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SEQUENCE THE FIRST (#ulink_7926a514-75b9-585c-8eaf-27a39156ed8a)
Thursday, 28th March, 193— 9 a.m. to 12 noon
ENTWHISTLE, the Fordfield postman, pushed his bicycle up the steep hill into Little Ockleton. The sack upon his back was heavy and grew heavier. The March sun, even at half-past eight this morning, seemed to carry the heat of July. Entwhistle stopped, puffed and mopped his head. He thought, as he thought every morning, that something ought to be done by the authorities about this hill. He pushed on again and at last was able to mount.
It was so rarely that he had a letter for Pond Cottage that he was nearly a hundred yards past it when he remembered that not only did he have a letter for Pond Cottage but that he had an unstamped letter for Pond Cottage. That meant collecting no less than threepence from Pond Cottage’s occupier. The extra hundred yards which he had given himself was alleviated by the thought that at last—if indeed Mr Marsh were at home—he would see Mr Marsh and talk to Mr Marsh. He had heard so many stories about Mr Marsh and never had occasion to add one of his own to the many, that the prospect was almost pleasing. He dismounted, rested his bicycle against the little green paling and went through the gate and up the untidy, overgrown, flagged path.
Mr Marsh, it seemed, was at home. In any event, the leaded windows of the room upstairs stood wide.
Entwhistle knocked with his knuckles upon the door … No reply. He fumbled in his satchel until he found the offending, stampless letter … He knocked again. Again no answer came. Perhaps after all he was not going to see and talk with the exciting Mr Marsh. Still, one more knock couldn’t do any harm! He gave it and this time an answer did come—from above his head. An answer in a deep guttural voice which seemed to have a curious and foreign and throaty trouble with its r’s.
‘Put the dratted letters down!’ said the voice. ‘Leave ’em on the step. I’ll fetch ’em.’
Entwhistle bent back, tilting his head until from under the peak of his hat he could see peering down at him from that open window the dark-spectacled, dark-complexioned and somewhat uncomfortable face of Mr Marsh. Mr Marsh’s grey moustache and little pointed grey beard seemed, as Entwhistle had so often heard they did, to bristle with fury.
He coughed, clearing his throat. ‘Carn’ do that, sir,’ he said. ‘Letter ’ere without a stamp. I’ll ’ave to trouble you for threepence, sir.’
‘You’ll have to trouble me for … What the hell are you talking about? Put the damn letters down, I say, and get your ugly face out of here. Standing there! You look like a … Put the letters down and be off.’
Very savage, the voice was.
Entwhistle began to experience a doubt as to whether it would be quite as amusing to see and talk to Mr Marsh as he had supposed. But he stuck to his guns.
‘Carn’ do that, sir. Letter ’ere unstamped. ’Ave to trouble you for threepence, sir.’
‘Dios!’ said the voice at the window, or some sound like that. The window shut with a slam. Involuntarily Entwhistle took a backward step. He half-expected, so violent had been the sound, to have a pane of glass upon his hat. He stood back a little from the doorstep. He could hear quite distinctly steps coming down the creaking staircase and then the door was flung open. In the doorway stood a tall, bulky figure wrapped in a shabby brown dressing gown. Its feet were in shabbier slippers of red leather. The hair was black, streaked with grey. The moustache and little beard were almost white. The tinted glasses staring straight into Entwhistle’s Nordic and bewildered eyes frightened Entwhistle. They gave to Entwhistle, though he could not have expressed this, a curious uneasy feeling that perhaps there were no eyes behind them.
‘Where’s this damn letter? Come on, man, come on! Don’t keep me standing about here all day. It’s cold!’ The bulk of Mr Marsh shivered inside his dressing-gown. He thrust out an imperious hand.
Into this hand, Entwhistle put the letter. It was twitched from his fingers.
‘I’ll ’ave to trouble you for threepence, I’m afraid, sir.’
Mr Marsh made a noise in his throat; a savage animal noise; so fierce a noise that Entwhistle involuntarily backed two steps. But he stayed there. He stuck to his guns. He was, as he was overfond of saying, a man who knoo his dooty.
Mr Marsh was staring down at the envelope in his hands. A frown just showed above the tinted spectacles; white teeth below them glared out in a wild snarl. Mr Marsh was saying:
‘Damn greaser!’ and then a string of violent-sounding and most unpleasing words. He put his thumb, as Entwhistle watched, under the flap of the envelope and with a savage jerk freed its contents; a single sheet of typewritten paper. Mr Marsh read.
‘F. X. Benedik,’ growled Mr Marsh. And then another word. This time an English word which Entwhistle omitted when telling of the adventure to Mrs Entwhistle.
