'You needn't worry. We'll protect you.'
Cough, cough, cough, went the woman upstairs, and then a faint cry like a sleeping child's. 'She's calling me,' Brewer said.
'Twenty pounds.'
'I don't keep my money in here. Let me fetch it.'
'You go with him, Dallow,' the Boy said. 'I'll wait here,' and he sat down on a straight carved diningroom chair and stared out at the mean street, the dustbins along the pavement, the vast shadow of the viaduct. He sat perfectly still with his grey ancient eyes giving nothing away.
A big way Colleoni come into it in a big way he knew there wasn't a soul in the mob he could trust except perhaps Dallow. That didn't matter. You couldn't make mistakes when you trusted nobody. / cat coasted cautiously round a bin on the pavement stopped suddenly, crouched back, and in the semi-dark its agate eyes stared up at the Boy. Boy and cat, they didn't stir, watching each other, until Dallow returned.
'I've got the money, Pinkie,' Dallow said. The Boy turned his head and grinned at Dallow; suddenly his face was convulsed: he sneezed twice, violently. Overhead the coughing died away. 'He won't forget this visit,' Dallow said. He added anxiously: 'You ought to have a spot of whisky, Pinkie. You've caught cold.'
'I'm all right,' the Boy said. He got up. 'We won't stop and say good-bye.'
The Boy led the way down the middle of the empty road, between the tram lines. He said suddenly: 'Do you think I'm finished, Dallow?'
'You?' Dallow said. 'Why, you haven't even begun.' They walked for a while in silence, the water from the gutters dripped on the pavement. Then Dallow spoke: 'You worrying about Colleoni?'
'I'm not worrying.'
Dallow said suddenly: 'You're worth a dozen Colleonis. The Cosmopolitan!' he exclaimed and spat.
'Kite thought he'd go in for the automatic machines. He learned different. Now Colleoni thinks the coast's clear. He's branching out.'
'He ought to have learned from Hale.'
'Hale died natural.'
Dallow laughed. 'Tell that to Spicer.' They turned the corner by the Royal Albion and the sea was with them again the tide had turned a movement, a splashing, a darkness. The Boy looked suddenly sideways and up at Dallow he could trust Dallow receiving from the ugly and broken face a sense of triumph and companionship and superiority. He felt as a physically weak but cunning schoolboy feels who has attached to himself in an undiscriminating fidelity the strongest boy in the school. 'You mug,' he said and pinched Dallow's arm. It was almost like affection.
A light still burned in Billy's, and Spicer was waiting in the hall. 'Anything happened?' he asked anxiously. His pale face had come out in spots round the mouth and nose.
'What do you think?' the Boy said, going upstairs.
'We brought the subscription.'
Spicer followed him into his bedroom. 'There was a call for you just after you'd gone.'
'Who from?'
'A girl called Rose.'
The Boy sat on the bed undoing his shoe. 'What did she want?' he said.
'She said while she was out with you, somebody had been in asking for her.'
The Boy sat still with the shoe in his hand. 'Pinkie,'
Spicer said, 'was it the girl? The girl from Snow's?'
'Of course it was.'
'I answered the phone, Pinkie.'
'Did she know your voice?'
'How do I know, Pinkie?'
'Who was asking for her?'
'She didn't know. She said tell you because you wanted to hear. Pinkie, suppose the bogies have got that far?'
'The bogies aren't as smart as that,' Pinkie said.
'Maybe it's one of Colleoni's men, poking around after their pal Fred.' He took off his other shoe. 'You don't need to turn milky, Spicer.'
'It was a woman, Pinkie.'
'I'm not troubling. Fred died natural. That's the verdict. You can forget it. There's other things to think of now.' He put his shoes side by side under the bed, took off his coat, hung it on a bed ball, took off his trousers, lay back in his underpants and shirt on top of the bed. 'I'm thinking, Spicer, you oughter take a holiday. You look all in. I wouldn't want anyone seeing you like that.' He closed his eyes. 'You be off, Spicer, and take things easy.'
'If that girl 'ever knew who put the card...'
'She'll never know. Turn out the light and get.'
The light went out and the moon went on like a lamp outside, slanting across the roofs, laying the shadow of clouds across the downs, illuminating the white empty stands of the racecourse above Whitehawk Bottom like the monoliths of Stonehenge, shining across the tide which drove up from Boulogne and washed against the piles of the Palace Pier. It lit the washstand, the open door where the jerry stood, the brass balls at the bed end.
The Boy lay on the bed. A cup of coffee went cold on the washstand, and the bed was sprinkled with flakes of pastry. The Boy licked an indelible pencil, his mouth was stained purple at the corners, he wrote: * 'Refer you to my previous letter' and concluded it at last: 'P. Brown, Secretary, the Bookmakers' Protection...' The envelope addressed 'Mr. J. Tate' lay on the washstand, the corner soiled with coffee. When he had finished writing, he put his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. He fell asleep at once: it was like the falling of a shutter, the pressure of the bulb which ends a time exposure. He had no dreams.
His sleep was functional. When Dallow opened the door he woke at once. 'Well?' he said, lying there without moving, fully dressed among the pastry crumbs.
'There's a letter for you, Pinkie. Judy brought it up.'
The Boy took the letter. Dallow said: 'It's an elegant letter, Pinkie. Smell it.'
The Boy held the mauve envelope to his nose. It smelt like a cachou for bad breath. He said: 'Can't you keep off that bitch? If Billy knew...'
'Who'd be writing an elegant letter like that, Pinkie?'
'Colleoni. He wants me to call in for a talk at the Cosmopolitan.'
'The Cosmopolitan,' Dallow repeated with disgust. 'You won't go, will you?'
'Of course I'll go.'
'It's not the sort of place where you'd feel at home.'
'Elegant,' the Boy said, 'like his notepaper. Costs a lot of money. He thinks he can scare me.'
'Perhaps we'd better lay off Tate.'
'Take that jacket down to Billy. Tell him to sponge it quick and put an iron over it. Give these shoes a brush.' He kicked them out from under the bed and sat up. 'He thinks he'll have the laugh on us.' In the tipped mirror on the washstand he could see himself, but his eyes shifted quickly from the image of smooth, never shaven cheek, soft hair, old eyes: he wasn't interested. He had too much pride to worry about appearances.
So that later he was quite at ease waiting in the great lounge under the domed lights for Colleoni; young men kept on arriving in huge motoring coats accompanied by small tinted creatures, who rang like expensive glass when they were touched but who conveyed an impression of being as sharp and as tough as tin. They looked at nobody, sweeping through the lounge as they liad swept in racing models down the Brighton Road, ending on high stools in the American Bar. A stout woman in a white fox fur came out of a lift and stared at the Boy, then she got back into the lift again and moved weightily upwards. A little Jewess sniffed at him bitchily and then talked him over with another little Jewess on a settee. Mr. Colleoni came across an acre of deep carpet from the Louis Seize Writing Room, walking on tiptoe in glac shoes.
He was a small Jew with a neat round belly--he wore a grey double-breasted waistcoat, and his eyes gleamed like raisins. His hair was thin and grey. The little bitches on the settee stopped talking as he passed and concentrated. He clinked very gently as he moved--it was the only sound.
'You were asking for me?' he said.
