“Ah, go to hell!” said Lolly, and he turned his back on the ring and went off the way he had come. His accomplices watched him until he disappeared among the rocks.
With his open-mouthed, vacant stare Bill Bragg also watched Lolly. He had seen the whole incident and heard some of the conversation, and he thought that it would make a nice item of gossip.
It would be no use telling Gus, the boss, when he went to see him in the hospital. Gus wouldn’t be interested in small-timers. He had a habit of cutting off Bill’s oral efforts in midsentence with a curt: “Stop blathering, Bill. It takes you half an hour to tell a two-minute tale.”
But it would make a tale to tell at the club. And his workmate, Stan Lomax, would be interested. Stan would probably know something. At any rate he would figure out an explanation as to why Laurie Lovett and another fellow had stopped Jakes from making a bet with some money he had in his pocket. Happen Stan would know which street-corner bookie the money belonged to. Whoever the bookie was, he ought to have his head examined for trusting Jakes with so much money.
The man ought to have his head examined. That is what Bill thought. He had that sort of brain. The sight of a much larger amount of money than he had first seen did not cause him to abandon the idea he had first formed. Bill’s brain could not handle more than one idea at a time.
Moreover, having decided that he would remember to tell somebody about the idea he had, Bill stored it away in the dusty background of his mind and immediately forgot it. Nothing less obvious than a leading question was likely to bring it out again.
6
That Sunday night, when Devery went to see his Silver, he gave her grandfather the news that Don Starling was now wanted for murder. To his surprise Furnisher again failed to show his usual lively appreciation of being “in the know” before the newspapers appeared. Nor did he say “I told you so.” He only shook his head, and his old eyes reflected a sober misgiving.
“He’ll see the papers in the morning,” he said. “Ther’ll be his photo on every front page. He’ll know it’s all or nowt, now.”
“It’ll be nowt, I think. We’ll soon get him. He won’t be able to move without being spotted.”
“He’ll be desp’rate. It’ll not be prison he’s thinking about. It’ll be the judge, putting the black cap on. He won’t be saying ‘Thank you, me lord,’ this time.”
“No, I’m afraid he won’t,” Devery agreed. “It’ll be the end of the road for him. He won’t care what he does.”
Furnisher looked at Silver before he spoke again. It was a good thing, he thought, that Devery was so busy. Because Devery was too busy to take her out, the girl stayed around the house. She was proper domesticated. Of course she had had no shopping to do since Saturday night. Tomorrow the shops would be open. If she went out, Furnisher would have to make an excuse to go with her, and he would take his old gun. It was more than half a century old, a service revolver of Boer War issue, but it would still stop a man; stop him immediately and permanently.
The old man’s vigilance was not based on reasonable expectations. Starling had no real motive for hurting Silver. He had made a bargain, and he would gain nothing by dishonoring it. And he would also be very busy saving his own skin. But Furnisher was taking no chances where Silver was concerned, and, in spite of the bold way he had spoken to Starling on the telephone, he had an instinctive fear of the man. It was easy for him to imagine what that dangerous criminal might do out of pique, injured vanity, fancied insult or mere senseless cruel whim. Until Starling was caught, Furnisher was determined to be always in a position to guard Silver. Wherever she went out of doors, there would he be also.
“Well, the sooner you catch him, the better for everybody,” he told Devery. “But, by gum, watch yourself if you come up agen him.”
“I will, don’t worry,” Devery replied with a smile. But he was thinking, as other young policemen were thinking at the same moment, that if he got a glimpse of Starling he would take almost any chance to make an arrest.
“Think on,” said the other man, not entirely convinced. “Our Silver wouldn’t like it if you got hurt.”
Devery used that remark to open another topic. “Silver and I are thinking of getting married soon,” he said.
Furnisher was startled. He looked quickly from the young man to the girl. Then he sighed. “Aye, I suppose it’s only natural,” he said. “A bit sooner nor I expected, though.”
Devery grinned at him. “You were young once yourself, you know.”
“Yes, and I were a proper buckstick, an’ all. I’ll not stop you. But there’s no need for you to go off and set up for yoursel’s. Silver’ll none want to leave her old granddad on his own. This place is big enough for three-or maybe more.”
“We thought you’d want us to stay,” said Devery, and he could see that his use of the plural hurt a little. “We’ll do that, temporarily at least. But Silver wants us to do the place up a bit. Some new furniture, and that. We’ll want something of our own, so I’ll buy it.”
“No need, lad, no need. If ther’s one thing we aren’t short on, it’s furniture.” He looked around the room. “Silver’s been bothering about new furniture for some time. Aay well, I suppose a young woman likes to see a change once in a while. We’ll have decorators in, and if there’s nothing in the shop what you want, you can see what’s in the catalogues of the firms I deal with. Unless-” he looked hopeful-“you’d like to see if there’s owt upstairs you want.”
Devery looked at Silver, who was following the talk with interest. He made a brief soundless remark to her, and they smiled at each other.
“Nothing doing, old boy,” he said. “We don’t want to seem ungrateful, but we don’t want any of your antiques.”
The top floor of Furnisher’s shop-home-warehouse was crammed with his “antiques.” Most of them were pieces of Victorian furniture which were in appalling taste by any standard except that of their period. During his business lifetime he had acquired them for next-to-nothing because people would no longer have them in their houses. He believed that before he died, or shortly after his death, the circular trend of fashion would make them into valuable collectors’ items. He had so much old furniture on the top floor that he did not know what he had. Some of it he had not seen for years, because he did not go up there for an occasional gloat as he might have been expected to do. The furniture was covered with dust, mainly forgotten, and seldom visited. The top floor was a bothersome thing in Silver’s tidy mind. She often threatened to go up there and sail into action with dusters and a vacuum cleaner.
Now, with her fingers, she repeated the threat.
Devery replied in a combination of sign and lip language. “You don’t want a duster, sweetheart. Take an axe.”
The old man took it all in good part. “You’ll see,” he said. “Ther’s some good stuff upstairs. It’ll be worth a mint o’ money one of these days.”
“I dare say you’re right,” said Devery tolerantly. “But we don’t have to live with it, do we?”
7
Martineau’s wife may have been out at teatime-Tea-time on Sunday meant that she had taken a bus journey to see her parents. Fair enough-but she was waiting, unshakably decorous, when he arrived home at half past ten. “Hello,” he said as he entered the house. She looked at him, but she did not reply.
He went into the kitchen. He was hungry. He had had one sandwich since breakfast, and a few glasses of beer since nine o’clock. Nowadays he always seemed to need a drink after a long day’s work; or perhaps it was not the work but Julia, Julia waiting for him with a grievance. Dutch courage.
He looked in the oven. His dinner was there: cold, congealed, unappetizing. Part of it was a cold rice pudding. He removed the pudding-he did not want it-and switched on the heat to warm up the remainder.