live...'
'Dally,' a voice called, 'Dally.' The Boy looked sharply and guiltily round; he hadn't heard Judy moving silently above in her naked feet and her corsets.
He was absorbed, trying to get the plan straight in the confused hot brain, tied up in its complexity, uncertain who it was who had to die... himself or her or both....
'What you want, Judy?' Dallow said.
'Billy's finished your coat.'
'Let it be,' Dallow said. 'I'll fetch it in a shake.'
She blew him an avaricious, unsatisfied kiss and padded back to her room.
'I started something there all right,' Dallow said.
'Sometimes I wish I hadn't. I don't want trouble with poor old Billy, an' she's so careless.'
The Boy looked at Dallow broodingly, as if perhaps he knew from his long service what one did.
'Suppose,' he said, 'you had a child?'
'Oh,' Dallow said, 'I leave that to her. It's her funeral.' He said: 'You got a letter there from Colleoni?'
'But what does she do?'
'The usual, I suppose.'
'And if she doesn't,' the Boy persisted, 'an' she began a child?'
'There's pills.'
'They don't always work, do they?' the Boy said.
He had thought he'd learned everything now, but he was back in his state of appalled ignorance.
'They never work, if you ask me,' Dallow said.
'Colleoni written?'
'If Drewitt grassed, there wouldn't be a hope, would there?' the Boy brooded.
'He won't grass. And anyway he'll be in Boulogne tonight.'
'But if he did... or say I thought he had... there'd be nothing to do then, would there, but kill myself? And she she wouldn't want to live without me. If she thought... And all the time perhaps it wouldn't be true. They call it don't they? a suicide pact.'
'What's got you, Pinkie? You're not giving in?'
'I mightn't die.'
'That's murder too.'
'They don't hang you for it.'
'You're crazy, Pinkie. Why, I wouldn't stand for a thing like that.' He gave the Boy a shocked and friendly blow. 'You're joking, Pinkie there's nothing wrong with the poor kid except for liking you.'
The Boy said not a thing--he had an air of removing his thoughts, like heavy bales, and stacking them inside, turning the key on all the world. 'You want to lie down a bit and rest,' Dallow said uneasily.
'I want to lie down alone,' the Boy said. He went slowly upstairs--when he opened the door he knew what he would see; he looked away as if to shut out temptation from the ascetic and the poisoned brain.
He heard her say: 'I was just going out for a while, Pinkie. Is there anything I can do for you?'
Anything... His brain staggered with the immensity of its demands. He said gently: 'Nothing,' and schooled his voice to softness. 'Come back soon. We got things to talk about.'
'Worried?'
'Not worried. I got things straight,' he gestured with deadly humour at his head, 'in the box here.'
He was aware of her fear and tension the sharp breath and the silence and then the voice steeled for despair. 'Not bad news, Pinkie?'
He flew out at her: 'For Christ's sake, go!'
He heard her coming back across the room to him, but he wouldn't look up--this was his room, his life; he felt that if he could concentrate enough, it would be possible to eliminate every sign of her... everything would be just the same as before... before he entered Snow's and felt under that cloth for a ticket which wasn't there and began the deception and shame. The whole origin of the thing was lost: he could hardly remember Hale as a person or his murder as a crime it was all now him and her.
'If anything's happened... you can tell me...
I'm not scared. There must be some way, Pinkie, not to...' She implored him: 'Let's talk about it first,'
He said: 'You're fussed about nothing. I want you to go all right, you can go,' he went savagely on, 'to ...' But he stopped in time, raked up a smile, '... go and enjoy yourself.'
'I won't be gone long, Pinkie.' He heard the door close, but he knew she was lingering in the passage the whole house was hers now. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the paper 'I don't care what you do.... Wherever you go, I'll go too.' It sounded like a letter read in court and printed in the newspapers. He heard her feet upon the stairs going down.
Dallow looked in and said: 'Drewitt should be starting now. I'll feel better when he's on that boat.
You don't think, do you, she'd get the police to hunt him out?'
'She hasn't got the evidence,' the Boy said. 'You're safe enough when he's out of the way.' He spoke dully as if he'd lost all interest in whether Drewitt went or stayed it was something which concerned other people. He'd gone beyond that.
'You too,' Dallow said. 'You'll be safe.'
The Boy didn't answer.
'I told Johnnie to see he got on the boat safe and then phone us. He'll be ringing up now almost any time. We oughta have a party to celebrate, Pinkie. My God, how sunk she'll feel when she turns up there and finds him gone!' He went to the window and looked out. 'Maybe we'll have some peace then. We'll have got out of it easy. When you come to think. Hale and poor old Spicer. I wonder where he is now.' He stared sentimentally out through the thin chimney smoke and the wireless masts. 'What about you and me an* the girl, of course shifting off to some new place?
It's not going to be so good here now with Colleoni butting in.' He turned back into the room. 'That letter' and the telephone began to ring. He said: 'That'll be Johnnie,' and hurried out.
It occurred to the Boy that it wasn't the sound of feet on the stairs he recognised, it was the sound of the stairs themselves he could tell those particular stairs even under a stranger's weight; there was always a creak at the third and seventh step down. This was the place he had come to after Kite had picked him up he had been coughing on the Palace Pier in the bitter cold, listening to the violin wailing behind the glass; Kite had given him a cup of hot coffee and brought him here God knows why perhaps because he was out and wasn't down, perhaps because a man like Kite needed a little sentiment, like a tart who keeps a pekinese. Bate had opened the door of No .63 and the first thing he'd seen was Dallow embracing Judy on the stairs and the first thing he had smelt was Billy's iron in the basement. Everything had been of a piece: nothing had really changed; Kite had died, but he had prolonged Kite's existence not touching liquor, biting his nails in the Kite way, until she came and altered everything.
Dallow's voice drifted up the stairs: 'Oh, I dunno.
Send some pork sausages. Or a tin of beans.'
He came back into the room. 'It wasn't Johnnie,' he said. 'Just the International. We oughta be hearing from Johnnie.' He sat anxiously down on the bed and said: 'That letter from Colleoni, what does it say?'
The Boy tossed it across to him. 'Why,' Dallow said, 'you haven't opened it.' He began to read: 'Well,' he said, 'it's bad, of course. It's what I thought. And yet it's not so bad either. Not when you come to look at it.' He glanced cautiously up over the mauve notepaper at the Boy, sitting there by the washstand, thinking. 'We're played out here, that's what it comes to. He's got most of our boys and all the bookies. But he doesn't want trouble. He's a business man he says a fight like you had the other day brings a track into disrepute. Disrepute,' Dallow repeated thoughtfully.
'He means,' the Boy said, 'the suckers stay away.'
'Well, that's sense. He says he'll pay you three hundred nicker for the goodwill. Goodwill?'
'He means not carving his geezers.'
'It's a good offer,' Dallow said. 'It's what I was saying just now we could clear out right away from this damned town and this phony buer asking questions, start again on a good line or maybe retire altogether, buy a pub, you an' me an' the girl, of course.' He said: 'When the hell's Johnnie going to phone? It makes me
