IT WAS very dark when Macdonald turned his car under the arch at Cannon Row and set out westwards. Booker, sitting in front, was glad that it wasn’t his lot to be driving in the murk of that solidly black November night. They went along Birdcage Walk, past Buckingham Palace and up Constitution Hill and Booker was glad to see the traffic lights at Hyde Park Corner: his eyesight was poor in the dark at any time, and it seemed to him that they were alone in the world—not a car on the road and nothing to break the blackness save the blur of a searchlight hazed by the London mist. Marble Arch, then a left turn at the Bayswater Road, then a right turn and Booker was lost again in the dark maze of streets near Notting Hill. Just as the car slowed down in Belfort Grove the sirens sounded, wailing in hideous cacophony.
“The bastards!” muttered Booker, (he had never got over his dislike of sirens) and he heard Macdonald’s placid voice inquiring:
“Which, Booker—sirens or Jerries ?”
“Both, sir,” replied Booker, somehow glad of the unruffled calm in the other’s voice as he got out and stood in the blackness.
“Five steps up here—steady on,” said Macdonald, grabbing Booker’s tunic as that worthy turned blindly away from number five as the first guns thumped in the distance.
“Hullo, we’ve got company,” said Macdonald, and a shrill cheerful voice replied from the neighbourhood of the front door: “So it’s you again. Can’t say I’m glad to see you cos I can’t see you, but you’re welcome. Someone’s left the front door open. Silly the way they all loses their heads. Ought to be used to Wailing Winnie by now.”
It was Mrs. Maloney, just come home after her evening “usual.”
“Now that’s funny—bulb must have gone,” she went on conversationally, and Macdonald heard the click as she worked a switch up and down: “That bulb was all right when I went out,” she continued, and a heavy thud shook the ground and set the doors vibrating. “Oh, go on, you!” she said contemptuously, as though addressing the distant explosion, “take more’n you to frighten me.”
Macdonald had let go Booker’s arm, and they were standing on the doorstep when the Hyde Park guns roared out.
“Go on! Give’em beans!” said the undaunted voice as Macdonald went inside and put his hand in his pocket for his torch. At that second he was aware, amid the racket of the guns, that someone had run across the hall of the house to the open door and Booker gave a sudden grunt and a heavy thud told its own story.
“Be damned!” exclaimed Macdonald, believing that he had brought out an elderly constable to get him killed by shrapnel on a doorstep in Notting Hill. “Booker, are you there?”
“Here sir,” grunted a voice from the pavement. “’E landed me one in the wind . . .”
“And he’s gone with the wind, too,” said Macdonald, whose quick ears had caught a sound of running footsteps during a second’s lull. “Can you manage, Booker? I can’t show a light until the door’s shut.”
“O.K., sir,” grunted the constable and Macdonald guessed from the sounds that followed that the heavy fellow was mounting the steps on all fours to avoid tripping up again. Mrs. Maloney’s voice chirupped on:
“It’s one o’ them from upstairs. Always runs when the guns go. Dippy I call it. I wouldn’t demean meself like that.”
A second later Macdonald closed the front door and switched on his torch.
“Now we’re all cosy,” shrilled Mrs. Maloney. Her hat was very much askew and her cheeks flushed. “Well—I’ll be off to me bed. Don’t’old wiv late hours.”
“I say, hadn’t you better stay downstairs until things are a bit quieter?” shouted Macdonald, but she shrilled back with gusto:
“Not me. Take more’n that ’Itler to keep me out of me bed. I’m not going to get meself killed running out to no shelters—like that silly boob as did a bolt just now. Put me’ead under the clothes and takes no notice. Good-night all!”
A line of light from a cautiously opened door seemed to throw a brilliant illumination on the dreary lobby and a deep voice inquired:
“Is that you, Chief Inspector? Rameses here. Sorry to have brought you out in this racket.”
