Josephine Tey - The Collected Works

“Come in,” said the man, and drew her quickly in and shut the door and locked it. She set her basket on the table by the curtained window and turned to face him as he came from the door.

“You shouldn’t have come!” he said. “Why did you?”

“I came because there was no time to write to you, and I had to see you. They’ve found out who he was. A man from Scotland Yard came this evening and wanted to know all about you both. I did everything I could for him. Told him everything he wanted to know, except where you were. I even gave him snaps of you and him. But he knows you are in London, and it’s only a matter of time if you stay here. You’ve got to go.”

“What did you give him the photographs for?”

“Well, I thought about it when I went away to pretend to look for them, and I knew I couldn’t go back and say I couldn’t find them and make him believe me. I mean, I was afraid I wouldn’t do it well enough. And then I thought, since they had got so far—finding out all about you two—a photograph wouldn’t make much difference one way or another.”

“Wouldn’t it?” said the man. “Tomorrow every policeman in London will know exactly what I look like. A description’s one thing—and that’s bad enough, God knows—but a photograph is the very devil. That’s torn it!”

“Yes, it might have if you were going to stay in London. But if you stayed in London you’d be caught in any case. It would only be a matter of time. You’ve got to get out of London tonight.”

“There’s nothing I’d like better,” he said bitterly, “but how, and where to? If I leave this house, it’s fifty to one I walk straight into the police, and with a mug like mine it wouldn’t be very easy to convince them that I wasn’t myself. This last week’s been ten thousand hells. God, what a fool I was!—and for so little reason. To put a rope round my neck for next to nothing!”

“Well, you’ve done it,” she said coolly. “Nothing can alter that. What you’ve got to consider now is how to get away. And as quickly as you can.”

“Yes, you said that before—but how, and where to?”

“Have some food and I’ll tell you. Have you had a proper meal today?”

“Yes, I had breakfast,” he said. But he did not appear to be hungry, and his angry, feverish eyes watched her unwaveringly.

“What you want,” she said, “is to get out of this district, where every one’s talking about the thing, to a place where no one’s ever heard of it.”

“If you mean abroad, it isn’t the slightest good trying. I tried to get taken on a boat as a hand four days ago, and they asked if I was Union or something, and wouldn’t look at me. And as for the Channel boats, I might as well give myself up.”

“I’m not talking about abroad at all. You’re not as famous as you think. I’m talking about the Highlands. Do you think the people in my home on the west coast have ever heard of you or what happened last Tuesday night? Take my word for it, they haven’t. They never read anything but a local paper, and local papers report London affairs in one line. The place is thirty-six miles from a railway station, and the policeman lives in the next village, four miles away, and has never seen anything more criminal than a salmon poacher. That’s where you are going. I have written a letter, saying that you are coming because you are in bad health. Your name is George Lowe, and you are a journalist. There is a train for Edinburgh from King’s Cross at ten-fifteen and you are catching that tonight. There isn’t much time, so hurry.”

“And what the police are catching is me at the platform barrier.”

“There isn’t a barrier at King’s Cross. I haven’t gone up and down to Scotland for nearly thirty years without knowing that. The Scotch platform is open to any one who wants to walk on. And even if there are detectives there, the train is about half a mile long. You’ve got to risk something if you’re going to get away. You can’t just stay here and let them get you! I should have thought that a gamble would have been quite in your line.”

“Think I’m afraid, do you?” he said. “Well, I am. Scared stiff. To go out into the street tonight would be like walking into no-man’s-land with Fritz machine-gunning.”

“You’ve either got to pull yourself together or go and give yourself up. You can’t sit still and let them come and take you.”

“Bert was right when he christened you Lady Macbeth,” he said.

“Don’t!” she said sharply.

“All right,” he muttered. “I’m sort of crazy.” There was a thick silence. “All right, let’s try this as a last stunt.”

“There’s very little time,” she reminded him. “Put something into a suitcase quickly—a suitcase that you can carry yourself—you don’t want porters.”

He moved at her bidding into the bedroom that led off the sitting-room, and began to fling things into a suitcase, while she put neat parcels of food into the pockets of the coat that hung behind the door.

“What’s the good?” he said suddenly. “It’s no use. How do you think I can take a main-line train out of London without being stopped and questioned?”

“You couldn’t if you were alone,” she said, “but with me it’s a different matter. Look at me. Do I look the sort who would be helping you to get away?”

The man stood in the doorway contemplating her for a moment, and a sardonic smile twisted his mouth as he took her in in all her upright orthodoxy. “I believe you’re right,” he said. He gave a short, mirthless laugh and thereafter put no difficulties in the way of her plans. In ten minutes they were ready for departure.

“Have you any money?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said; “plenty.”

She seemed about to ask a question.

“No, not that,” he said. “My own.”

She carried a rug and an extra coat: “You mustn’t suggest hurry in any way; you must look as though you were going a long journey and didn’t care who knew it.” And he carried the suitcase and a golf-bag. There was to be no hole-and-corner business. This was bluff, and the bigger the bluff, the more chance there was of carrying it off. As they stepped into the foggy road, she said, “We’ll go to Brixton High Street and get a bus or a taxi.”

As it happened, it was a taxi that offered itself first. It swelled out of the dark before they had reached a main thoroughfare, and as the man heaved what they were carrying aboard the woman gave the address of their destination.

“Cost you something, lady,” said the driver.

“Well, well,” she said, “isn’t every day my son has a holiday.”

The driver grunted good-naturedly. “That’s the stuff! Feast and famine. Nothing like it.” And she climbed in, and the taxi ceased its agitated throbbing and slid into action.

After a silence the man said, “Well, you couldn’t do more for me if I were.”

“I’m glad you’re not!” she said. There was another long silence.

“What is your name?” she asked suddenly.

He thought for a moment. “George Lowe,” he said.

“Yes,” she said; “but don’t think next time. There is a train north to Inverness that leaves Waverly at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. You’ll have to spend tomorrow night in Inverness. I have written down on a paper what you do after that.”

“You seem to be perfectly sure that nothing’s going to happen at King’s Cross.”

“No, I’m not,” she said. “The police are not fools—that Scotland Yard man didn’t believe half I said—but they’re just human. All the same, I’m not going to give you that bit paper until the train’s going.”

“I wish I had that revolver now!” he said.

“I’m glad you haven’t. You’ve made a big enough fool of yourself already.”