“he’s frightened! What is it he’s done?”
“God knows! Something crazy, stuck his neck out somehow, , , Oh, lord!” said Leslie in a gasp of dismay as his eye fell on his watch. He sprang for the door and went clattering down the stairs. It was eleven minutes to nine, eleven minutes to zero hour. There was no time now to do anything but take the affair seriously.
He heard Jean’s heels rapping down the stairs close behind him, and turned in the open doorway to shout to her to stay where she was, that he’d see to everything, that he’d be back. But she was still close at his elbow, tugging her way breathlessly into her coat, as he wrenched open the door of the telephone booth at the end of the street.
It seemed to take him an age to locate George Felse’s number, and a fantastic time to get an answer when he dialled it, and even then it was Bunty who answered. Dominic’s assumption that mothers were not to be frightened inhibited Leslie’s tongue no less surely. No, never mind, it could wait, if Mr. Felse wasn’t there. Never mind, he’d call him again. He slammed the receiver back and tried again.
“Police, Comerbourne? Listen, this is urgent. Please do what I ask at once, and then stand by for the explanation. It’s the Armiger case, and this is Leslie Armiger, and I’m not kidding. If Mr. Felse is there, get him. Never mind, then, you, listen, , , “
Jean whispered in his ear: “I’m going to fetch Barney’s van. I’ll be back.” She shoved open the door and ran, the staccato of her heels dwindling along the street.
“Corner of Brook Street and Hedington Grove, nine o’clock,” Leslie was repeating insistently. “We’ll be coming along from this end to meet ‘em, you see you’re there to follow ‘em.”
It was two minutes to nine when he cradled the receiver for the second time.
CHAPTER XV.
DOMINIC STRUCK THE hundredth wrong note of the evening, corrected it with a vicious lunge of both normally adroit hands, and said resignedly: “Damn! Sorry! I’m making a hell of a mess of this. Wouldn’t you rather I shut up?”
“I would,” said old Miss Cleghorn frankly, “but your parents are paying for an hour, my lad, and an hour you’re going to put in, even if you drive me up the wall in the process. I’m beginning to think I ought to revert to the old ebony ruler, though, and fetch you a crack over the knuckles every time you do that to my nerves.”
Dominic flicked a phrase of derisive laughter out of the piano and made a face at her. She was plump, sixty-odd and as lively as a terrier, and on the best of terms with her pupil, indeed from his point of view she was the one redeeming feature in these Thursday evening lessons. It was Bunty who had insisted that the ability to play at least one musical instrument was an invaluable part of any young man’s equipment, and kept his unwilling nose to the keyboard; a feat which wouldn’t have been nearly so easy if some part of his mind hadn’t come to the generous conclusion that she was probably right about the ultimate usefulness of the accomplishment.
“Ebony ruler my foot!” scoffed Dominic. “I don’t believe you’ve even got one, much less that you ever hit anybody with it.”
“You be careful! It isn’t too late to begin, and it doesn’t have to be ebony. Come on now, you’re not getting out of it by trying to side-track me. Try it again, and for goodness’ sake keep your mind on what you’re doing.”
He did his best, but the trouble was that his mind was very insistently and earnestly upon what he was doing, and it had almost nothing to do with this harmless regular Thursday evening entertainment, which had merely provided the occasion for it. He set his teeth and laboured doggedly through the study again, but his thoughts were ahead of the clock, trying to speculate on all the possible developments which might confront him, and to compile some means of dealing with all of them. What worried him most was that he had had to base his actions so extensively upon speculation, that there was so much room for miscalculation at every stage. But it was too late to allow himself to be frightened by all the possible mistakes he had made, because there was no drawing back now.
“One certain fact,” said Miss Cleghorn, nodding her bobbed head emphatically when he had fumbled his way to the last chord, “you haven’t touched a piano since last Thursday, have you? Own up!”
He hadn’t, and said so. He quite saw that from her point of view it was reprehensible, and the tone in which he made his excuses was deprecating. He thought it would be nice if he could believe that some day such things would again have importance for him, too. The weight of the real world was heavy on his shoulders; the little cosy, everyday world in which mealtimes and music lessons mattered had begun to look astonishingly charming and desirable to him, but he couldn’t get back to it. Like an unguided missile he was launched and he had to go forward.
“And how do you expect to learn to play well if you never practise? No, never mind soft-soaping me with fancy finger-work, you take your hands off that keyboard and listen when I’m talking to you.”
He removed them obediently and sat meekly with them folded in his lap while she scolded him. It couldn’t be said that he listened, though his eyes stared steadily at her round pink face with a rapt attention which amply covered the real absence of his mind. To look at her was comforting, she was so ordinary and wholesome and unsecret, knowing and knowable, no partner to the night outside the closed curtains, which had begun to be terrifying to him. He dwelt earnestly upon her invariable hand-knitted twin set and short tweed skirt, the Celluloid slide in her straight, square-cut grey hair, the mole on her chin that bobbed busily as she abused him. He smiled affectionately, cheered by the human conviction that nothing sinister or frightening could exist in the same dimension with her; but as soon as he looked away or closed his eyes he knew that it could, and that he had invoked it and could not escape it.
“It’s all very well,” she said severely, “for you to sit there and smile at me and think that makes everything all right. That’s your trouble, my boy, you think you can just turn on the charm and get away with murder.”
She could have made a happier choice of words, of course; but how could she know she was treading hard on the heels of truth?
“I know,” he said placatingly, “but this week I’ve had things on my mind, and honestly there hasn’t been time. Next week I’ll do better.” I will if I’m here, he thought, and his heart shrank and chilled in him. He grinned at her. “Cheer up, it’s nearly nine o’clock, your suffering’s almost over.”
“Yours will begin in a minute,” she said smartly, “if you don’t watch your step. You know what you’re asking for, don’t you?”
“Yes, please. With lots of sugar.” He knew there was cocoa in a jug on the stove in her kitchen, there always was on cold nights. She got up good-humouredly and went to fetch it. “All right, pack up, we’ll let you off for tonight.”
It was still a few minutes to nine, and he didn’t want to be even one minute early for his appointment. If Leslie had done his part the police should be watching the corner of the street. To arrive ahead of time was to risk
