The Tiger In the Smoke (33 page)

On the run. The horror of the reality shut out every other thought in his mind.

‘You must be so tired,' he said.

The mutter in the blackness was too soft for him to catch. He became aware of astonishment and mistrust and rising anger, not in himself but behind him. The man was very close.

‘What exactly are you playing at?'

The question only just reached him, it was so quiet, but its menace was unmistakable. ‘Ma said you
knew
this afternoon when you came round to her, and she swore you'd never let on. We didn't risk it. We made her get us another place. But I came back because I remembered you used to hide things in here …'

‘Not hide,' protested Avril. ‘Keep.'

‘Quiet. Where do you think we are, in the middle of a wood? What are you up to, coming in here to find me alone?'

Avril made no answer because he had none. All the wordly intelligence he possessed, and it had never been very much, was asking him the same question. The loneliness and the danger were apparent to him, but he pushed them away and ceased to tremble. He was glad of that because he felt a hand brush over his shoulders, feeling for him, finding out exactly where he was.

‘Are you my father?'

The inquiry came out abruptly in the night. The enormity of all it implied was not lost on Avril, but it did not shock him. Human sin in any form, real or imagined, never did. It was his greatest strength. His entire attention was taken up with trying not to hurt.

‘No,' he said, and he sounded matter-of-fact, regretful even, ‘not your parent. I am, or ought to be, your spiritual father, I suppose. I'm your parish priest. I don't seem to have been very successful in that. The man who begot you died, poor fellow, fighting in a public-house. Your mother was left a widow, and after some little while my wife found her her present cottage to get her out of the district where the tragedy occurred.'

‘And she was paid for it later, I suppose?' The sneer was very bitter. The boy was disappointed not only because he was convinced, Avril knew, but because he had been searching for a reason for the Canon's charity towards him and it was not the shameful one he had chosen.

‘I suppose she was,' Avril said sadly. ‘In those days respectability seemed to matter very much.'

‘Don't I know it! Ma came within an ace of burying an empty coffin for the sake of respectability. She got one of her clients to fix it. Think of it, a whole funeral procession costing pounds, and all it did was to give me a hold on her. She didn't think of that.'

‘I wonder. She held you, if only in that way.'

‘Cut it out. Look, time's short. This is an unhealthy place for me and you're wasting my time.' A hand was biting into Avril's shoulder now and the stink of terror was enveloping him.

‘Why are you here? You're not trying to save my soul, by any chance?'

‘Oh no.' Avril gave the little grunting laugh which showed that he was genuinely amused. ‘My dear boy, I couldn't do that. The soul is one's own affair from the beginning to the end. No one else can interfere with that.' The idea interested him and in spite of himself he went off on a little intellectual digression, knowing quite well how absurd it was. ‘What is the soul?' he inquired. ‘When I was a child I thought it was a little ghostly bean, kidney-shaped, I don't know why. Now I think of it as the man I am with when I am alone. I don't think either definition would satisfy the theologians.'

‘Then for God's sake,' said the agonized voice behind him, ‘why the hell did you come?'

‘I don't know,' said Avril, and struggled on, making the truth as clear as he could. ‘All I can tell you is, that greatly against my will I had to. All today every small thing has conspired to bring me here. I have known something like it to happen before, and I believe that if I have not been misled by some stupidity or weakness of my own I shall see why eventually.'

To his amazement, the explanation which to himself sounded utterly inadequate and unsatisfactory, appeared to be understood. Behind him he heard the man catch his breath.

‘That's it,' said Havoc, and his voice was natural. ‘That's it. The same thing happened to me. Do you know what that is, you poor old bletherer? That's the Science of Luck. It works every time.'

Now it was Avril's turn to understand and he was frightened out of his wits.

‘The Science of Luck,' he said cautiously. ‘You watch, do you? That takes a lot of self-discipline.'

