Frazer broke off abruptly. He was standing by the window.
“There she is! Mrs. Basement must have forgotten something. Bah! She looks like a servant. I’m getting out of this. I can’t stand it for another second!”
He disappeared, and almost immediately the front door banged. But as, a moment later, Mrs. Frazer knocked on Rendell’s door, it is probable that she had guessed the nature of her husband’s activities during her absence.
“Come in,” Rendell cried in response to the knock. “Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Frazer. I——”
“He’s not been troubling you, has he?” she asked tonelessly.
“Yes. He’s been in here.”
“Did he show you his room?”
“He did.”
“I thought so. Always shows someone his room: after we’ve had a row.”
She stood motionless, holding a heavily-laden shopping basket with both hands.
“Did he mention Mr. Trent?”
“Yes, I’m afraid he did.”
“Ah well!”
She put the basket on the floor with a weary movement.
“He’s going to make trouble,” she added.
“You mean that he’s discovered that Mr. Trent’s friends did not know he had rooms here, and——” Rendell hesitated
“Yes, that’s what’s worrying me. He loves to think the worst. And he’ll borrow money, if he can, from the people who call to inquire. He had some from Mr. Marsden last night.”
Rendell turned a laugh into a cough, then said sympathetically:
“I’m afraid he gives you plenty to worry about.”
“Worry!”
And then, mechanically and in a drab tone, she enumerated certain of the more quotable of her husband’s activities. Rendell learned that, should a prospective lodger call when his wife was out, he would give him or her instant possession of a vacant room, providing something was paid there and then to him on account. Also, ignoring her entreaties, he would collect a part of the rent from the less reputable lodgers, giving a receipt for the whole of it. In addition, if a bottle of whisky was left out in any of the rooms, the Captain would help himself frequently and with liberality. And, finally, that in a number of ways—some of which Mrs. Frazer preferred not to mention—he conducted underground warfare against her, and the lodgers who were loyal to her, ceaselessly and with great cunning.
When she had finished, Rendell turned to her and said emphatically:
“Now, you listen to me, Mrs. Frazer. If you drift on like this, he’ll bring you and himself to the gutter. Why don’t you allow him thirty shillings a week on the express condition that he gets out—and stays out.”
There was a long silence. Then, slowly, she raised her eyes till her glance met his. It told him that she loved her wreck of a husband.
“Good God,” he said softly, “good God.”
Then, fearing he might have embarrassed her, he added with an attempt at jocularity:
“Well, it’s fortunate you haven’t any children.”
“I have one,” she replied enigmatically, then picked up the heavy basket and went slowly out of the room. . . .
As a result of these disclosures, and a long conversation with the servant, Mary, which occurred soon after Mrs. Frazer had left him, Rendell gained an accurate knowledge of No. 77 and its lodgers.
Briefly summarised, he learned that the house contained a fixed and a floating population and that, roughly, the fixed were Mrs. Frazer’s allies, and the floating were the Captain’s. The term, fixed, was a relative one, however, as it was conferred on anyone who had been in the house for three months and had no immediate intention of departing. But this stable element was in the minority—and whether or not the palmist and clairvoyante was to be numbered among its members was a problem which would have extended a subtler brain than Rendell’s.
But one thing was definite. Respectability had only two representatives. One was a withered old lady, who spoke to no one and lived with a cat in a small room on the second floor. The other was a faded and angular Civil Servant of about fifty, who was nicknamed Clockwork Charlie, owing to the regularity of his daily departures and returns.
Another member of the fixed population was a woman gossip writer employed by a pictorial daily paper, who went to bed one night in seven, and lived exclusively on tinned food. She was as thin as a fountain-pen, but had sharply-cut remarkable features and fiercely intelligent grey eyes. It was whispered that she was of a good family, and that her journalistic activities were the spoils of a battle for independence which she had waged and won in the study of a mellow parsonage in the west of England. Probably this was a fact, for she possessed one of those upper-class voices which charm and madden simultaneously. You heard it long after she had ceased to speak. It was incisive, authoritative, cultured, and triumphant over all competitors. It was heard frequently, for she had a telephone in her room. When she was not in, the bell rang out, hour after hour. When she was in, the voice rang out, hour after hour. She went everywhere, interviewed everyone who came into the news, “covered” every social function—and got thinner and thinner, and more and more vital, as a result of this whirlwind existence. She was killing herself, and no one dared tell her so. Somehow, she compelled admiration and affection. That she belonged wholly to her job was evidenced by the fact that she cried if her “copy” was altered.
The room opposite hers was occupied by a young man of about twenty-three. He was remarkably handsome in a dashing rather desperate way, but had two peculiarities not wholly desirable in a lodging-house. One was that he was unable to remain motionless for a moment: the other was that he could not endure a second’s silence. He shaved to the strains of “Hold Me—Never Let Me Go,” emitted by an unusually powerful gramophone. It, or the wireless, performed whenever he was in his room. So you always knew.
He had a host of men and women friends—mostly long and thin, and with very definite voices. Rakish cars, laden with a selection of them, often drew up outside No. 77 and hooted—and continued to hoot—till he appeared. He returned usually at three in the morning. If alone, he leaped up the stairs whistling. If with others, the cavalcade would ascend, frequently pausing for one, or other, or all, to emit certain very definite statements in very definite voices. On reaching his room, when alone, the gramophone would immediately begin to function—a cushion having been placed upon it, since the young man held the theory that this device made the instrument wholly inaudible to others, while permitting him to hear it in all its accustomed power.
In due course, Rendell was interested to ascertain that this young man was regarded by his fellow lodgers as a student.
The student was on the friendliest terms with the lady journalist. Frequently, while he was dressing for dinner and she was opening tins—banging them on the floor to expedite the operation—they would shout the liveliest comments to one another, peppering their remarks with the most intimate details concerning the lives of well-known persons—in a manner that was instructive and stimulating to less well-informed people.
The floating population was drab by comparison with these vivid personalities, but, if it lacked colour, it possessed mystery. Its members consisted of men who were either nondescript or sinister-looking, and whose activities could not be imagined. Their stay was short and their departure usually abrupt. They never paid their rent when it was due, never paid it in full, and rarely paid it at all. They were always in their rooms—or never in them. They seldom received letters, but had interminable conversations on the telephone at the back of the hall, to which one could listen for half an hour without deriving any clear conception as to their purport. This floating population was either extremely active, or lacked occupation—and one or two of its members only went out by night.