“Not at all. We ought to be used to it,” replied Macdonald. “I’ll bring my man inside—he’ll feel more cheerful somewhere with a light on. The fact is he doesn’t like air-raids.”
“Don’t blame him. Damn’ silly business it all is—like small boys chucking stones,” said Rameses. “There’s a cup of tea if he’d like one—and something in it.”
A moment later Macdonald was sitting in Mr. Rameses’ practice room, while Booker occupied a chair in the little lobby and gratefully accepted a cup of tea (which smelled pleasantly of rum) from the illusionist who had “nearly frightened him “that afternoon.
“Like a cup yourself, Inspector?” inquired Rameses and Macdonald said:
“Thanks. I should. It’s against regulations—but on occasions like this regulations seem silly.”
“Silly? You’ve said it. Everything looks silly—and the silliest thing of all is for a chap like you with first-class brains and physique to be bothering about who killed Johnnie Ward last Thursday. However—if you’re still interested I’ve got a few things to tell you.”
“Good. I’m like Mrs. Maloney—at least I try to be,” replied Macdonald. “I decline to be put off ‘by ’im’”
“That old woman’s pure gold,” said Rameses unexpectedly. “I hope for her sake she’ll go out with a direct hit, knowing nothing at all about it—and if there’s anything in the philosophy of any religion at all she ought to wake up in her own idea of heaven. That may be nothing to do with your case, Inspector, but I admire courage when I see it, and by the lord, I lift my lid to her!”
Sitting as immobile as some squat Buddha, Mr. Rameses regarded Macdonald with mournful inscrutable eyes while the London barrage roared overhead. There were shutters at the windows, and the heavy curtains—which quivered now and then—helped to reduce the racket so that Rameses’ deep slow voice sounded distinctly against the muffled clamour.
“There have been some damned funny things going on in this house, Inspector,” he went on. “Whether they’re due to people inside the house or outside it, I don’t pretend to know, but you may as well hear about them. Incidentally, have you had a visit from an outsize in fat boobs, a yellow-haired son-of-a-gun named Veroten? Thought so,” he added, before Macdonald had made any reply at all. “That bloke’s asking for trouble—and he’ll get it in God’s good time. Now I take it you’ve been round this house and know the amenities—including the storage-room downstairs.” He paused a second, staring with his unwinking eyes. “The old lady didn’t split,” he went on. “She’s a rare one to hold her tongue and she’s taken a fancy to you. I don’t know if you’ve gone through all the junk down there—but someone has.”
“No. I haven’t gone through it all,” said Macdonald. “I didn’t open any of your boxes, for instance.”
“So I imagined. If you’re anything like the chap I take you for you’d have done it more neatly than the merchant who did do it.. . That one was somewhere close Marble Arch way,” he added. There had been a thud and reverberation which told of a near-by “incident “and Macdonald moved his cup farther on to the table for safety as the saucer bounced a little on the bare wood. When he looked at Mr. Rameses again he thought at first that the “something” in the tea had affected his vision. The man’s face had completely changed: in place of the high shining forehead with shinning hair brushed back from the temples was a low bumpy forehead fringed with thick oily hair, and the chin had coarsened and thickened, while the black eyes seemed to protrude under bushy eyebrows.
“Look out! look out! it’s coming,” wheezed a voice behind Macdonald as another thud shook the room. For the life of him he could not help looking round, and when his eyes sought Rameses’ face again the illusion had passed, and the stolid melancholy-eyed Rameses faced him as before.
“Look here,” protested Macdonald. “If you must practise your technique, will you kindly wait until the All Clear goes. I’m willing to regard air-raids as all in the day’s work, but if you throw Guy Fawkes stuff in too, I’m liable to lose my temper. Now about that mask——?”
“Yes, about this mask,” said Rameses, holding the thing up by its black wig. “What do you bet me that if that young Bruce Mallaig had been in here when that last bit of iniquity exploded somewhere in Kilburn, he’d have identified the man he saw on the bridge in Regents Park ?”
