Payment Deferred

every three of the criminals mentioned came to grief through inability to dispose of the body. There was a tale of a woman who had walked for miles through London streets with a body in a perambulator; there was an account of Crippen’s life in London with the body of his murdered wife buried in his cellar; but the police laid hold of them all in time. On this damning difficulty the book dwelt with self-righteous gusto. At midnight Mr. Marble put the book aside sick with fear. He was safe at present; indeed, he was safe altogether on many accounts. As long as he could see that that flowerbed was undisturbed no one would know that there was any cause for suspicion at all. That nephew of his had vanished into the nowhere that harbours so many of those whose disappearance is chronicled so casually in the papers. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to connect him, the respectable Mr. Marble, with young Medland’s annihilation. But once let some fool start investigations, even involuntary ones, in that flowerbed, and the fat would be in the fire. Mr. Marble did not know whether identification would be possible at this late date⁠—he made a mental note that he must get another book from the library in which he could look that up⁠—but even if that were impossible there would be unpleasant inquiries, and he would be in trouble for certain. Come what may, either he must maintain complete control over that flowerbed, or else he must make some other adequate arrangements. And from those “arrangements,” whatever they might be, his soul shrank in utter dread. They were certain to be his ruin. There would be some unforeseen mishap, just as there had been to the cart in which that man in the book tried to carry his victim’s remains along Borough High Street. Then he would be found out and then⁠—? Prison and the gallows, said Mr. Marble to himself, with the sweat pouring in torrents down his face.

One thing would give him security, and that would be the purchase of his house. That would give him security against disturbance for the rest of his life. Mr. Marble did not mind what happened after his death, as long as that death was not accelerated by process of law.

But how could Mr. Marble possibly purchase his house? He was living beyond his income as it was, he told himself, with a grim recollection of five-pound notes changed in Popular Corner Houses. Yet he must, he must, he must. The blind panic of the earlier months had changed to a reasoned panic now; the one object of Mr. Marble’s life now was to raise enough money to buy that house. The covering letter to yesterday’s notice to quit had hinted that perhaps Mr. Marble would find it to his advantage to buy instead of continuing to rent; Mr. Marble went to bed, to toss and mutter at his wife’s side all night long as he framed impossible schemes for acquiring money, a great deal of money, enough to buy the freehold of 53 Malcolm Road.

IV

At the Bank, as was only to be expected, they had noticed a slight change in Mr. Marble’s manner of late. He always looked worried, and clearly often he had been drinking. The head of the department to whom Mr. Marble acted as second-in-command noticed it frequently, but he took no drastic action. For one thing, he was glad to have an inefficient second, as that enabled him to keep the work more closely under his own hand, thereby making his retention of his job more probable, and for another he had a queer sort of liking for “poor old Marble,” with his worried expression, and his worried eyes, and his worried moustache. In fact, Mr. Henderson was heartily glad that Marble had apparently struggled out of the financial difficulties which had for many months before made him come to Henderson borrowing a fortnight before payday. What Henderson did not realize was that for all Marble’s looseness of fibre, and seeming incompetence to grapple with anything worth while, somewhere in Marble there was a keen mind⁠—razor keen still, despite too much whisky of late⁠—and a fount of potential fierce energy which might contrive wonderful things if only something were to rouse him sufficiently. Mr. Henderson, of course, knew nothing of a piece of work that Marble had performed marvellously efficiently some months ago.

So far Mr. Marble had found no opportunity of making the money that he hankered after so pathetically. Yet money was in the air all the time that he was working, more so even than is usually the case in a bank department. For the department of the County National Bank, of which Mr. Henderson was executive chief, with Mr. Marble as his chief assistant, dealt solely with foreign exchange, buying and selling money all day, dollars for cotton spinners, francs for costumiers, pesetas for wine merchants, and dollars, francs, pesetas, and, above all, marks, for speculators of every trade or none. Gambling in foreign exchange was becoming a national habit by which the National County Bank profited largely. Here, if anywhere, would Mr. Marble win the money for which he thirsted. But Mr. Marble knew too much about foreign exchange operations, and he was afraid. There had been times when he had made a pound or two by well-timed buying and selling, but not many. He had the example before him of those who had bought marks at prices seemingly lower than they could ever be again, only to see them change from the absurd thousands to the still more absurd hundred thousands which meant the loss of nine-tenths of their investment. The wise man who speculated in foreign exchange would do well to sell, not buy, in most cases. And one could not sell without first buying unless one could arrange a “forward operation” with a bank. One can only