J. Farjeon - Detective Ben

‘Don’t keep me waiting, Mr Lynch, will you?’ said the woman who was watching him.

‘I do when I wanter,’ replied Mr Lynch.

‘Really?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Perhaps I’d better remind you, then, that your predecessor wanted to.’

‘Prederwotter?’

‘I must remember your dictionary is limited. The man I engaged before you.’

‘Oh! Wot ’appened to ’im?’

‘Something I hope will not happen to you.’

‘I’ll see it don’t. I mike things ’appen to other people, and I knows ’ow to tike care they don’t ’appen to me. Yer don’t think yer’ve engaged Little Lord Fowntleroy, do yer?’

‘I confess I don’t see the resemblance.’

‘I’ve twisted more necks than I can cahnt.’ He looked at her neck. ‘There was one they couldn’t untwist. Orl right. That’s me!’

Helen Warren may have been impressed, but she was not alarmed. Slipping her hand under the lace-edged pillow, she brought out a little revolver and laid it on the silk counterpane.

‘And that’s me. So now you know, Mr Lynch, what will happen to you if you don’t keep to the rules of this flat. By the way, do you intend to?’

For an instant, while her firm slender fingers tapped the revolver—the murderous weapon made an incongruous gleam on the attractive counterpane—he almost forgot he was Harry Lynch, twister of necks, for he knew that Helen Warren was ruthless and would suffer no heart-pangs if she popped him off. But the instant passed, and a wave of personal indignation helped him to maintain the role he was playing.

‘If you think I git palpertashuns when I sees a popgun,’ he answered, ‘yer wrong!’

‘Which is not a reply to my question,’ she observed. ‘I asked whether you were going to obey the rules?’

‘Yus, I know you did.’

‘Well?’

‘P’r’aps it derpends.’

‘On what?’

‘On if there’s any more. ’Ave I ’eard them orl?’

‘No, you have not heard them all,’ she said. ‘There are a few more.’

‘Ah!’ muttered Ben. ‘Let’s ’ave ’em!’

‘You are not really a lady’s man, Mr Lynch, are you?’

‘I treat ’em right when they treat me right.’

‘How fair! I am that way with people myself. Well, one of the rules you’ve not heard yet is that nobody leaves this flat without permission.

‘Another is that, although I may permit others to be humorous, when it amuses me, the others must understand that I myself am quite serious.’

‘Oh!’

‘Another is that, if the lift-bell rings, I answer it.’

‘That’s O.K. I ain’t bin engaged fer a butler.’

‘You have been engaged, Mr Lynch, to do whatever you are told to do—which brings me to the last rule, and the reason why I have sent for you. You are receiving a pound a day retaining fee, free board and lodging till the time comes for your job, expenses during the job, and fifty pounds when you have completed the job. I don’t think you will have to wait long. In fact, you may be sent on the job at any moment. But meanwhile I have a rule against idleness, and though you will not be my butler, you will be my cook and my waiter, and you will begin your duties at once by preparing breakfast for myself and Mr Sutcliffe. We take breakfast in our rooms. The kitchen is the first door on the right beyond the lift. You can’t make a mistake, because all the other doors are locked. Can you make tea and cook eggs?’ She laughed suddenly at his expression, and slipped the revolver back under the pillow. ‘We’re not going to quarrel, Mr Lynch. You’ll find a pound note on the kitchen table, and a slightly more presentable suit than the one you are wearing over a chair. Profit by both, and bring in my breakfast in half an hour. Thank you.’

‘Well, I’m blowed!’ blinked Ben.

‘If that’s all you are, we needn’t worry,’ she replied sweetly. ‘You can boil the eggs. Four minutes.’

Her tone bore a note of definite dismissal. He turned to go. But at the door he paused. What would Harry Lynch’s attitude have been towards boiling eggs?

‘Orl right, we’ll carry on,’ he said, ‘so long as there ain’t no ’ankey-pankey, and so long as I ain’t done out of my proper job. But if you don’t like my cookin’, that’s your funeral, see?’

‘Close the door after you,’ she answered.

Outside he nearly bumped into the pale Mr Sutcliffe. Mr Sutcliffe smiled, and put his finger to his lips.

‘Yes, I was listening,’ he whispered, without shame. ‘I always do.’

‘Corse, you don’t know wot walls are for, do yer?’ frowned Ben.

‘I’ve heard,’ smiled Mr Sutcliffe. ‘They are to conceal us. To imprison us. To protect our little secrets. Terribly in the way. You did quite well, Mr Lynch. I wish you were staying longer. You can do my egg four-and-a-half minutes. Safer. And please, please cut the crusts off the toast.’

He slipped back along the corridor to his bedroom.

Trying to dispel an unpleasant idea that he had strayed into a lunatic asylum and that his job might be to polish off the worst cases when they arrived, Ben made his way across the hall to the first door on the right beyond the lift. The door led to the kitchen, the suit, and the pound note, as predicted.

Thoughtfully, he changed. In spite of the fact that the suit he changed to had holeless pockets and almost made him look respectable, he parted with his old clothes with regret. It seemed as though he were shedding the final remnants of his familiar personality.

The pound note in one of the holeless pockets soothed him a little. He felt he had earned it already, and if things got too hot and he had to escape, it would keep him for a month. Ben could live royally on eightpence a day. But he had no present intention of escaping. Imprisoning him more securely than locks and keys was the ghost of the dead detective, to which he was attached by an invisible chain.

He found the eggs in a small larder. Also tea, bread, butter, condensed milk, and other breakfast accompaniments. In a few minutes, the gas cooker was busy.

‘’Allo—wozzat?’ he muttered suddenly.

A faint, buzzing sound had come from the hall. The lift?

‘Well, it ain’t my bizziness,’ he reflected. ‘I ain’t on the door!’

He stared at the eggs reclining placidly in their hot bath, envying their placidity. He tried to think only of the eggs, but found he was thinking more of the lift. The buzzing sound came again.

‘Ain’t nobody goin’?’ he wondered, nervily.

The eggs recaptured his attention for a few moments. How long had they been in? One minute or two? The lift had confused the count. Actually it was three.

Then he forgot the eggs again. Someone was in the hall; he heard a faint, filmy rustle. He also heard the dim whirr of the lift’s ascent. Somebody was coming up?… well, why shouldn’t somebody come up?… Only he hoped it wasn’t another lunatic …

He crept to the door. The eggs continued boiling perilously. Curiosity beat him when he heard the lift stop and the gate slide aside. He opened the door a crack, turning the handle very softly, and peeped through.

At first he could see nothing but the back of a blue dressing-gown. Miss Warren was standing between Ben’s nose and the lift, obscuring his view of the person who was just stepping out of it. But after a second the blue back made a little movement that was suspiciously like a start, and the movement altered its position. Now it was no longer between him and the lift, and he could see the person who had just stepped out.

Ben closed the door swiftly, his heart thumping. The visitor was a policeman.

The arrival of the policeman spelt the ruin of the eggs. They were now entirely forgotten in the graver problem that had suddenly presented itself.