‘I’ll ’ave,’ began Entwhistle bravely, ‘to trouble you for …’ There was a flurry within the door. It slammed. The violence of the slamming detached a large flake of rotting timber which fell at Entwhistle’s feet.
Entwhistle pushed the postman’s hat forward on to the bridge of his snub nose. The stumpy fingers of his right hand scratched his back hair. What, he wondered, was he to do now? It did not, it must be noted, occur to him to knock at the door again. Mr Marsh might be good gossip, but Mr Marsh was most obviously not the sort of man for a peace-loving postman to annoy. But there was the excess fee and when he got to Fordfield he would have to account for that. Well, threepence isn’t much, but threepence is a half of Mild …
He was still debating within his slow mind when something—some hard, small, ringing thing—hit the peak of his cap with sharp violence. He started. The cap, dislodged by his jerk, fell off; rolled to the path. Bewildered, he looked down at it; stooped ponderously to pick it up. There beside it, glinting against a mossy flag, was a florin. Still squatting, Entwhistle looked up. The upstairs window was open again. From it there glared out Mr Marsh’s face. ‘It was,’ said Entwhistle to Mrs Entwhistle that evening, ‘like the face of a feen in ’uman shape. And,’ said Entwhistle, ‘he was laughin’. To ’ear that laugh would make any man’s blood run cold, and I don’t care ’oo ’e was. Laughin’ he was; laughin’ fit to burst hisself. What did I do? Well, I picks up the two-bob and me hat and I says as dignified like as I can: “You’ll be requirin’ your change, sir.” Just like that I said it, just to show him I wasn’t ’avin’ no nonsense. What does ’e say? When he’s finished laughin’ a few minutes later, he says; “You can keep the something change and swallow it!” Funny sort of voice he’s got—a violent sort of voice. That’s what he says; “You can keep the something change and you can something well swallow it!” What did I say? Well, I says, still calm and collected like: “D’you know, sir, throwin’ money like that, you might ’ave ’it me in the face,” and then ’e says: “Damn bad luck I didn’t!” just like that: “Damn bad luck I didn’t! You something off now or I’ll chuck something a bit heavier.”.’
Thus the indignant Entwhistle to his wife. Thus, later that same evening, the histrionic Entwhistle in the bar of The Coach and Horses. Thus the important Entwhistle in the Fordfield police station three days later.
2
James Wilberforce Burgess Junior was whipping his top upon the cement path outside Ockleton station booking office.
James Wilberforce Burgess Senior, Ockleton’s stationmaster, porter and level-crossing operator, watched for a moment with fatherly pride and then turned away to enter the hutch which was his booking office. He came out of the hutch a moment later a good deal faster than he had gone in. A sudden howl from James Wilberforce Junior had torn wailing way through the sunny morning.
James Wilberforce Junior was huddled against the wall with one hand at his ear and the other rubbing at his eyes. His top and his whip lay at his feet. Just within the doorless entrance was ‘that there Mr Marsh.’
The Ockleton Burgesses have not, for many generations, been renowned for physical courage. Some fathers—however big, however sinister-seeming, the assaulter of their innocent child—would have hit first and spoken afterwards. Burgess did not hit at all. He said, instead, a great deal. That there Mr Marsh stood in the shadow, the odd, pointed black hat tilted forward upon his head. The dark glasses made pits in his face instead of eyes; his white teeth gleamed when he smiled his savage, humourless and twisted smile. He seemed to Burgess, no less than previously to Entwhistle, ‘a feen in ’uman shape.’ He cut presently across the whiningly indignant outburst of outraged fatherhood. He said:
‘Cut it out! Cut it right out! I want a ticket for London.’ His deep, somehow foreign voice boomed round the tiny brick box.
‘Goin’ about,’ said James Wilberforce Burgess Senior, ‘strikin’ defenceless children! Don’t you know it’s dangerous to ’it a child on the yeerole?’
Mr Marsh took a step forward. Mr Burgess took three steps backwards. Mr Marsh pointed to the door of the ticket hutch. Mr Marsh said, and Mr Burgess swore afterwards that his teeth did not part when he said it:
‘Into the kennel you go, little puppy. And give me a ticket for London.’
Here Mr Marsh, Burgess reported, put his hand into his pocket and pulled out half a crown which, with a half-turn of his body, he threw to the still snivelling James Wilberforce Junior.
‘There,’ he said, ‘that’ll buy him a new ear! Blasted kid!’
‘All very well, sir,’ said Burgess, now speaking through the pigeon-hole, ‘walking about, striking defenceless children …’
Into the pigeon-hole Mr Marsh thrust his dark face.
