J. Farjeon - The House Opposite

Here came the old man. Ben didn’t wait. He dived for the cupboard, doubling back past the foot of the staircase and along the narrowing passage that ran alongside to the back quarters. He seized the knob of the cupboard just as the old man’s footsteps sounded immediately above him. The cupboard was under the stairs. Chuckling, the old man, was he? Well, two could play at that game! In a moment Ben would be chuckling … What was the matter with the knob?… Yes, Ben would have, the laugh … Got stuck or something. Come on! Turn, won’t you …

The cupboard was locked.

‘Crumbs!’ gasped Ben.

He plunged into the kitchen. He had not time to close the door behind him because, when he swung round to do so, having failed to perform the operation with his leg, the old man was already in the passage and might be looking his way. If he saw the door move, of course he’d smell a rat. So all Ben could do was to duck aside, ensuring that he at least was not within the old man’s possible vision, and to wait between an open door and an open window for what might happen.

The old man was beyond the open door. Was anything beyond the open window? The thought induced complete rigidity.

Well, if you couldn’t move, you couldn’t. You just stood like a statcher. And, while you stood, and the moments went by, other thoughts came to you, to assist in the general merry-making. How had that cupboard come to be locked? It hadn’t been locked when Ben had first entered the house. Who had locked it? What was inside? And had what was inside locked it?

‘Yer know,’ thought Ben, ‘this is gettin’ ’orrible.’ A moment later, he heard the front door slam.

‘Thank Gawd!’ he murmured.

But he wasn’t going to take any undue risks, even yet. Two might play at that door-slamming game!

He was out of the way, anyhow! Quickly Ben slithered towards the passage, but in a flash he was back in the kitchen again. The old man was still standing in the hall, his silver-locked head slightly on one side, listening. Great minds sometimes think alike.

Another two minutes of agony went by. Apparently, the old man did not move from the door. He just stood and waited, listening, with his revolver ready in his hand. Then the door banged a second time …

You can’t stand in a kitchen for ever. Presently Ben tiptoed to the doorway again. This time, the hall was empty. And—the cupboard?

BACK in his sanctuary on the second floor, Ben reviewed the situation. He did not review it as a detective would have reviewed it, building point upon point and forming question upon question; he reviewed it unscientifically and emotionally, the various problems revolving in the ample space of his mind like planets in a deranged solar system. But out of the chaos we, better fed and better equipped, may select material for constructive conjecture by seizing on the more important of the questions in transit, and letting the others go. As, for example:

‘’Oo locked that cupboard unner the stairs? Yus, and when did ’e do it’? Yus, and wot’s in it? Or ’oo? Lummy!…

‘That old feller! Is ’e mad? Lummy!…

‘If the ’ouse is ’is —if mindjer—orl right! But it ain’t the Injun’s, too, can it? ’E tole me ter go, too! Sime as the old ’un did. Are they workin’ tergether? Lummy!…

‘If ’e thinks I’ve gorn—well, corse ’e must, wouldn’t ’e, will ’e come back presen’ly and do wot ’e thinks I gorn for? Lummy!…

‘Now this ’ere ’ouse can’t be the gal’s if it’s ’is— if , mindjer. Orl right. If it isn’t the gal’s, wot she pay me ter stay ’ere for? Was it so’s I’d be ’ere when ’e comes back ter do wot ’e’s goin’ ter do? Gawd!…

‘And ’ere’s a funny thing. ’E fires at me bang in the fice and misses me. Bang in the fice. And misses me!…

‘Yes, and wot abart my cheese?’

To Ben’s credit, he did not harp on the cheese. That thought merely came to him now and again in momentary pangs. He harped most on the bullet. He couldn’t make that out at all. Think he didn’t know when a revolver was pointing bang in his face?

‘Well, if ’e didn’t ’it me,’ muttered Ben suddenly, still requiring documentary proof that he was alive, ‘let’s see where the bullet did ’it.’

He turned and gazed at the wall. He saw no evidence of a bullet mark. He walked to the spot where he had been when the old man had fired, and then he located the spot where the old man had been when he had fired, and then he drew an imaginary line between the two spots. He even traced the line with his finger along the floor, continuing it to the wall and up the wallpaper as far as the height of his face. Nowhere near his finger when it paused at the correct elevation was there any sign of a bullet’s impact. There was no sign of it in the whole of the room.

‘Well, if that don’t beat a cat ’avin’ chicks!’ blinked Ben, in amazement. ‘’E fires at me. ’E don’t ’it me. ’E don’t ’it nuffin’!’

The only solution was that the bullet had suddenly stopped dead in the middle of space and had evaporated. ‘P’r’aps it was disappointed like at missin’ me and wouldn’t go on,’ thought Ben. But this thought was itself pulverising, so he reverted for relief to another problem—the problem of the cupboard under the stairs in the hall. It was, admittedly, a queer relief, but at least the cupboard presented a puzzle that could be solved, given a stout boot and a stouter heart. Ben possessed the former; it represented the best thing he’d ever found in a dust-bin; but he doubted whether he possessed the latter.

‘And yet it’s funny,’ he cogitated. ‘I done some brave things in my time. There was that toff ’oo was drahning that time. I was thinkin’ o’ savin’ ’im jest afore that other chap done it. And once I ’it a copper.’

Could not those days of glory be revived? He went on cogitating. And suddenly, to his profound astonishment, he discovered himself in the passage, starting to go downstairs.

He was astonished because he believed he was being courageous. Actually, he could not survive the idea of spending the night in No. 29 Jowle Street with the secret of the cupboard unsolved. It would be too likely to work into his dreams.

‘These stairs and me’s gettin’ ter know each other,’ he murmured, half-way down. He liked to talk to himself. It was company. ‘I could play a tune on ’em!’

As a matter of fact, he couldn’t help playing a tune on them, and it wasn’t exactly ‘Home Sweet Home’. It might have been more aptly described as a nocturne in creak minor. Just round the corner to the left was the cupboard door. Oh, the difference!

But Ben had made up his mind, and when he made up his mind it sometimes remained made up. Swerving round the corner to the left and refusing to stop to think, he reached the cupboard door, gasped at it, and swung back his boot.

‘Now fer it!’ he thought, closing his eyes.

The boot thought differently, however. It remained swung back, and for exactly four seconds Ben became a statue of a blind man about to kick a goal. A taxi had stopped outside.

Four seconds was too long. He realised it during the fifth. A key was now being slipped into a lock of the front door, and the front door was beginning to open. He only had time to jump away from the cupboard and jerk himself round before the visitor appeared …

Once before in this house Ben had waited for an ogre and had received a vision. Now history repeated itself, although it was a different vision. The other had been a girl. This was a woman. A woman in evening dress, with a wonderful fur cloak, that half-concealed and half revealed an even more wonderful white throat. Ben didn’t know they came so white. The whiteness of this woman’s throat was dazzling. And yet, of course, he’d seen her kind at cinemas. Breathless close-ups, that advanced towards you enormously, outdoing reality. Yes—she’d make a close-up! She was difficult enough, even at six yards! Made your head swim … if you’d been through a bit of a time, you know, and felt emotional …