‘Of course it does, but it's worth it. I watch everything, all the time. I'm one of the lucky ones. I've got the gift. I knew it when I was a kid but I didn't grasp it.' The murmur had intensified. ‘This last time, when I was alone so long, I got it right. I watch for every opportunity and I never do the soft thing. That's why I succeed.'

Avril was silent for a long time. ‘It is the fashion,' he said at last. ‘You've been reading the Frenchmen, I suppose? Or no, no, perhaps you haven't. How absurd of me.'

‘Don't blether.' The voice, stripped of all its disguises, was harsh and naive. ‘You always blethered. You never said anything straight. What do you know about the Science of Luck? Go on, tell me. You're the only one who's understood at all. Have you ever heard of it before?'

‘Not under that name.'

‘I don't suppose you have. That's my name for it. What's its real name?'

‘The Pursuit of Death.'

There was a pause. Curiosity, fear, impatience bristled behind Avril. He could feel them.

‘It's a known thing, then?'

‘You did not discover it, my son.'

‘No, I suppose not.' He was hesitating, a torn and wasted tiger but still inquisitive. ‘You've got it right, have you? You have to watch for your chances and then you must never go soft, not once, not for a minute. You mustn't even think soft. Once you're soft you muck everything, lose your place, and everything goes against you. I've proved it. Keep realistic and you get places fast, everything falls right for you, everything's easy. Is that it?'

‘That's it,' said Avril humbly. ‘It is easier to fall downstairs than to climb up.
Facilis descensus averno
. That was said a long time ago.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘The Science of Luck.' Avril bent his head. ‘The staircase has turns, the vine climbs a twisted path, the river runs a winding course. If a man watches he can see the trend and he can go either way.'

‘Then you know it? Why are you soft?'

‘Because I do not want to die. A man who pitches himself down a spiral staircase on which all his fellows are climbing up may injure some of them, but, my dear fellow, it's nothing to the damage he does to himself, is it?'

‘You're crazy! You're on to a big thing, you can see what I see, and you won't profit by it.'

Avril turned round in the dark. ‘Evil be thou my Good, that is what you have discovered. It is the only sin which cannot be forgiven because when it has finished with you you are not there to forgive. On your journey you certainly “get places”. Naturally; you have no opposition. But in the process you die. The man who is with you when you are alone is dying. Fewer things delight him every day. If you attain the world, you cannot give him anything that will please him. In the end there will be no one with you.'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘I can hear that you do,' said Avril. ‘Suppose you had got to Sainte-Odile – '

‘Where?' The sudden eagerness did not warn the Canon and he went on steadily.

‘Sainte-Odile-sur-Mer. In English, Saint Odile on Sea. A little village to the west of Saint-Malo. Supposing you had got there and uncovered treasure worth a king's ransom. Do you think that you would then become somebody else? Do you believe that this weary unsatisfied child who is with you when you are alone would not go with you then? What could you buy for him to make him happy?'

Havoc was not listening. ‘Is that the name of the house or the village?'

‘Both. But you must put that out of your mind. Geoffrey Levett has gone there tonight.'

‘Has he? By sea?'

‘Yes. But the fog is lifting. He will be there by tomorrow, or the day after.' Avril threw away the information impatiently. ‘You must forget that. That is over. The ports are watched and you are hunted, my boy. Now is your last chance to think of yourself.'

Havoc laughed aloud. ‘Got it!' he said. ‘The Science of Luck, it's done it again. See how it's worked? That's why I came back, see? See what we're doing, you and me?'

‘Passing on the stairs,' said Avril, ‘rather near the bottom.' And he sighed.

‘You cut that out.' The hand was on his shoulder again. ‘I won't hear it. You're wrong. You've told me the only thing I want to know, and I came to hear it. You don't even know why you came.'

‘But I do.' Avril was quietly obstinate. ‘I came to tell you something which is perhaps more obvious to me than to anyone else whom you may meet.'

‘You came to tell me to go soft. I should say so. You silly old fool. You go home to bed and – '

His voice died abruptly. In the silence the chill grew so intense that it was painful. Far above them the ghostly figures on the windows had begun to take shape as the morning light began to strengthen.

