerts and all that--if he only set about it properly. Probably doesn’t know how to look after himself. I ought to ask him up to tea or supper one of these week-ends--be a nice change for him--bit of home life. Yes, I’ll do that when we’re a bit more settled and Edie’s in a good temper.”

Thus, with these thoughts buzzing in their heads, they looked at one another, almost staring as people stare at a familiar word that has suddenly grown strange. Then, with a sober nod across the office, they turned away, Turgis to the door and Smeeth to his desk.

III

It was fine that night, and in the slight stir of wind there was a faint warmth that hurried the black slush into the gutters. Once out of the main road, where the bright lamps and the passing cars and buses were crazily mirrored in the wet stone, Turgis turned into a Maida Vale that was quite unlike the one he had seen two nights before, when the snow lay thick on the ground. Now it was close, dark, and dripping. Carrington Villas was one great gloomy _drip-drip_ and it smelt slightly of wet grass. Turgis, shivering a little, not with cold, but from excitement, never gave these things a thought, but nevertheless he noticed them. He noticed everything that night. The least thing, a shadow moving on a curtain, a boy’s whistle far down the road, stood out clearly, rammed itself home. At No. 2 somebody was playing the piano, and he recognised the very piece; he had heard it many a time at the pictures.

He stood outside the gate. There was a light up there. She was in, that was certain. Some one might be with her, but he would have to risk that. He did not care very much now if there was somebody there, for he could go up and say something. He waited a moment.

Then, as he waited, he was suddenly visited by an impulse to go away, to drop it all then and there and never to think about the girl again. He felt for a second as if he had only to turn on his heel and walk straight forwards until he reached the top of the street, just the top of the street, that was all, and he was free and a different kind of fellow, stronger and happier. It was almost as if a voice whispered sharply in his ear: “Come on. Have done with it. Come away, _now_.” There was a cold emptiness somewhere in his stomach. He wasn’t well. He could easily have cried. If that light up there had suddenly vanished from the window, he could have turned away without regret. The faint crimson glow remained, however, and he could not leave it now for a safe but empty world.

Once again, he passed the broken statue of the little boy playing with two large fishes, climbed the steps between the two peeling pillars, and carefully rang the bell marked _4a_. When nobody seemed to hear it, he remembered what had happened before, and tried the other bell. The door was opened by the enormous woman in the apron.

“Do you know if Miss Golspie’s in, please?”

“Oh, I’m wearing me feet out for them people!” cried the woman. “Up and down, and every time our own bell rings, it’s for them. Miss Golspie, is it? I believe she’s in too, though it’s no business of mine whether she’s in or out or gone to the devil, young man. Would she be expecting you coming at all?”

“No, she isn’t. Do you know if she’s by herself--I mean, is there anybody else there?”

“I’ll see, I’ll see. I’ll give her a shout. Just come inside and close the door gently behind you, so there’s no draught in the place, and then I’ll give her a shout.” And the woman went down the hall, climbed a few stairs, and gave a shout that soon opened the door above. “Miss Golspie, there’s a young man here, known to you--I’ve seen him before meself--he wants to know if you’re alone up there and can he come up to see you.”

“Yes, I’m all on my lonesome to-night,” Turgis heard Lena cry. “Tell him to come up, please, and I won’t be a minute.” She sounded as if she was pleased. It was wonderful to hear her like that.

“You’ve to go up and then when you get there, she says she won’t keep you a minute, meaning you’ll wait while she tidies herself and makes herself pretty.”

“Thanks very much,” said Turgis fervently, and up he went. The door was open and he walked forward, straight into the big sitting-room, which he had revisited so many times in his imagination these last few weeks that it was quite strange to see waiting quietly there for him, the very same room, with the very same piles of bright cushions, the same deep sofa thing, the same gramophone records, books, magazines, bottles, fancy boxes, fruit, and glasses all over the place, the same two big shaded lamps. He shook to see it there, solid, real. He did not sit down, but stood in the middle of the room, holding his hat, glancing quickly, nervously, at this thing and that.

“Hel-_lo_!” cried Lena gaily in the doorway. Then the sound was cut short. He turned to face her.

“Oh!” she cried, staring at him. “It’s you.” And her face fell, her voice dropped.

He tried to say something.

“Do you want to see my father about something?” she demanded.

“No, I don’t. I want to see you--Lena.”

“What do you want to see me about?”

“Oh!--you know, Lena. Everything.”

She came forward a little now. “I don’t know. My father will be coming back soon--any minute.”

“He won’t,” he told her sullenly.

“How do you know he won’t? You don’t know anything about it!”

