J. Farjeon - Detective Ben

‘Got somethink to tell yer, guv’nor,’ said Ben.

‘What?’ asked the detective.

‘I’m a mug. I ain’t no good at ’elpin’.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Well, see, I knows meself better. The on’y thing I’m really good at’s runnin’ away.’

‘Many a useful man begins by running away.’

‘Yus, but I’ve never stopped.’

‘You’re stopping now.’

‘Eh?’

‘Prove your words. I’m not keeping you. Run away. Pop off!’

‘Lumme, ’e’s doin’ me!’ thought Ben, wretchedly. ‘I toljer ’e would.’

‘You see, I know you better than you know yourself,’ continued the detective, after a pause. ‘I’m quite sure you know how to run away—’

‘I’ll die runnin’!’

‘—but if there’s any solid reason, you stand firm. You used one of my favourite expressions just now. “Stick it out.” Well, suppose I told you that, if you stick this out, you may bring off something that will make all the folk in Scotland Yard touch their hats to you every time you pass—’

‘Go on!’

‘—and that might bring you in, say, a fifty pound note at the end?’

‘’Ere, ’old me!’ gasped Ben.

The detective laughed softly. ‘Listen—I’m going to tell you a little story,’ he said.

‘I’ll bet it’s ’orrible!’

‘But you’d like to hear it?’

‘No. Go on.’

‘The fellow you spoke to and who has just been taken away had an appointment to meet somebody on this bridge between two and half-past. He was going to be identified by his rags and that skull-pin in your hand. I don’t know who the somebody is, but I do know that if I can track him to his source—that’s my present job—I’m on to a big thing.’

‘Yus, but—’

‘Wait till I’ve finished. What I’m going to propose to you is this. The somebody hasn’t turned up yet. Will you wait on this bridge, with that ugly brute of a pin in your coat, at the spot where you spoke to the late lamented, till half-past two—’

‘Late ’oo?’

‘The chap who’s dead. Nothing may happen. In that case the fee will have to be reduced, but you’ll still be on to a fiver for the easiest job you’ve ever had. But something may happen. The somebody may turn up, and be duped by your rags and your pin. In that case—Ben—if you play your cards cleverly and “stick it out,” eh?—the somebody may cart you back to the very source I’m looking for, and you will earn your couple of ponies.’

Ben wiped his forehead.

‘I admit it won’t be pleasant. But there will be glory and cash at the end of it—and, of course, I’ll be following you and looking after you—with this —!’

He raised his revolver again and, with grim and unappreciated humour, directed it towards Ben. Ben ducked involuntarily. An instant later the detective dropped to the ground, a crumpled heap.

Ben stared, stunned. ‘Wot’s ’appened to me?’ he wondered. The thing had been too swift and silent and unbelievable to have occurred outside a suddenly distorted brain. His mind ceased to function. Then he experienced a sensation as though he were coming out of gas. Truth developed out of numbness, and for several seconds he saw nothing, and thought of nothing, but the helpless, limp form of a young man whose eager voice still echoed in his ears, and whose friendly eyes had conveyed him out of terror into human warmth … He looked up to find other eyes upon him. The eyes of a beautiful woman in a dark, close-fitting coat.

She was standing beside a closed car. Had the car slipped up from the ground? He had not heard its approach. It had come as silently as the bullet. Or perhaps emotion had throbbed too insistently in his ears …

‘Quick!’ ordered the beautiful woman. ‘There’s not a moment!’

The door of the car was open. Ben looked at it; then at her; and then once more at the motionless heap on the ground.

‘Dead?’ said Ben thickly.

‘Quite,’ answered the woman. Her voice was low and rich, but as pitiless as cold steel.

‘Are you coming?’

Ben raised his face from death to life. Even in this dimness the woman’s eyes were dazzling. Ben’s heart turned black.

He nodded.

‘That’s right, miss,’ he murmured. ‘I’m comin’.’

The blackness in Ben’s heart was reflected in the car. The blinds were drawn, and as the car shot forward he found himself travelling in a darkness that seemed to creep right up to him and touch him.

By his side was the beautiful woman. Even in this enveloping darkness that affected both sight and soul he remained conscious of her beauty, just as he had been conscious of it while staring at death. It brushed his ragged sleeve as the car swung abruptly round a corner. It whispered to him through the fragrance of scent. It electrified the black atmosphere. Ben was not impervious to beauty, and he could stare with incoherent appreciation at a sunset, or watch little children dancing to a piano-organ, or pause, futilely desirous, at the photograph of a naughty chorus girl wrapped round a pound of cheese. But he hardened himself against the beauty he was now encountering, for it presided in enemy territory.

Ahead of him, driving, was another figure. A big, smudgy figure in a large overcoat. There was no beauty in this dim outline. It was sinister and forbidding, and reminded Ben of Carnera. He found himself wondering how long, if it came to a fight, he would be able to stand up against that massive frame. He worked it out at five seconds less six.

But the big figure in the large overcoat had another kind of tussle on at the moment. Emerging suddenly from his dazed thoughts, Ben became conscious of it when the car took another violent curve that brought the woman’s shoulder hard against his own. He heard a shout. The car swerved. He heard a shot. The car accelerated dizzily. Another corner. Straight again. Another corner. Straight again. Plop! Ting! Two little holes. One in the small window in the back of the car, one in the windscreen. A straight line between the two holes separated, and cleared by three inches, two heads.

‘All right, Fred?’ inquired the owner of one of the heads, coolly; while the owner of the other head thought, less coolly, ‘Lumme!’

The big figure in the large overcoat nodded. The car flew on.

‘And you?’ asked the woman, turning to Ben.

It was the first time she had addressed Ben since they had entered the car. ‘Now wot I’ve gotter do,’ reflected Ben, ‘is to pertend it ain’t nothink, like ’er!’ Aloud he responded, with elaborate carelessness:

‘Corse! ’Oo minds a little thing like that?’

She smiled. He could not see the smile, but he felt it. It came to you, like her scent.

‘Item, courage,’ were her next words. ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve got that, for you’ll need it.’

‘’Ooray,’ thought Ben.

‘But, after all,’ she went on, ‘one expects courage from those who have been awarded the D.S.O.’

‘’Oo’s that?’ jerked Ben.

‘Distinguished Skull Order.’ She touched his gruesome pin with a slender finger. ‘You must tell me one day what you got it for. I expect you’ve a nice little selection of bedtime stories. But have you ever been shot at twice in five minutes before? You have to thank our driver for saving you the first time.’

‘Eh? When was the fust time?’ blinked Ben.

He couldn’t remember it, and the notion that he was under any obligation to the driver was not one that went to his heart. When had the ugly brute saved him?

‘Don’t play poker-face with me!’ retorted the woman. ‘You know as well as I do!… Oh, but of course—I see what you mean. The detective didn’t actually shoot at you—he was merely going to. Well, Fred was a fool to interfere. If you’d got in a mess, it was your affair to get out of it. However he lost his head, so I hope you’ll prove worth the risk he took by not losing yours!’