“We can ask him about it later on,” said Macdonald, “for the moment will you kindly tell me just what you’re getting at?”
“Right. There’s a storage room below and I keep some of my properties there—including this mask and a few others. Somebody has been through the boxes in which I keep the masks. Somebody has had this one out and put it back out of its place. Nothing to make a song about, is it ?—nothing stolen, nothing broken.”
There was a second’s pause, and Macdonald was so much interested in what Rameses was going to say next that he didn’t even notice the guns.”
“Nothing to make a song about,” went on the melancholy voice. “I heard the evidence at the Inquest—Ward was killed by somebody who got behind him so quietly that even the man under the bridge didn’t hear a footstep. A face was seen in the matchlight—a dark heavy face with bulging eyes. Now how could you get behind a man so quietly that another just below the boards of the bridge didn’t hear a footstep? By avoiding footsteps, eh? You’ve looked in that cupboard of mine downstairs. What did you see? There’s a stage cycle down there. Don’t tell me you didn’t see it.”
“Yes, I saw it—because I looked for it,” said Macdonald.
“Yes, you’ve got the wits to see the connection,” growled Rameses. “The bike, and then this——” dangling the mask. “Both mine . . . and I’ve only got one neck, same as other folks . . . and that fat buffoon is cooking up some story about my show on Thursday night. Says I didn’t do my own stuff. Says my boy did it. My boy’s in the Commandos . . . got a week’s leave after coming out of hospital. There it is. If I know an honest man when I see one, I’d say you’re an honest man. That’s why I’m telling you. Matter of common sense. If you took me before a jury to-morrow with only the evidence I’ve given you to-night I should be committed for trial. I see that.”
“Yes. I see it, too,” said Macdonald. “I take it you’ repleading ‘not guilty——’ ”
“Pleading? I’m not pleading anything. I’ve seen men shot: I’ve seen men stabbed. I’ve seen a knife thrown so that it slashed a man’s wind-pipe and cut through his jugular—but I’ve never killed a man yet, nor done any dirty trick I’ve cause to be ashamed of. I’ve played the clown—on stage and off. I’ve laughed and made crowds laugh and I’m proud of the skill I’ve worked to attain. Plead?—the word makes me mad. . . .” The man’s voice was extraordinarily impressive: low and deep, it rumbled on and yet the words were curiously distinct against the background of gunfire. Macdonald was hard put to it to find an answer—and then came an interruption, as Someone hammered on the outer door.
It was true that Constable Booker disliked air-raids, but it was the actual shriek of the sirens which penetrated to his nervous system, and as the raid went on he became more and more phlegmatic in the face of danger. After he had put down that very comforting cup of tea he sat down in the dimly-lighted lobby of Mr. Rameses’ flat and had a comfortable rest, reflecting that things might be much worse—he was well under cover, on the ground floor at that: Booker accounted himself lucky and even felt halfway towards a comfortable nap. His heavy head was showing a tendency to nod when his ears—which were still on the alert—picked out a different sound from the uproar without—someone was clattering down the stairs and running across the entrance hall of the house. “The old girl’s got the wind-up after all,” he thought, and then realised that someone was banging on the Rameses’ front door. He opened it and saw Mrs. Maloney, her grey hair in curlers on one side and straggling down to her shoulders on the other.
“Now don’t you get worked-up, mum. Things is quieting down nicely,” said Booker.
“Me, worked-up? an’ you the Bobby that fell down my front steps in a funk?” she retorted. “You look after your own .business, and I’m telling you it’s not sitting in an easy chair on the ground floor you ought to be. There’s something’appening upstairs in the late lamented’s flat—sounds like’e’s come back and is makin’ a real old racket.’Eard’im through the guns an’ all I did.”