“I do. I know where he is, and I know he won’t be back for some time.”

“Yes, you _would_! That’s why you’re here. You’ve been spying and following me about, haven’t you? Making me look a fool! _You_ look a fool too, let me tell you that, a nasty fool.”

“Well, what if I have? I wanted to see you.”

“Well, I didn’t want to see you,” she cried, furious now. “And you ought to have known I didn’t. You can’t take a hint. I told you as plainly as I could I didn’t want to see you any more.”

“Lena, why don’t you?”

“Because I _don’t_, and that’s why. If I don’t want to see you, why don’t you go away and stop away? I don’t want you hanging about me and coming slinking in here, looking like nothing on earth. Just because I felt sorry for you once and hadn’t anything much to do and was nice to you, do you think I’ve got to spend all my time trailing round to the pictures with you?”

“But, Lena, listen----”

“I tell you I won’t listen. I don’t want to hear. If you only _saw_ yourself! Go away. I won’t listen. I didn’t want to be rude to you, but you’re so _stupid_ and you just make me look silly too.”

“Lena, please, please, just listen a minute----”

“Oh, go away, can’t you! Fool!”

“You’ll have to listen,” he screamed. He sprang forward, dropping his hat, and seized both her wrists and held them tight. As she struggled to break loose, he poured it all out in a wild unbroken rush of short phrases, the whole story of his first distant adoration, his desire and his passion, all the ecstasies and miseries of his love. As he came to the end, his grasp suddenly slackened and she was able to free her wrists. She had not listened to him. She was in a fury.

“You damned rotten rotten----” she gasped, fighting for breath. Then she flared up into a shriek: “Keep your filthy hands off me,” and she flung her own hands into his face, pushing him away.

Things were snapping inside him now like taut fiddle-strings. “All right, I’ll kiss you for that,” he cried, and caught hold of her before she could get away. He was not a muscular youth, but he was strong enough now. He pressed her body to his and forced a few brief kisses upon her before she had a chance to do anything but push and wriggle. The feel of her body, the soft cheek burning beneath his lips, the scent of her hair, touched a spring inside him; all tenderness for her vanished; his blood leaped and sent a murderous cataract roaring in his ears. He still held her, but hardly noticed her hands on his face.

She gave a violent twist, partly freeing herself. “You dirty, filthy pig!” she cried. “Let me go. I hate you. If you touch me again, I’ll scream and scream until somebody comes.”

He looked at her and there came, like a flash of lightning, the conviction that she was hateful, and something broke, and a great blinding tide of anger swept over him. Her scream was cut short, for his hands were round her soft white throat, pressing and pressing it as he shook her savagely. Her head wobbled like a silly mechanical doll’s. Her mouth was open and her eyes were bulging, and so she wasn’t even nice to look at any more, but just silly and ugly, so silly and ugly that his hands, which had an independent life of their own now and were strong and masterful, pressed harder than ever. A horrible rusty noise came from that open mouth. She suddenly went limp, and, as his hands released their grip, her eyes closed and she slipped backwards, striking her head against the corner of the divan as she fell and then rolling over on to the floor, a huddle of clothes and white flesh. She made no movement at all, not a twitch, not a tremor. He crept forward, his eyes fixed on what could be seen of her face, purply-white and still. The whole figure was completely motionless. He waited a minute, raising his eyes in a slow strained fashion until they took in nothing but the shape and colour of a fancy box of cigarettes on the little table by the divan. There was a gay picture of a Turkish woman on the box. He had had some cigarettes from that box; they were very good; they were foreign cigarettes; Turkish, of course, but not sold in England; foreign words just above the picture of the Turkish woman, foreign words. Very slowly his eyes left the box and returned to the figure on the floor. Lena. Not a movement. No, that wasn’t Lena any more; that was a body. You couldn’t lie there like that unless you were dead. Lena was dead.

He stopped thinking then; no more thoughts came, not one. He picked up his hat and shambled quickly out of the room, out of the flat, leaving the door wide open behind him. When he reached the hall below, somebody came out from somewhere, perhaps spoke to him, but he took no notice. He left the house. It was better outside, in the dark.

