The Tiger In the Smoke (21 page)

His mouth was no longer sealed. They had given that up when they thought he was suffocating, but they had taught him not to talk. His hands and feet were tied, each with the same cord, which was drawn up with agonizing tightness behind him, and most of his clothes had been removed so that he was cold as well as cramped. The others were keeping well away from him.

By now the cellar was almost quiet. Even the dwarf had ceased his twittering at last, but there was whispering going on all along the wall. It was Doll's achievement. He had got them out of a quarrelling knot and into their beds, but even he could not make them sleep. It was in the small hours long before daylight. The market would not stir for some time yet and lay sodden and filthy just above them, while on all sides the city sprawled, breathing heavily and twitching beneath its grimy counterpane of fog.

In the cellar the man from Tiddington alone was on his feet. He was standing before the stove, peering into its red depths, and he was burning his boots. He went about the task methodically, hacking the solid leather into strips with a snobber's knife and dropping them one by one into the mouth of the iron cylinder. So far it was the only sign of fear he had shown, the only concession to human weakness.

Chemists employed by the police can do remarkable things with blood. They can find it in shreds of cloth, in the interstices of floorboards, on the iron of a heel, and can measure it and swear to it and weave it into a rope to hang a man.

Tiddy Doll read his newspaper. It was an accomplishment of which he was proud, and he knew a great deal about chemists. He knew something about the treachery of ashes, too, so he was making very sure, taking his time. Geoffrey could see him in the glow, picking out the nails with a small pair of pliers and dropping each one carefully into his pocket like the cautious countryman he was.

But if Doll was afraid, his terror was prudence compared with the abject quaking which was going on all along the whitewashed wall. The cellar had become a pit of fear; it was mindless irresponsible alarm in men who would have been pitiable had they not possessed that streak of cruelty which is unforgivable in the weakest. Not one was trustworthy. Not one could be relied upon not to give both his friends and himself away at the slightest outside pressure.

In the earlier part of the night Geoffrey had had an opportunity to learn something of the company which the albino had collected about him, and although at first sight it had seemed some physical peculiarity or defect which they all possessed in common, he had soon realized that the true bond between them was the shiftless dependence which had made them beggars. Roly, Tom, and possibly Doll were the only exceptions, and they had no illusions about the rest. Doll had let Roly out, taking the risk because he figured the man had more to lose in flight than to gain. The ex-fishennan had gone down the dark alleys into Fleet Street to pick up a morning paper as soon as the damp piles of newsprint should shoot out to the waiting vans. He had also agreed to bring back some food. There had been wrangling over that already and there would be more tomorrow when the full weight of the situation was recognized by all.

Doll and Roly were now in a position in which they could not afford to let any of the others out of their sight. The cellar with its single staircase and its sunken recess under a grating at the back, which contained no more than a tap and a drain, had become a cage. In it they were safe, at any rate from themselves, but there was no means of sustaining life there, and meanwhile they had a prisoner.

Men who have been manhandled sometimes die, and no one who is hiding from one corpse is anxious to find himself shut up with another. It was a situation horrific to anyone who faced it with imagination, and Doll was by no means deficient in that respect. All the same, he continued his task steadily, giving the nervous eyes which watched him from the wall comfort by his quietude.

Yet behind his deliberate manner he was hurrying. He needed to get the job done before his only ally came back and saw what he was about. The others did not worry. None of them seemed to realize that he was destroying the only valid proof that he was the particular one amongst them who was actually guilty of murder. He knew they were whispering about it, but he understood their limitations. The fearful logic of the law had no place in their emotional thinking. He knew what they believed. They thought they held Tiddy Doll in their hands at last and that any one of them, if he could brace himself to do it, could save his own skin with words and swear his leader's life away. Doll did not suppose that anyone was contemplating such action yet because he knew that there was not a man amongst them who would not feel more afraid in the world without him than with him. He realized they just thought they could hang him if it came to it, and were taking comfort from that prospect.

He let them get on with it and went on with his destruction, only raising his eyes every now and again to glance at the tin clock propped up on the shelf behind the stove. Yet even Tiddy was not so very clever. Not clever enough. For there had been no mention of the nature of the wound in the paragraph about Duds in the stop-press column.

