Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

‘Are you quite sure?’ asked the stranger. ‘Think again.’

‘Them’s my orders, sir. It don’t do me no good to think.’

At this moment the porter had a curious sensation as though some important part of him, his life maybe, had gone adrift inside him and was spinning round and round. The sensation ceased when he began to speak.

‘I’ll call the waiter, sir,’ he said.

But before he called the waiter appeared, intent on an errand of his own.

‘I say, Bill,’ he began, ‘what’s the number of Mr. Rumbold’s room? He wants a drink taken up, and I forgot to ask him.’

‘It’s thirty-three,’ said the porter unsteadily. ‘The double room.’

‘Why, Bill, what’s up?’ the waiter exclaimed. ‘You look as if you’d seen a ghost.’

Both men stared round the hall, and then back at each other. The room was empty.

‘God!’ said the porter. ‘I must have had the horrors. But he was here a moment ago. Look at this.’

On the stone flags lay an icicle, an inch or two long, around which a little pool was fast collecting.

‘Why, Bill,’ cried the waiter, ‘how did that get here? It’s not freezing.’

‘ He must have brought it,’ the porter said.

They looked at each other in consternation, which changed into terror as the sound of a bell made itself heard, coming from the depths of the hotel.

‘Clutsam’s there,’ whispered the porter. ‘He’ll have to answer it, whoever it is.’

Clutsam had taken off his tie and was getting ready for bed. He slept in the basement. What on earth could anyone want in the smoking-room at this hour? He pulled on his coat and went upstairs.

Standing by the fire he saw the same figure whose appearance and disappearance had so disturbed the porter.

‘Yes, sir?’ he said.

‘I want you to go to Mr. Rumbold,’ said the stranger, ‘and ask him if he is prepared to put the other bed in his room at the disposal of a friend.’

In a few moments Clutsam returned.

‘Mr. Rumbold’s compliments, sir, and he wants to know who it is.’

The stranger went to the table in the centre of the room. An Australian newspaper was lying there which Clutsam had not noticed before. The aspirant to Mr. Rumbold’s hospitality turned over the pages. Then with his finger, which appeared even to Clutsam standing by the door unusually pointed, he cut out a rectangular slip, about the size of a visiting card, and, moving away, motioned the waiter to take it.

By the light of the gas-jet in the passage Clutsam read the clipping. It seemed to be a kind of obituary notice; but of what possible interest could it be to Mr. Rumbold to know that the body of Mr. James Hagberd had been discovered in circumstances which suggested that he had met his death by violence?

After a longer interval Clutsam returned, looking puzzled and a little frightened.

‘Mr. Rumbold’s compliments, sir, but he knows no one of that name.’

‘Then take this message to Mr. Rumbold,’ said the stranger. ‘Say, “Would he rather that I went up to him, or that he came down to me?” ’

For the third time Clutsam went to do the stranger’s bidding. He did not, however, upon his return open the door of the smoking-room, but shouted through it:

‘Mr. Rumbold wishes you to Hell, sir, where you belong, and says, “Come up if you dare!” ’

Then he bolted.

A minute later, from his retreat in an underground coal-cellar, he heard a shot fired. Some old instinct, danger-loving or danger-disregarding, stirred in him, and he ran up the stairs quicker than he had ever run up them in his life. In the passage he stumbled over Mr. Rumbold’s boots. The bedroom door was ajar. Putting his head down he rushed in. The brightly lit room was empty. But almost all the movables in it were overturned and the bed was in a frightful mess. The pillow with its five-fold perforation was the first object on which Clutsam noticed bloodstains. Thenceforward he seemed to see them everywhere. But what sickened him and kept him so long from going down to rouse the others was the sight of an icicle on the window-sill, a thin claw of ice curved like a Chinaman’s nail, with a bit of flesh sticking to it.

That was the last he saw of Mr. Rumbold. But a policeman patrolling Carrick Street noticed a man in a long black cape, who seemed, by the position of his arm, to be carrying something heavy. He called out to the man and ran after him; but though he did not seem to be moving very fast, the policeman could not overtake him.

The evening before we made the expedition to Podolo we talked it over, and I agreed there was nothing against it really.

‘But why did you say you’d feel safer if Walter was going too?’ Angela asked me. And Walter said, ‘What good should I be? I can’t help to row the gondola, you know.’

Then I felt rather silly, for everything I had said about Podolo was merely conversational exaggeration, meant to whet their curiosity, like a newspaper headline: and I knew that when Angela actually saw the dull little island, its stony and inhospitable shore littered with broken bottles and empty tins, she would think what a fool I was, with my romancing. So I took back everything I said, called my own bluff, as it were, and explained that I avoided Podolo only because of its exposed position: it was four miles from Venice, and if a boisterous bora got up (as it sometimes did, without warning) we should find getting back hard work, and might be late home. ‘And what will Walter say,’ I wound up, ‘if he comes back from Trieste’ (he was going there for the day on business) ‘and finds no wife to welcome him?’ Walter said, on the contrary, he had often wished such a thing might happen. And so, after some playful recriminations between this lately married, charming, devoted couple we agreed that Podolo should be the goal for tomorrow’s picnic. ‘You must curb my wife’s generous impulses,’ Walter warned me; ‘she always wants to do something for somebody. It’s an expensive habit.’ I assured him that at Podolo she would find no calls on her heart or her purse. Except perhaps for a rat or two it was quite uninhabited. Next morning in brilliant sunshine Walter gulped down his breakfast and started for the station. It seemed hard that he should have to spend six hours of this divine day in a stuffy train. I stood on the balcony watching his departure.

The sunlight sparkled on the water; the gondola, in its best array, glowed and glittered. ‘Say good-bye to Angela for me,’ cried Walter as the gondolier braced himself for the first stroke. ‘And what is your postal address at Podolo?’ ‘Full fathom five,’ I called out, but I don’t think my reply reached him.

Until you get right up to Podolo you can form no estimate of its size. There is nothing near by to compare it with. On the horizon it looks like a foot-rule. Even now, though I have been there many times, I cannot say whether it is a hundred yards long or two hundred. But I have no wish to go back and make certain.

We cast anchor a few feet from the stony shore. Podolo, I must say, was looking its best, green, flowery, almost welcoming. One side is rounded to form the shallow arc of a circle: the other is straight. Seen from above, it must look like the moon in its first quarter. Seen as we saw it from the water-line with the grassy rampart behind, it forms a kind of natural amphitheatre. The slim withy-like acacia trees give a certain charm to the foreground, and to the background where they grow in clumps, and cast darker shadows, an air of mystery. As we sat in the gondola we were like theatre-goers in the stalls, staring at an empty stage.

It was nearly two o’clock when we began lunch. I was very hungry, and, charmed by my companion and occupied by my food, I did not let my eyes stray out of the boat. To Angela belonged the honour of discovering the first denizen of Podolo.