“What’s that you’re saying, Mrs Maloney?” inquired Macdonald who had come out into the lobby, and she said joy-fully:
“You come and listen yourself, sir—you’re the one to settle this. Not’im” (indicating Booker): “not safe on’is feet,’e isn’t. You come upstairs and listen. Bombs I don’t mind, but ghosts I never did fancy, and if so be Mr. Johnny Ward’s rumpusing about up there,’tis no place for me to be.”
“I’ll come up,” said Macdonald, and began racing up the dark stairs, holding his torch half-covered in his hand. Booker made a spring after him, but Rameses was quicker: slipping past the constable he gained the stairs just behind Macdonald while Booker rushed behind and Mrs. Maloney panted in the rear shrilling breathless encouragement:
“Go for’im—you’re the one to do it,” she shrilled.
Macdonald had just got to the bottom of the last flight when a crash sounded above his head which had certainly nothing to do with ghosts: there was a rending sound of cracking wood, and a rumble of plaster as the ceiling over his head came down in a shower of dust and pulverised fragments.
“That one’s a dud,” said Mr. Rameses calmly. “If it weren’t none of us’d be left to chat on the stairs.”
“It wasn’t a bomb—not big enough,” said Macdonald, as he shook the plaster from his head and shoulders. “It was either a shell or a good large hunk of shrapnel. I’ll go on up—tell Mrs. Maloney to go and look after the basement——”
“Nat me!” shrilled the old lady. “I don’t mind bombs and bits, I’m goin’ to see yer cop that ghost.”
Macdonald began to negotiate the top flight, kicking aside the plaster fragments.’ He was shaking with laughter despite the racket of the guns. The whole situation had a quality between a farce and a nightmare and no ordinary common sense regulations seemed to apply. He doubted very much if ‘the ghost’ had been anything more than the patter of shrapnel on the roof—but if old Mrs. Maloney were not afraid of sleeping on the top floor during an air-raid, Macdonald was not going to funk investigating her ghost for her, crazy though the whole proceeding seemed. He reached the top floor and found the door of Ward’s flat, remembering that he had still got the key in his pocket. Rameses was just behind him, and Booker’s voice panted:
“ ’Ere, you stand back. This is none of your business,” as he endeavoured to elbow the “illusionist” farther back on the narrow landing. Macdonald found the door was unlocked, but it refused to give to the pressure of his shoulder. Turning his torch upwards, he saw that there was a bolt on the top of the door . . . had that bolt been there before, he wondered ? . . . and as he drew it back another crash resounded on the roof and more plaster came down.
“Incendiaries—heard that sort of thing before,” said Rameses.
Macdonald got the door open at last, pushing back a heap of plaster and splintered wood. Rameses was right, he realised—incendiaries, somewhere in the bathroom. His torchlight showed him something else—a man’s figure lying on the floor, pinned down by a beam which had fallen from the roof.
Rameses pushed in beside him. “I can help here . . . I’m as strong as both of you put together,” he said, and bent to the beam.
It was some minutes later that Macdonald and Rameses got the limp body down into the hall of the house. Booker had been sent to call up the Fire Post and Mrs. Maloney screeched like a banshee at the door of each flat while she opened the front doors with her own keys. The incendiary bombs had crashed through the top floor and reached the kitchenette on the second floor. Macdonald had to make up his mind quickly whether to act in his capacity as a Detective Officer or as a Civil Defence worker. He decided to deal with the casualty first and help the firemen second.
Rameses was as good as his boast—he was a phenomally strong man and he proved capable of lifting a beam with what seemed like half the roof on top of it so that Macdonald could get the limp body clear. Then, together, they carried the body down the stairs while smoke began to swirl round the upper part of the house. Whether their burden was a corpse or not Macdonald had not had time to decide, but his instinct was to get the man into safety. By the time they had reached the ground floor Mrs. Maloney had produced a stirrup pump and Mrs. Rameses—her hair more than ever resembling a home-made wireless set—was intent on helping to fire-fight.