‘Give me,’ said Mr Burgess afterwards, ‘a fair turn, sort of as if the devil was looking at you through a ’ole.’
Mr Marsh received his ticket. Mr Marsh was presently borne away by the 9.10 Slow Up from Ockleton. He had bought a day-return ticket.
Upon the Ockleton platform that night, there waited for Mr Marsh’s return not only James Wilberforce Burgess Senior but James Wilberforce Burgess Senior’s sister’s husband, one Arthur Widgery. This was a big and beery person whose only joy in life, after beer, was performing the series of actions which he invariably described as ‘drawin’ off of ’im and pastin’ ’im one alongside the jaw!’
But Mr Marsh did not take advantage of the return half of his ticket.
3
Mr Basil Musgrove, who had charge of the booking office of the Royal Theatre, was this morning presenting an even more than usually bored exterior to the world. Last night Mr Musgrove had been out with a set of persons to whom he referred as the boys. Consequently Mr Musgrove, underneath his patent leather hair, had a head which was red hot and bumping.
Mr Musgrove said into the telephone: ‘No, meddam. We do not book any seats at all under three shillings!’
Mr Musgrove said, to a purply-powdered face peering in through his pigeon-hole: ‘No, meddam, we have no stalls whatsoever for this evening’s performance. I am sorry.’
Mr Musgrove, when the face had vanished, put his head upon his hand and wished that the boys would not, quite so consistently, be boys. Mr Musgrove’s heavy lids dropped over his eyes. Mr Musgrove slept.
Mr Musgrove was awakened most rudely. Something cold and sharp and painful kept rapping against the end of his nose. Mr Musgrove put up feeble hands to brush this annoyance away, but, instead of being brushed away, its rappings grew more frequent and really so discomfortable that Mr Musgrove’s eyes were forced to open. With the opening of his eyes, the world came back with a rush. Mr Musgrove had been sleeping at his job! He saw now what it was that had awakened him. It was the ferrule of an ebony walking-stick. He looked down this stick. The ferrule was now hovering barely half an inch from the end of his nose. Peering round the stick, he saw a strange unusual sight; a pair of dark goggling, blank eyes set in a face which, he told some of those boys the next night, was just like Old Nick looking at you …
Mr Musgrove drew back with a start. His chair tilted underneath him and he narrowly escaped a fall.
The walking-stick was withdrawn. The window now was filled with this devil’s head under the strange, pointed black hat; there were dark glasses; a little grey block of beard; a white, twisted, inimical smile.
‘Er …’ said Mr Musgrove, ‘er … er … I beg … er …’
The stranger said a word. And then: ‘Any stalls tomorrow night?’
‘No. No,’ said Mr Musgrove, ‘no, no, no!’
‘I heard,’ said the stranger, ‘what you said the first time.’
Mr Musgrove strove to collect his scattered wits. ‘No, sir. No. We are entirely full for both the matinee and the evening performance today.’
The face seemed to come nearer. It was almost through the pigeon-hole. Mr Musgrove recoiled; once more felt his chair rock beneath him.
‘I didn’t,’ said the harsh voice, which seemed to find trouble with English r’s, though none with English idiom, ‘I didn’t ask for today’s performance. I asked about tomorrow!’
‘Oh! Er … I’m sorry!’ Mr Musgrove babbled. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I didn’t catch what—’
‘Cut it out! Have you or have you not three stalls for tomorrow night’s performance?’
‘Tomorrow, sir, tomorrow?’ said Mr Musgrove. ‘Three stalls, sir, three stalls. Would you like them in the middle, sir, at the back, or in the front at the side … I have a nice trio in H—’
‘I don’t care,’ said the voice, ‘in the least where the hell the damn seats are! All I want is three stalls. Give ’em to me and tell me how much they are so that I can get away from your face. It’s not a pleasant face, I should say, at the best of times. This morning it’s an indecency.’
Mr Musgrove flushed to the top of his maculate forehead. The tips of his ears became a dark purple colour. As he said to the boys that evening: ‘D’you know, you chaps, if it had been any other sort of man, well, I’d have been out of that office and set about him in half a second. You know me! But as it was, well, believe me or believe me not, I just couldn’t move. I was rooted! All I could do was to give him his three seats and take his money. You see some odd customers in my job, but I’ve never seen such an odd one as that before and I don’t want to see another one like it. Horrible old bloke! Sort of nasty, sinister way to him, and what with that beard and those dark glasses and that limp—he sort of seemed to drag his left leg after him and yet go pretty fast—he was a horrible sort of chap! I’m going to look out for him tomorrow night and see what sort of company he’s got … Thanks, Ted; mine’s a port and lemon. Cheerioski!’
