No. 17

He marched to the door, but even though he knew the room was empty, he hesitated for an instant on the brink. Almost pitch-dark, for the light that should have entered the window was practically fogged out, it looked a gloomy hole. He could just discern the outline of the table in the middle of the room, and of a chair that seemed to have been hastily shoved aside. Yes, a very gloomy hole—yet a palace of delight to another Ben was soon to enter.

‘I thought you were going “hin”?’ observed a sarcastic voice behind him.

‘So I am goin’ hin,’ retorted Ben, ‘but I ain’t no hexpress trine!’

He entered cautiously. She had said the room was empty, but, after all, there might be somebody under the table, or behind that big arm-chair in the corner. He groped about, and suddenly, like a child anxious to get a nasty business over, he bent down and lifted an edge of the table-cloth. That he saw nothing was, at first, no proof that there was nothing to see, because in his terror lest he should see a pair of eyes staring out at him, he had instinctively closed his own eyes. But when he opened them, they met blankness, and he breathed again.

‘Thank Gawd!’ he murmured. ‘This is a narsty bizziness, s’elp me it is!’

His mind relieved, he now proceeded to examine the room with elaborate thoroughness. If the Merchant Service had lagged behind a little, it would at least prove that, when it once tackled a job, it tackled it properly. Ben examined the table, noting the half-finished meal (which in other circumstances he would very promptly have finished), and then he looked behind all the chairs—yes, even the big ones with the backs you couldn’t see round. He did take one curtain for granted, but he prodded the other one, and, as he did so, something slipped off the bottom of it.

‘’Allo—wot’s this?’ he queried.

He stooped and picked up the object. In the gloom he could hardly distinguish what it was, but it appeared to be a small cardboard ticket or badge. He struck a match. The light flared abruptly upon a number, written large upon the cardboard’s surface.

‘Seventeen,’ muttered Ben, staring at it. ‘Wot the ’ell’s that mean? Number Seventeen!’

He dropped the match suddenly. Someone had entered the bar parlour from the road. He could hear the steps. Lummy!

Then he smiled.

‘Idjut!’ he thought. ‘’Er father come ’ome, o’ course!’

He strode out of the room, making a brave show, and nearly fell into the arms of a policeman.

‘Hallo!’ exclaimed the policeman. ‘Wot’s this?’

For a moment, Ben was wordless—he never did feel really comfortable with policemen—and the woman explained.

‘Oh, he’s all right,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about him. But I’m glad you’ve come—there’s been funny goings on here, I can tell you.’

‘Yes, that’s why I’ve come,’ answered the constable. ‘This is pickpockets’ weather, and I’ve seen some funny characters round about here.’ He looked at Ben suspiciously. ‘I ain’t too sure this isn’t one of ’em!’

‘’Oo? Me?’ expostulated Ben indignantly. ‘Well, if that ain’t sorse! ’Ere I stays, ter proteck a gal, and now you comes along—’

‘Steady, steady!’ interposed the constable. ‘There’s funny people about, I tell you, and I’ve seen some of them about this place. One ran out of this inn just now, but I couldn’t catch him.’

‘Yes, there was something funny about him,’ agreed the woman. ‘He left in a hurry, without even finishing his meal.’

‘And I expect this man would have left in a hurry too,’ observed the constable, ironically. ‘Open your hand! What have you got there?’

‘Wot, this?’ answered Ben. ‘Picked it up in that room there jest now. ’Ere—don’t snatch!’

The constable whipped the piece of cardboard out of Ben’s hand.

‘Hallo!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s this?’

‘My age,’ replied Ben.

‘Now, then, don’t be funny,’ frowned the constable.

‘Well, ’ow do I know wot it is,’ retorted Ben. ‘You ain’t give me time to look yet. Got it off the floor—’

‘Yes, so you say,’ interposed the constable, and turned to the woman. ‘Have you seen this before?’

‘No, never.’

‘He says he picked it off the floor in the next room.’

‘Well, he may have done so.’

‘Were you in the next room before him?’

‘Yes, I was.’

‘And you didn’t see anything on the floor?’

‘No. But it was dark. I didn’t look everywhere. I expect it belonged to that other man.’

‘Oh, you do? Well, that’s got to be proved, and meanwhile it’s on this man—’

‘Yes, but what is it, anyway?’ asked the woman, trying to get a peep at it.

‘Something—mighty queer,’ replied the constable darkly. ‘Don’t ask no questions, and you won’t be told no lies. But I dare say our friend here—’

He turned to Ben. But Ben was gone. He had decided to forgo his Carlton luncheon.

3 (#ulink_d67bd7ab-047a-51b7-8eab-99b108a5d8f8)

Ben Finds His Port (#ulink_d67bd7ab-047a-51b7-8eab-99b108a5d8f8)

Swallowed completely by the fog, for the first time Ben appreciated it. Perhaps he had left the inn more hurriedly than wisely, and the sacrifice of a good square meal certainly rankled in his hungry breast. But Ben liked a quiet life—he had only chosen the sea because it took him away from the land—and it had seemed to him that he had been caught up in a network of uncomfortable matters which were no concern of his, and for which he was in no way responsible. That being so, he argued that the best thing he could do was to cut quite clear of them, and to begin, so to speak, afresh.

The constable may have been talking through his hat, of course. He may have been saying more than he meant. But, contrariwise, he may have meant more than he said, and Ben did not see why he should take any chances. Particularly with a nice, comfortable, all-concealing fog just outside.

So into the fog he had slipped, and through it he now ran, in the innocent belief that his troubles were over. He managed to steer an uninterrupted course for a full ten minutes, and then the person he bumped into was nothing more alarming than an elderly gentleman with a bad corn.

‘Where are you going to?’ barked the elderly gentleman.

‘Sime spot as you was,’ replied Ben, hunger and the fog rendering him something of a daredevil.

As he hurried on, he recalled the gleam of the elderly gentleman’s gold watch-chain, and he wondered how many square meals that could have been converted into.

‘It’s a lucky thing fer gold watches,’ he reflected, ‘that me mother taught me ter say me prayers reg’lar!’

Presently, feeling secure, he slackened his pace; and indeed this was necessary, for although he could not see London, he felt it beginning to envelop him. Houses loomed up, when he hit one side of the road or the other. People became more frequent, and meetings ceased to be events, or bumpings to surprise. Traffic groped and hooted along the road, lamp-posts dawned—a mile away one moment and upon you the next—and, every now and again, voices were suddenly raised in warning, or anxiety, or irony.

The fog entered Ben’s brain, as well as his eyes. Soon, he was walking in a sort of a trance. If you had stopped him and asked where he was walking, he could not have told you, and he might have had difficulty, also, in telling you why he walked—until, at any rate, he had had several seconds to consider the matter. He was travelling very much like a rudderless ship, borne by the tide into whatever port, or on to whatever rocks, that tide decreed.