IV

Down the straight length of Maida Vale, past the detached villas, past the great blocks of flats that were like illuminated fortresses, he moved at a steady pace, never lingering, just as if he were a young man who knew exactly where he was going and knew exactly how long it would take him to get there. But he wasn’t going anywhere; he was only moving on, simply leaving that room with the bright cushions and the fancy boxes and the quiet huddle of clothes and limbs by the end of the deep sofa. He wasn’t quite real. He was a young man walking in a film. Somebody spoke to him once. It was a big man in a cap and mackintosh, and he planted himself squarely in front of the dazed Turgis and said, almost angrily: “Here, I say, how do I find Nugent Terrace?” And when Turgis muttered that he didn’t know, that he was a stranger in that district, the big man said that he was a stranger too and that everybody he asked was a stranger, that they were all bloody strangers. When Turgis was walking on again, he kept repeating that--“all bloody strangers.” He noticed things as he went along, though they weren’t very real, only like the things you see in the background of a film. Maida Vale turned itself into Edgware Road, and immediately became bright and crowded, a gleaming medley of shop windows, pubs, picture theatre entrances, hawkers’ barrows, and pale faces. There was a shop where you could get sixpenny packets of gaspers for fivepence. A woman was shouting at a pub door; she was drunk. A lot of people were waiting to see the pictures, and a fellow with a banjo was singing to them. Two Chinamen came out of a sweet shop: _All These Chocolates Our Own Make_. That fried fish smelt bad. Two men starting a row, and a woman trying to pull one of them away. A good raincoat for 25/6. Funny what a lot of these imitation bunches of bananas there were, and didn’t look a bit like the real ones either. That chap standing in the shop doorway was just like Smeeth, might be his double. It streamed on and on, like a coloured film, a film with heavy bumping bodies and real eyes in it. Marble Arch, and some people waiting for buses.

Now, quite suddenly, he felt sick and terribly tired. There was nothing left of his body but some tiny aching old bones, but his head was enormous and there was more screeching and grinding and dull roaring in the great hollow inside it than there was among the cars in the road. He tried to think. Had he really gone there and done that? He had gone to that room so many times in his imagination, had so many scenes there, so many vivid encounters with Lena, that perhaps this last visit wasn’t real either. Had he done that? His fingers, closing round ghostly flesh, sent a sharp message to say he had done it. Yes, he had. Then there was no changing it at all. It was there. As if curtains had suddenly parted and been drawn up, he saw the room again; he was back in it; a Turkish woman on a box of cigarettes, and then--on the floor, not a movement. Something inside him, a little wild thing, trapped, mad, sent up a scream. Something else muttered over and over again that it was an accident, only an accident, a pure accident, just an accident, all accidental, simply an accident; and then it said that he wasn’t well, not at all well, ill in fact, nerves and all that, yes nerves, quite ill, not healthy, not well. The tears came into his eyes as he thought how true this was, for lots of people had said that he wasn’t well and he knew he wasn’t well. Then a bus came up and everybody got on it, so he got on it too, and sat inside. The man next to him had a big swelling at the back of his neck, and for a moment Turgis was sorry for him, but after that he forgot all about him, forgot about all the other people in the bus, forgot all about Oxford Street and Regent Street that rolled past like a gleaming and glittering frieze. He did not notice where the bus was going; he did not care; he sank into a sick stupor.

“’Ere, come along,” said the conductor. “Fares, please.”

Mechanically, vacantly, Turgis handed him twopence and received his ticket.

Nobody else bothered about him at all. They glanced in his direction and then looked indifferently away. Yet in a week or two perhaps they might all of them be talking about him. But then he would not be Turgis any more, Mrs. Pelumpton’s lodger and the railway and shipping clerk at Twigg & Dersingham’s; he would be the Maida Vale Flat Murderer; and as that he could set huge machines in motion, send men running here and there, men with notebooks, men with cameras; news editors would mention him at conferences; sub-editors would rack their brains for good headlines for him; reporters would describe his little room in Nathaniel Street and interview Mrs. Pelumpton; columns on his “ill-fated romance” would be commissioned for the Sunday papers; good money would be paid for the smallest snapshot of him; every detail of his past would be sent roaring through the printing machines; men who had known him would boast of it; special contributors would comment on his story and his fate for twenty guineas a thousand words; scholarly criminologists would make a note of his case for future reference; novelists and dramatists would see if he could be worked up into anything good; millions would talk about him, would denounce him, would cry for his execution, would sign petitions, or perhaps pray for his soul; if he were set free, ten thousand women would be ready to marry him, and any halting sentences he could produce about himself would be handsomely paid for and conjured into The Story of My Life, announced on innumerable placards and hoardings: he would be somebody at last--the Maida Vale Flat Murderer. As yet, however, he was only a shabby, hollow-eyed youth with a vacant look, huddled in a seat that slowly moved round Piccadilly Circus, where, against the night sky, commerce was clowning it royally in a multi-coloured fantasy of lights. Nobody bothered about him yet; they were, as the big man had said, all strangers.