COMMENT THE FIRST
NOT a pleasant person, Mr Marsh. Little Ockleton—where he has had a weekending cottage for the past six months—cannot abide him. Nor can any one, it seems, with whom he comes into contact. And how he dislikes having to pay excess postage—or was that outburst more by reason of his feelings towards the sender of that particular letter?
SEQUENCE THE SECOND (#ulink_6a247082-2213-5665-bc29-10faef9424a4)
Thursday, March 28th, 193— 12.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m.
THE offices of RYNOX (Unlimited) are in New Bond Street. A piece of unnecessary information this, since all the world knows it, but it serves to get this Sequence started.
Up the white marble steps of Rynox House—RYNOX themselves use only one floor in the tall, narrow, rather beautiful building—there walked, at 12.30 in the early afternoon of this Thursday, Francis Xavier Benedik—‘F. X.’ to his many friends and few but virulent enemies.
The door-keeper, a thin, embittered person with the name of Butterflute, smiled. The effort seemed—as F. X. had once indeed remarked—to sprain the poor man’s face. But smile he did. Everybody smiled at F. X.—except those few but very bitter enemies. F. X. paused upon the top step.
‘’Morning, Sam,’ he said.
‘Good-morning, sir,’ said Butterflute.
‘How’s the sciatica?’
‘Something chronic, sir.’
‘That’s a bad job. How’s the family?’
‘Not too well, sir,’ said Butterflute. ‘Wife’s confined again; I dunno ’ow she does it! Me boy got three weeks yesterday, for D. and D. in charge of a motor car, and me daughter—well, sir—’
F. X. was grave and sympathetic, also determined. ‘Damned hard luck, Butterflute. Damned hard! Anything you want, just let me know, will you?’
Butterflute touched his cap. ‘Yes, sir. I will that, sir. Thank you, sir.’
F. X. went on and through the main doors and so along the corridor to the lift; a tall, burly but trim, free-striding figure which might have been from the back that of an athletic man of thirty. It was only when you saw his face that you realised that F. X. was a hard-living, hard-working, hard case of fifty-five. You realised that, and you were quite wrong. Wrong about the age, anyhow, for this day was the sixty-seventh birthday of Francis Xavier Benedik. But whatever your guess, whoever you were—unless indeed you were one of those few but very violent enemies—you loved F.X. on sight. He was so very much the man that all the other men who looked at him would have liked to have been. He had obviously so much behind him of all those things of which, to be a man, a man must have had experience.
‘’Morning, sir!’ said Fred. Fred was the liftboy. In direct contrast to Butterflute Fred did not smile. You see, Fred otherwise always smiled, but Fred felt, as every one, that one must do something different for F.X. So instead of smiling, Fred looked grave and important.
‘’Morning, Frederick! Lovely day!’
‘It is that, Mr Benedik, sir. Beautiful day.’
The lift purred softly and swiftly upwards. Frantic would-be passengers on the first, second and third floors were passed with a cool contempt. Had not Fred got RYNOX in his lift!
The lift stopped. For other passengers Fred was wont to jerk the lift, being the possessor of rather a misguided sense of humour, but for F. X. Fred stopped the lift as a lift should be stopped; so smoothly, so gently, so rightly that for an appreciable instant the passenger was not aware of the stopping.
At the gates F. X. paused. He said over his shoulder:
‘You look out for that girl, Frederick.’
From between Fred’s stiffly upstanding cherry-coloured collar and Fred’s black-peaked cherry-coloured cap, Fred’s face shone like a four o’clock winter sun.
‘Beg pardon, sir?’ said Fred. ‘Which girl was you meanin’, sir?’
‘You can’t tell me, Fred! That little dark one; works on the first floor. Between you and me, you might tell her that their Enquiries door wants a coat of paint, will you? … She’s all right, Fred, but you want to look out for that sort with black eyes and gold hair.’
The winter sun took on an even deeper shade.
‘Oh, Fred!’ said F.X.
The lift shot downwards at the maximum of its speed.
Past the big main doors upon this top floor—the big doors with their cunningly blazoned sign:
RYNOX
S. H. RICKFORTH
ANTHONY X. BENEDIK
F. X. BENEDIK
went F. X., with his long, free stride which seemed somehow out of place in a city. Past these and past the next small door bearing the sign:
RYNOX
ENQUIRIES HERE
and so to the modest mahogany door—the door which most people passing along this corridor thought was that of a lavatory. The handle of this door turned in F. X.’s fingers. He went in, shutting the door behind him.