He kept his back towards the lonely cot in the corner. The prisoner was very different from all the other witnesses and he presented a fearsome problem of his own. As yet the Tiddington man had not made up his mind about him at all. It is one thing to kill casually in the expression of one's natural brutality, but quite another to murder coldly for practical reasons. A thousand country-bred forebears in his blood advised Tiddy Doll most earnestly against that.

He had set himself to finish his boot-burning by four at the latest and he achieved it almost to the minute. He threw the last piece of leather into the stove and closed the iron door. The iron horseshoes from the boot heels went to join the studs and nails in his pocket, to be scattered in the street at the earliest convenient opportunity. He glanced down at his feet with satisfaction. They were lightly shod now in a pair of cracked leather pumps which he kept for his leisure hours. He reckoned he was safe, Tiddy did.

At ten minutes after four he began to worry. He did not betray it save by a single longing glance towards the barren ladderway and the savagery of the way he swore at the man who played the cymbals when he began to whine that he was hungry. But half an hour later Tiddy Doll was beginning to sweat, and as though his alarm had had sound the men by the wall heard it and grew restive, and the complaints became bolder.

Only Tom, brother of Roly, the young soldier who had seen Martin Elginbrodde disintegrate before his eyes and had never been the same again, slept soundly. He lay like a child spreadeagled, with open mouth, and breathed peacefully midway along the restive line.

By a few minutes before five the emotional atmosphere in the cellar had become electric.

‘He's gorn. You won't see him no more. He's scarpered and left you, Tiddy.' Bill, the effeminate to whom fear was an excitant, spoke with glee from the shadows where he was invisible, but his bed creaked as he bounded up and down on it. ‘He'll try King's Evidence, you'll see.'

Doll turned on him, the muscles of his neck swelling, but he had himself in hand.

‘There's many a ruddy fool thought of that and made the last mistake of their lives,' he said with comparative mildness. ‘Them as trusts in the police gets all that's coming to 'em and no error. If you ain't learnt that, you ain't safe to be out of your box.'

The man who had carried the cymbals began to cough most horribly.

‘I'm empty, gord I'm empty,' he complained, choking and retching. ‘When's the grub coming?'

The demand was echoed with nerve-racking abruptness by the dwarf. His shrill voice was uncontrolled and it jarred and echoed between the high walls.

‘Shut up!' The albino's roar was still authoritative. ‘Do you want me to come across to you, little 'un? Hold yer row. Listen, can't yer?'

He stood waiting, his weak eyes strained to catch the first movement at the top of the stairs, but there was nothing there, no one, only the dark doorway and silence.

‘The pull-up on the corner opens at five,' whined the man with the cymbals. ‘I want something out of the kitty to get a bit o' breakfast. I didn't have no supper, Tiddy. You can't starve me.'

‘Can't I?' The Tiddington man was savage. ‘Listen, Gutsy, I can stop you ever being 'ungry again. Wait for it, can't yer?'

A step sounded in the passage above and he paused in full flight, the wrath seeping out of him.

‘There,' he said, his voice hearty with relief, ‘there, what did I tell yer? Here he is. Here's Roly. What ‘appened to you, mate? Got lost?'

The newcomer did not reply immediately. He was descending the stairs very steadily. He had a large grease-soaked newspaper parcel in his arms, but it was not this which occasioned the unwonted caution. Doll met him as he reached the ground and a burst of startled obscenity escaped him.

‘Spirits!' he exploded amid the profanity. ‘You've been down to the all-night boozer in the meat market and bin drinking spirits. You're off your rocker, chum, that's what you are. Off your bloomin' rocker. 'Oo've you been gassing to, eh? 'Oo've you been squealing to?'

He had taken the man by the shirt collar and was shaking him as if he were a branch. In the ordinary way Roly was the only member of the band who was spared this kind of attention from Doll, and in the early days of their association there had been fights between them, but this morning the fisherman was inclined to crumple.

