By all the rules of logic Ben should have been caught. A crowd had begun to collect outside the restaurant before he shot away from it and some of the new arrivals loomed up as obstacles. One man indeed succeeded in tripping him up and making a grab at him, ‘but before I could lay hold of the fellow,’ this would-be captor explained subsequently to a policeman, ‘he’d rolled through my legs like a barrel! Talk about quick! This wasn’t a man at all, it was a bullet!’
Three blocks away, a motorist was arriving at the same conclusion. The bullet leapt into the back seat, was carried thirty yards, and then leapt out again.
‘Catch him!’ shouted someone.
‘Who? Where?’ cried the motorist.
Nobody knew who and nobody knew where. Ben only had the foggiest notion himself.
And so, by dizzy ducking and impossible twisting and outrageous behaviour generally, Ben confounded logic and knocked the bottom out of the Einstein Theory, pulling up at last as he emerged from a by-street into a crowded, congested thoroughfare.
The crowd, with a blessedness unusual in his experience, swallowed him up. Unconsciously it directed his course and afforded him protection. It bore him to a bridge under which the Thames ran darkly. Ben found himself elbowed near the parapet. He squinted over.
Mist, wraith-like, curled over the surface. It had a queer fascination. A quick little jump, and there would be no more chasing of Ben in this world! Yes, but what about the next world? Ben jerked his head back again. If one had to be chased, it was better to be chased by solid matter. Even Mr Lovelace was preferable to a horned individual with a tail!
As he jerked his head back something fell from it and began to descend over the bridge. He caught it in mid-air. It was his cap.
He made his way from the parapet to the curb, striking a forward diagonal course and advancing like a bishop on a chess-board. When he reached the curb he jumped on to a bus. The conductor stared at him and he jumped off again.
Above him towered the Houses of Parliament. In spite of his need to keep moving he paused for a few moments to gaze up at the impressive building. He didn’t know why he paused, yet he felt there was some reason. What had he to do with the edifice from which came the nation’s laws—those laws he always seemed unwittingly to be breaking? Then, all at once, the reason came to him, and he knew why he had paused. It was a sort of salutation from one poster to another!
‘That’s it!’ he murmured. ‘Me and Medway!’
The sailor and the statesman, bound together by an invisible thread, and unconsciously drawing closer and closer each moment!
And then another thought flashed into the humbler man’s head, emphasising the association in a more whimsical way.
‘Big Ben and Little Ben! Well, I’ll be blowed!’
A policeman eyed him. Ben was born to be eyed. He could never stand long in a London street without becoming what he’d heard was called a cynosher. He jumped on another bus with ‘Mansion House’ written upon it.
As he sank into his seat, two passengers in front of him were conversing eagerly. The backs of their heads bobbed and wagged as though they were on wires.
‘Somewhere near Waterloo, so I’ve heard,’ said one.
‘That’s right,’ nodded the other. ‘I saw the crowd as I went by.’
‘Tork abart famous!’ groaned Ben. ‘I’m orl hover Lunnon!’
Which being the case, what was the use of getting out of the bus again? He’d only bump into himself somewhere else! Nevertheless he kept a sharp eye on the backs of the two heads, and was ready for a fresh bunk the moment they ceased to be backs and became fronts.
‘What, were you there?’ exclaimed the first head. And added, when the second head nodded, ‘Did you see him?’
‘Only a glimpse,’ replied the second.
‘Fare, please,’ said the conductor.
‘What was he like?’
‘Smallish chap—’
‘Fare, please!’ repeated the conductor.
‘Eh?’ muttered Ben. It was his fare the conductor was requesting. ‘Oh! I’m jest gettin’ out.’
‘Just getting out?’ frowned the conductor. ‘Why, you’ve only just got in!’
‘So I ’ave,’ murmured Ben. ‘I was thinkin’ o’ the last bus.’
The second head was saying,
‘No, I don’t think he had a moustache.’
‘Beard, then?’ exclaimed the first head. ‘I’d like his description. What about a beard?’
The conductor began to grow impatient.
‘Where to?’ he demanded.
While Ben had trouble with his throat, the second head went on,
‘Well, he was a bit grubby about the lower portion of his face. Yes, he could certainly have done with a shave.’
The conductor regarded Ben’s chin.
‘How about his eyes?’
Now the conductor regarded Ben’s eyes. Ben closed them and said,
‘’Ammersmith.’
