J. Farjeon - Detective Ben

‘P’r’aps yer could do with a bit,’ suggested Ben.

‘Perhaps I could, and perhaps I could not,’ replied Mr Sutcliffe thoughtfully. ‘And perhaps, after all, it would be a mistake to discuss it. Discussion is rather fatiguing, though, of course, one can always train. Well, now I have seen you and know what is on the other side of the wall, I shall return to my room. Good-night.’

‘’Ere, ’arf a mo’!’ exclaimed Ben, quickly. ‘If you’ve done, I’ve got a few things I’d like to ask!’

‘Be sure they are few,’ said Mr Sutcliffe, ‘and don’t count on getting answers.’

‘Well—corse, I knows a lot,’ began Ben, cautiously feeling his way. ‘I knows I’ve bin engaged fer a job—’

‘But you don’t know what the job is,’ interposed Mr Sutcliffe, helpfully. ‘No. And you won’t, till she chooses to tell you.’

‘Meanin’ you won’t!’

‘I certainly won’t.’

‘P’r’aps yer can’t?’

‘Perhaps I can’t. Perhaps is such a useful word. It means nothing.’

‘Oh, well—I can wait!’

‘Since you will have to, that is fortunate. I have no doubt, Mr Lynch, that in your own slum, or castle, or service flat, or Soho restaurant, you are the monarch of all you survey—but there is only one monarch here !’

‘Meanin’ Miss Warren?’

‘Meaning Miss Warren.’

‘Well, I’m ’ere to do ’er instrucshuns,’ said Ben, ‘but she can’t twist ’Arry Lynch rahnd ’er little finger!’

‘She can twist Stanley Sutcliffe round her little toe,’ confessed that individual.

‘Then why ain’t you doin’ ’er job?’

Mr Sutcliffe seemed intrigued by the question. He considered it as though this were the first occasion it had occurred to him.

‘I expect I am too gentle,’ he replied, at last. ‘I only know two or three ways of killing people, and of those only one is a certainty.’

‘Oh! Well, what’s wrong with the certainty?’

‘No one knows anything about that but myself.’ He suddenly frowned. ‘And we don’t talk about it … But the real reason,’ he went on, changing the trend of the conversation, ‘is that Miss Warren has other uses for me and likes me to remain at the flat. Do you know, Mr Lynch, I haven’t been out for five months.’

‘Go on!’

‘It’s the truth. And it’s a pity. Or isn’t it? Ease. Comfort. The pleasant passing hours. Omar Khayyám.’ He held up a soft hand and moved the fingers contemplatively. ‘I wonder whether I could still hit the ball?’

Ben spent one of the most unpleasant nights of his experience, and the extent of the unpleasantness may be gauged from the circumstance that his nocturnal experience was vast, including coal-bunkers, luggage-vans, dustbins, water-tanks, and once a coffin.

When Mr Stanley Sutcliffe left the room, his strangely flabby atmosphere remained, hanging on the darkness like a nauseous scent. The possibility that his pale blue eye might at any moment be plastered against some invisible peephole assisted the illusion of his continued presence. Helen Warren, at least, was physically beautiful. She could give satisfaction to the senses if not to the soul. Mr Stanley Sutcliffe could not give satisfaction, in Ben’s view, to anything. Not even to a golf ball.

‘Wonner why she ’as ’im arahnd?’ he reflected. ‘Is ’e one o’ them conternental giggerliots?’

Ben had been to Paris, and at a dance-hall had watched anæmic young men perform amorous revolutions with jewelled ladies, the latter usually stout and elderly; and when he had asked what these curious male creatures were, he had been informed. He liked a bit of French, so he had memorised the word.

‘That’s wot ’e is, a giggerliot,’ he decided, ‘and she keeps ’im shut ’ere case ’e runs away. Five months—lumme, no wunner ’e looks like Monday’s cod!’ A nasty thought followed. ‘’Ope she ain’t goin’ ter keep me ’ere five months!’

The probability was happily reduced by the reflection that he would make a very bad giggerliot.

After creeping to the door and discovering that Mr Sutcliffe had relocked it, Ben turned to the bed. The time had come to test it, because he did not want to spend the whole night—or what was left of the night—on the floor. If the spy-holes were used, the procedure would not reflect much credit on Harry Lynch, while even if the spy-holes were not used, the morning light, revealing a comfortable empty bed, would produce humiliation. So he felt his way carefully towards the spot where he believed the bed was, screwed up his courage, raised his fist, and brought it down hard. If anything was on the bed, he was going to get in the first whack.

He whacked air. A second effort, however, was more successful. He whacked a pillow. It yielded with pleasant obedience to his attack, as did the rest of the bedding when the attack was continued rapidly down its complete length … Good! Just a bed. Nothing nasty in it. That was all right, then!

He took off his boots. Or, rather, somebody else’s. They had had quite half-a-dozen previous owners, and the last had discarded them into a ditch beside a dead cat. Ben had left the cat but had taken the boots. Morally one has a right to the surplus contents of a ditch, though technically they may be crown property.

He did not take off his collar because he hadn’t one. It saved time. He did not take off his coat because it was next to nature, and it was risky to sun-bathe when anybody might pop in on you. The same applied to his trousers. Going to bed, with Ben, was taking off your boots; getting up, putting them on again.

He stretched himself out on the bed. Not in it. You can’t spring so far when you take the clothes with you.

Nothing happened saving the constant expectation that something would. He listened for footsteps. He watched for the thin ray of light. The minutes slipped by in nerve-racking uneventfulness and silent blackness. Even the silence and the blackness contributed some special quality to the occasion. He had never known them so utter.

A thought began to worry him before he knew what it was. It materialised into: ‘Blimy, I never looked unner the bed!’

After a period which he estimated at, roughly, ninety-five hours, he drifted into the companion torture of dreams. The last, characteristic of the rest, from which he awoke with a start may be recorded. He was dancing with a skeleton. The skeleton was wearing jewels, and he was the skeleton’s giggerliot. Its bony arms pressed him so hard against its open ribs that they pressed him right inside, and he was struggling to get out when he opened his eyes and found Mr Stanley Sutcliffe smiling at him.

Mr Sutcliffe was still in his dressing-gown and, with the room, was fully revealed for the first time by the light of a bedside lamp.

‘Oi!’ gasped Ben.

‘So you observed before,’ answered Mr Sutcliffe. ‘You say it beautifully.’

Ben screwed up his eyes and then opened them properly while Mr Sutcliffe continued:

‘One day I must write some poems about you. Those I think I could do. Poetry is a sort of last resort when you’ve nowhere else to go. I wish I weren’t so witty. Did you sleep well?’

‘Wot ’ave you come back for?’ demanded Ben.

‘It’s time to get up,’ replied Mr Sutcliffe. ‘I mean, for you to get up.’

‘Go on!’

‘Eight o’clock, Mr Lynch.’

Ben stared. If it was eight o’clock, which seemed impossible anyhow, why wasn’t there some daylight in the room? And where had the lamp come from?

‘You don’t know what you’re doing for me,’ said Mr Sutcliffe. There was no enthusiasm in his tired voice, yet the words had a curious genuineness. ‘You fit right into my hobby. Guessing, you know. I shall guess lots of things about you—till you drift away, like all the others, and become the big, final guess. Yes. But what I’m guessing now is small fry. I just look at your interesting face, and see if I can read behind. You won’t mind if I study you a lot, will you? I’m reading Alice in Wonderland at present, but I find it rather stiff, and I shall put it aside for you. You’re much nicer. And easier. You are wondering now about the light.’