‘Stop it,' he said briefly. ‘Nark it, Tiddy. I've not spoke to a soul, I tell you, but I 'ad to go down to the fish-and-fry, didn't I, and I just 'ad one to steady me nerves at the 'ouse next door. I got something to show you, Tiddy. I got something 'ere.'

The final announcement was made in an undertone and his sharp-featured face was eager with tremendous news. Doll hesitated. The temptation was great, but once he relaxed he knew he lost his hold.

‘Save it,' he commanded and maintained his superiority. ‘Give us the grub first. I've got a pair of moaners 'ere.' He took the parcel and set it on the table beside a pile of clean greaseproof paper. This was his great refinement and compared with, say, a lace tablecloth in other households. ‘Now then,' he nodded towards the wall, ‘you two wot's rumbling, come and get your supper. It's a few hours late and so what? You've got it now.'

However, he had under-estimated the story. While he was superintending the division of the warm fish, armour-plated in dry fried batter, Roly slid over to Bill. An incautious word flared aloud between them and immediately a flame of interest caught the whole flimsy structure of the company. The half-clad men scrambled over one another to hear. The knot formed again, the whispers gave place to shouts, the hideous quaver of hysteria trembled through the noise, and the mischief was done.

Tiddy Doll reached the centre of the group a second too late. The headlines in the morning paper were too large for even the slowest to miss. They streamed out across the meagre page in that particular assortment of type which in England seems to be reserved for world calamities or ordinary crimes of violence.

KILLER ROAMING LONDON FOG

FAMOUS DOCTOR STRANGLED THREE DEAD IN OFFICE

Police Cordon Thwarted as Convict Patient Escapes

As the Tiddington man stared at the announcement his face grew swollen and fiery under its translucent skin. Having identified himself with the first statement, the remainder appeared to him to be a fantastic lie, backed, most alarmingly, with the authority of the printed word. He snatched the paper and strode out under the light with it, using his elbows freely as the others dragged about him.

‘“From our special correspondent, London.”' He read each word with equal emphasis, moving his head with the type. ‘“At a late hour last night the picked men of London's crack Criminal Investigation Department had to confess that an escaped convict, who is possibly one of the most dangerous criminals this country has ever known, was still ranging the fog-bound streets of their city, possibly with a still crimson knife in his hand. Meanwhile, in a solicitor's office in the western area, three innocent people, one of them a Detective Officer, lay murdered, each, so say experts, butchered with professional skill with an identical weapon. Earlier in the evening, on the other side of the metropolis, in famous Guy's Hospital, the well-loved savant whom men called, the Kind Healer, fought gallantly for life…”'

The news story, battling magnificently with too much jam, the laws of libel and contempt of court, was a work of art of its kind, but to the Suffolk man in the cellar it failed in the first degree and was incomprehensible.

‘Knifed?' he bellowed suddenly. ‘'Oo said Duds was knifed?'

‘No, Tiddy. Look down 'ere. See the pictures.'

It was Bill who flipped the sheet from him with fingers delicate as a woman's and dirty as a monkey's, and turned it down to show the reproduction of two photographs from the police files. Hard lighting and coarse printing had done their worst with them and the result was wooden and meaningless to any but the initiated.

‘If you see this man, dial 999 and – take cover' ran the legend above the panel, and underneath in smaller type, ‘This is the man the police are seeking, Jack Havoc, aged 33'.

Tiddy Doll remained rigid and Roly began to chatter in his excitement.

‘Tiddy don't know 'im. 'E ain't never seen 'im. That's 'im, Tiddy! 'E's changed 'is name like we said 'e would, but that's 'im, that's the Gaffer.'

The albino stirred with an effort. ‘What? That is? That there?'

‘Yus. The Gaffer. 'E's changed 'is name.'

Tiddy Doll raised a face which wore no expression.

‘The Gaffer!' he said, aghast.

‘That's right.' Roly shook the paper as if he could scatter the words out of it into the other man's mind. ‘'E's bin inside, in prison, like Duds told us, but 'e's got out and 'e's done in the M.O. All the dicks in London are after 'im, but they ain't got 'im. That's 'im all right. I knew 'is face as soon as I see it, though the photo's not much like 'im.'