“Give me the pails, dearie, and we’ll have a real go at it,” she said to Mrs. Maloney. “Not the first time I’ve played fireman. We had the big top alight one night we were in Rio—there’s no elephants here, that’s one thing. I never could manage elephants . . .”
“My God, Ladybird, come off it!” roared Rameses. “Here you—do what you like with this one, I’m going to stop my missus committting suicide,” he shouted to Macdonald.
Booker had done his part well: he came panting tip to Macdonald.
“’Phone’s all right, sir. I got through to the Post. Fire engine and ambulance coming. I’ll go up and see what I can do . . . Another wave of’em coming over, the bastards . . . ought to get the old girl out of this.”
Macdonald bent over the figure on the floor, his torchlight directed on to the pallid face. Stanley Claydon. “And what the devil you were doing in Johnny Ward’s flat you’ll probably never be able to tell us,” said Macdonald—and heard the clang of an ambulance bell outside.
“Quick work,” he said to the volunteers. “This chap has probably got a broken back . . . I haven’t had time to find out.”
“Right oh, we’ll see to it,” responded the man with the stretcher. “Any more casualties here? We’re wanted further along. The N.F.S. chaps are just coming.”
Stanley Claydon was carried out feet first as the firemen came in, and for the next few minutes Macdonald was busy going into every room in the house to make certain no one else needed assistance. When he came up the basement stairs again he heard a weird sound on the staircase. It was Mrs. Maloney, sitting on the bottom step, singing in a strange cracked voice, and an Air Raid Warden, who had just come in, was shouting:
“Now then, you’ve got to get out of this into the shelter along the road.”
“Not me,” yelled Mrs. Maloney, and Macdonald interposed:
“If you won’t go quietly I’m going to carry you, Mrs. Maloney—stop in this house you shan’t!”
He bent and lifted the old lady up as though she had been a child and she cackled with glee.
“Arms o’ the law . . . well I’m blessed . . . Abraham’s bosom.”
“You stop being funny. I won’t be called Abraham, not even by my friends,” protested Macdonald. “Where’s Mrs. Rameses?”
“Don’t you worry about’er.’Er Birdie’s doing the strong silent man I don’t think. Can’t carry two of us, can yer?”
Macdonald set her on her feet at the front door and listened for the next lull in the gunfire. He reckoned it was a hundred yards to the shelter.
“You stay here, old lady, and none of your jokes,” he said. “My car’s still there. It’ll get you to the shelter faster than I can run—and this house is going to fall down any minute. Now when I say ‘jump ‘you jump—straight into the car.”
“All correc’, Cap’n,” she retorted, and at Macdonald’s word she was down the front steps with the agility of a cat.
“You’re a wonderful woman for your age,” said Macdonald cheerfully. “Here we are: in you tumble—and don’t let me find you’ve been up to any tricks when I come back. I want a nice long chat with you.”
He pulled up at the shelter and hustled her in, left his car where it was and raced back to number five. No more bombs had fallen since the cluster of incendiaries came down, and the Fire Service seemed to have got things under control. At least, there was no big outbreak. At the front door Mr. Rameses was giving orders to his Ladybird:
“Right along there to the shelter and don’t argue,” he commanded. Macdonald raised his voice:
“I’ve just taken Mrs. Maloney along there. Won’t you go and look after her—the poor old soul’s all shaken up.”
“Oh, that’s different,” said Mrs. Rameses cheerfully. “I’m always glad to oblige, but my husband . . .”
“I’ll look after him,” said Macdonald and steadied her down the steps.
“One thing, I never was frightened of the dark,” she called back, “and if a girl was brought up to step dance on liberty horses she never loses her balance. . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she ran towards the shelter and Rameses said “Frightened? My God! I don’t know what she is frightened of, barring burglars under the bed—and she could strangle any burglar with one hand. What’s next on the programme? Go up and help the fire wallahs?”
“That’s about it,” said Macdonald.