The long fingers closed round the bones of Avril's shoulders and the trembling force of the man shook his whole body.

‘Look. Swear. Swear it on anything, anything you like. Swear you'll keep quiet.'

Avril saw the temptation into which he was led. ‘Oh,' he said wearily, ‘you know as well as I do that for us who watch there can be no half turns. I can swear and you can let me go, but as soon as I am gone what will you think? Will you feel confident or will you think you have been soft? If you do, and you come to grief as soon you must, you will blame that one act and will go down believing it. That is no good, John. The time has come when you must make a full turn or go on your way.'

‘You fool, you fool, what are you doing? Do you want it? Are you asking for it?' The boy was weeping in his weary rage and the tears fell on Avril. The old man felt the agony of them and was helpless.

‘I want very much to stay alive,' he said. ‘Enormously. Much more than I could have believed.'

‘But you've done it, you've done it, you put the doubt in my mind. I daren't. You know it, I daren't go soft.'

Avril bent forward to put his head in his hands. His resignation was complete.

‘I cannot help you,' he said. ‘Our gods are within us. We choose our own compulsions. Our souls are our own.'

He had reached the end of his secret prayer when the torch blazed and the knife struck him.

The fact that he felt it at all was significant. For the first time Havoc's hand was doubting, and because of that it had lost some of its cunning.

—

THIRTY-FIVE HOURS LATER
, in the morning, when the sun was shining through the newly-cleaned windows of his office as blandly as if no such thing as a London fog had ever existed, Charlie Luke sat at his desk in Crumb Street and considered the situation with that complete detachment which arrives with exhaustion.

Thirty-five hours. Two nights and a day. Thirty-five hours of rushed and unrelenting work, growing public hysteria, confused sympathy and censure from an excited Press, anxiety in high places which from being stern was becoming querulous, and nothing, not one pointer, not one useful clue.

Havoc, Tiddy Doll, the brothers, and Bill had vanished again as utterly as if the sewers had swallowed them.

This morning Stanislaus Oates and the Assistant Commissioner were with the Home Secretary. Chief Superintendent Yeo was at the Great Western Hospital, hoping to get an interview with Canon Avril. The old man had been out of danger since midnight and it was hoped he would be able to say a word or two as soon as he awoke.

Dear,
silly
old fool. Luke thought he could just understand him and hoped to be able one day to forgive him. Sam Drummock had saved his old friend's life. He had come creeping down in the very early morning, intending to take his boxing article to Fleet Street, and had found Picot asleep, the front door unlatched, and Avril's bed unslept in. It had taken the frightened household twenty minutes to find the old man where he lay on the vestry floor, which was as far as he had got before the loss of blood had doubled his legs under him. The actual nature of the wound was one of those miracles which Luke decided he would never understand. Why a man of Havoc's skill should suddenly miss his mark by inches, so that the collarbone took most of the blow, or why, having surely known he had missed, he had not struck again, completely defeated him. Pneumonia had not followed either. That was just God looking after His own, he supposed. ‘Surprisingly little loss of bodily heat,' the surgeon had said, ‘as if the system had suffered very little shock.'

Luke dragged his tired mind away from the subject and, although he was for the moment quite alone, made a gesture as if to throw a crumpled ball of paper over his shoulder into the wastepaper basket.

He was open to bet that Yeo would get nothing from Avril voluntarily, and he knew his
Archbold
far too well to expect that there would be any attempt to drag much from him. Page 483 … ‘
while in strict law the privilege does not exist, the minister should not be required, etc
…' It did not fit the case, of course, because no one supposed that there had been any question of confession, but it was near enough if the old fellow didn't want to talk, and he wouldn't, Luke was sure of that. Besides, what news could he tell? Havoc had been his attacker. His prints were all over the blessed church. As to the rest, Luke could hardly suppose that the chap would have had a chat with the old man before he did his handiwork, much less mention where he was going.