She wrung a cloth out in the pail at her right hand. The clock below struck its quick, wiry, reverberating note. It kept on striking.
“That’s never eleven o’clock!” Mrs. Arb exclaimed, completely aware that it was eleven o’clock. “How time flies when you’re hard at it, doesn’t it?”
Elsie silently disagreed with this proposition. In her experience of toil she had found that time lagged.
“Well, Elsie, I’m sure I’m much obliged to you. I can finish myself. Don’t you stay a minute longer.”
“No, ’m,” said Elsie, who had exchanged three hours’ overtime for sixpence and a slice of ham.
At this moment, and before Elsie had raised her damp knees from the damp floor, a very sharp and imperious tapping was heard.
“My gracious! Who’s that?”
“It’s the shop door,” said Elsie.
“I’ll go.” Mrs. Arb decided the procedure quite cheerfully. She was cheerful because the living room, with other rooms, was done, and in a condition fit to be seen by possible purchasers of her premises and business; she had no intention to live in the living room herself. And also she was cheerful because of a wild and silly, and yet not wholly silly, idea that the rapping at the shop door came from Mr. Earlforward, who had made for himself some absurd manlike excuse for calling again that night. She had, even thus early, her notions about Mr. Earlforward. The undying girl in her ran downstairs with a candle and unlocked the shop door. As she opened it a man pushed forward roughly into the shop—not Mr. Earlforward; a young man with a dangerous look in his burning eyes, and gestures indicating dark excitement.
“What do you want?” she demanded, trying to control the situation firmly and not succeeding.
The young man glanced at her. She perceived that he carried a torn umbrella and that his clothes were very wet. She heard the heavy rain outside.
“You can’t come in here at this time of night,” she added. “The shop’s closed.”
She gave a sign for him to depart. She actually began to force him out; mere temerity on her part. She thought:
“Why am I doing this? He might attack me.”
Instead of departing the young man dropped his umbrella and sprang for the big carving-knife which she had left on the counter after cutting the slice of ham for Elsie. In that instant Mrs. Arb decided absolutely and without any further vacillation that she would sell the place, sell it at once, and for what it would fetch. Already she had been a little alarmed by the sinister aspect of several of her customers. She remembered the great Clerkenwell murder. She saw how foolish she had been ever to come to Clerkenwell at all. The man waved the carving-knife over his head and hers.
“Where’s Elsie?” he growled savagely, murderously.
Mrs. Arb began dimly to understand.
“This comes of taking charwomen you don’t know,” she said pathetically to herself. “And yet I could have sworn by that girl.”
Then a strong light shone in the doorway leading to the back room. Elsie stood there holding the wall-lamp in her hand. As soon as he caught sight of her the man, still brandishing the knife, ran desperately towards her. She hesitated and then retreated a little. The man plunged into the room and banged the door.
After that Mrs. Arb heard not a sound. She was nonplussed, helpless and panic-stricken. Ah! If the late Mr. Arb had been alive, how he would have handled the affair! Not by force, for he had never been physically strong. But by skill, by adroitness, by rapid chicane. Only she could not imagine precisely what the late Mr. Arb would have done in his unique and powerful sagacity. She was overwhelmed by a sudden and final sense of the folly, the tragedy, of solitary existence for a woman like her. She had wisdom, energy, initiative, moral strength, but there were things that women could do and things that women could not do; and a woman who was used to a man needed a man for all sorts of purposes, and she resolved passionately that she would not live alone another day longer than she could help.
This resolve, however, did not mitigate her loneliness in the candle-lit shop with the shut door in front of her hiding dreadful matters and the rain pelting on the flagstones of Riceyman Steps. She looked timidly forth; a policeman might by Heaven’s mercy be passing. If not, she must run in the wet, as she was, to the police-station. She then noticed a faint light in Mr. Earlforward’s shop, and dashed across. Through the window she could see Mr. Earlforward walking in his shop with a candle in his hand. She tattooed wildly on the window. A tramcar thundered down King’s Cross Road, tremendously heedless of murders. After a brief, terrible interval the lock of Mr. Earlforward’s portal grated, and Mr. Earlforward appeared blandly in the doorway holding the candle.
“Oh, Mr. Earlforward!” she cried, and stepped within, and clutched his sleeve and told him what had occurred. And as she poured out the words, and Mr. Earlforward kept apparently all his self-possession and bland calm, an exquisite and intense feeling of relief filled her whole being.
“I’ll come over,” said Mr. Earlforward. “Rather wet, isn’t it?”
He cut a fine figure in the eyes of Mrs. Arb. He owed his prestige at that moment, however, not to any real ability to decide immediately and courageously upon the right, effective course to follow, but to the simple fact that his reactions were very slow. Mr. Earlforward was always afraid after the event. He limped vigorously into the dangers of Mrs. Arb’s dwelling with his placidity undisturbed by the realization of those dangers. And he had no conception of what he should do. Mrs. Arb
