Prelude To A Certain Midnight

detested exertion; he wanted to dream.

He sat down sighing, dipped a long, sharp, shiny nib in the ink-pot and began to write:

IRONSKIN OBST!

by

DASHWOOD STEEL

He liked this nom-de-plume even better than the one with which he signed his stories in Young Detective Weekly — ‘Dirk Pike’. Readers of The Thunderbolt knew him as ‘Lance Stockmar’. Sometimes he contributed to The Smasher under the pseudonym ‘Carver Riddle’. When he wrote for the Weekly Sweetheart he took pleasure in signing himself ‘Rayon Knickerbocker’. But ‘Dashwood Steel’ was the name he liked best of all — the name he would have chosen for himself if he had had any say in the matter.

Ironskin Obst laughed as the red-hot iron seared his eyeballs, he wrote. Then he nibbled his penholder. If only such things could be! But no, no dreams just now! Work… .

Nothing could hurt him. Knives broke and bullets rebounded from the serum-strengthened body of Ironskin Obst. Even fire was powerless to hurt him.

But oh, oh, oh if only such things could be! Oh for impregnability, and the attributes of Samson Herk, who could poke his finger through the side of a submarine! Such physical strength, combined with the powers of Svenska Xgali, the Schoolboy Hypnotist… .

But the sneering oblong mouth of the gas fire asks for shillings.

To work!

Genius is ninety per cent perspiration… which smells. The world is grim and hard, and stinks. What can a sensitive man do?

He wrote.

32

His landlady, who spoke of him as the nicest gentleman she had ever let rooms to, had put flowers on his dressing-table. The Murderer selected a small yellow chrysanthemum and stuck it in his buttonhole.

Then he went out. He walked slowly. It was not that he did not know where Frame Place was: he wanted to give himself the thrill that came of talking to a policeman.

‘Oh, officer…’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I wonder if you could tell me the best way to get to Frame Place?’

‘Well now, Frame Place, let’s see. Go straight along as you’re going, and when you get to the end of the street turn right, take the first on your left, go straight on and bear right left, and there you are. It’s a kind of crescent, sort of.’

The Murderer went on his way. He was laughing to himself. If that poor fool of a policeman had lifted out a hand and grabbed him by the collar, he would have made himself a sergeant. And there he was, pounding a beat, while he — the Murderer –was at large.

On the next street corner he asked. another policeman for a light.

‘You’re welcome, sir, if I’ve got one.’

The Murderer walked steadily up the long shadowy street. He was thinking, incongruously, of his father, who had died in the War, of his mother, who had come of a good family, of his uncle-by-marriage, who was an ironmonger, of his mother’s sister, who was remotely related to a baronet, and of his brother, who was a corn chandler….

He reached Asta Thundersley’s house in Frame Place by the river.

Another man in a grey suit had just rung the bell. The Murderer said: ‘I’m rather afraid we must be a little early.’

The other man, who seemed also to be of a quiet, reticent disposition, said: ‘Oh yes. I shouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t right. Early, yes; I’m rather afraid we must be.’

They looked at each other. After what he thought was a decent interval the Murderer approached the bell-push with an extended forefinger; whereupon the other man retreated several paces — obviously he did not want the people of the house to think that he had had the temerity to ring twice. The Murderer saw this and paused. They avoided each other’s eyes. But just then a man and a woman came up. The man looked crushed and angry — as if everything had been squeezed out of him except one deep, dark hate. And it was easy to see that the woman was the object and the inspiration of this hate. She was a big. blonde, with little pale eyes set too close to a nose shaped like a potato. Her face appeared flat and powdery as a flounder dusted with flour before it is thrown into a frying-pan; and her mouth protruded like the scalloped edge of a pie. Without hesitation she thrust a hand forward and held her thumb on the button of the bell for a good five seconds. Then The Tiger Fitzpatrick threw the door open and, muttering something that sounded like an apology, uncouthly bowed them in.

But as the door was closing someone pushed it. Another guest had arrived, the whites of whose eyes were yellow and bloodshot, and he carried a curiously carved stick of some brown and yellow tropical wood.

The guests exchanged glances but did not speak to one another. The Tiger Fitzpatrick conducted them to the sittingroom.

This room was divided by tall green folding doors which had been thrown back. At the far end Asta Thundersley’s caterers had laid out an immense table on trestles, covered with a pure white cloth, and upon this table stood three massive fivebranched candlesticks. Between the candlesticks there were two immense punch bowls, each of which contained at least two gallons of a turbid orange-coloured mixture, the pungent smell of which filled the place. To the excited eyes of the Murderer it seemed that there were five hundred glasses in the foreground, five hundred bottles of champagne in the background, and five hundred dishes of rare and complicated canapes on the left and the right. Asta Thundersley came forward, roaring words of welcome and gripping hands.