‘Hammersmith? We don’t go to Hammersmith!’ retorted the conductor, sharply.
And before he could say any more, Ben replied, ‘Oh, doncher?’ rose rapidly, and jumped out.
He walked to the Mansion House. Waterloo would have been quicker, but he was giving Waterloo a wide, wide berth.
He preferred streets to conveyances. In conveyances you were packed too close, like. At the Mansion House station, however, he had to risk another conveyance, and he took his seat in the Southfields train wondering which of his fellow-passengers would start talking about him this time. For a change, none of them did. Of the four in his immediate vicinity, one was asleep, another was doing a crossword puzzle, while the third and the fourth were discussing the best way to make an omelette. He reached Southfields without any further shocks.
But at Southfields, after alighting, he received a bad one. Just as the train was beginning to move on again the man who was doing crosswords looked up from his paper, having caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye.
‘Hey, don’t you want this?’ he cried.
‘Lummy!’ gasped Ben.
And watched, with a sick feeling, his cap come sailing out of the window. Another second and it would have been lost for ever!
He made a grab at it, but a young porter was before him.
‘Now that’ll just suit me nice!’ grinned the porter, and removing his own cap he stuck Ben’s on his head.
‘’Ere! Give it hover!’ muttered Ben, not in a mood for play.
‘Let’s see your name inside it first!’ replied the porter, irritatingly. ‘I want to know if it’s Rockefeller or Ivor Novello!’
He took the cap off and, turning it over, began examining the lining.
‘Oi!’ protested Ben.
‘Hallo! Shop in Southampton—’ began the porter.
But the next moment the cap was snatched from him, and the owner was beating a rapid and indignant retreat.
‘Well, I’m blowed!’ exclaimed the porter. And, all at once, repeated ‘Southampton’ and whistled.
Before the porter whistled, however, Ben was outside the station, eagerly scanning faces.
He scanned in vain. The face he desired to see was not there. Depression seized him. He had expected this moment to mark the end of his troubles, but now responsibility descended upon him with all its arduous demands upon his brain. Something had gone wrong somewhere, and it was up to him to find out what it was.
Impossible to make inquiries. Inquiries would invite publicity, and publicity was a thing to be avoided. Yonder paper man could probably tell him whether a small, attractive girl had been hanging around here during the past hour or two, but it would be folly to ask him. It was folly to hang around oneself! That fresh young porter had been mighty curious. He’d seen ‘Southampton’ inside the cap. S’pose he popped out, and brought the station-master with him?
Ben crossed the road, and continued his miserable thoughts a little farther away from the station. Now, then! Get your mind on to it! The position was—Molly wasn’t here. The question was—where was she?
He tried to visualise her actions after he had left her, but all he visualised was a fog. He supposed she had got out of the window and had found a policeman—probably the policeman he had passed in the taxi just beyond the pillar-box—but what after that? What had she told the policeman? Yes, lummy, what had she told him? That an old man had killed somebody at his house, and that the old man had then bound her up in a chair, and that the old man had then gone to Waterloo to try and get a cap, and that while he was still gone he had come back again and stuck the person he had killed up the chimney?
And then the policeman would ask:
‘Who is this dead man?’
And she would reply:
‘I don’t know.’
And he would ask:
‘Who stuck him up the chimney?’
And she would reply:
‘I don’t know.’
And he would ask:
‘What did the old man want the cap for?’
And she would reply:
‘I don’t know.’
And he would ask:
‘Why did you go to the old man’s house?’
And she would reply:
‘I don’t know.’
And he would ask, and this would be a particularly nasty one:
‘If the old man was at Waterloo and you can’t say who else was in the house, or if anybody was in the house, who untied you?’
And she would reply:
‘I don’t know!’
It was a lot not to know! Yet how, if she gave any other answers, was she going to keep Ben out of it? In fact, could she keep Ben out of it? And had she?
For the first time Ben wondered whether, after all, Molly’s plan had been a good one, and whether he himself had not been remiss in trusting to a tired brain. But she had been so dominating, all of a sudden, and his brain was tired, too. P’r’aps her idea was just to shout at the policeman, ‘Hi! Go to Greystones, there’s a deader up the chimney!’ and then run. The policeman couldn’t run two ways at once, so he’d run to the deader while she ran to Southfields …
‘Yus, but she ain’t at Sarthfields!’ thought Ben, desperately. ‘If that’s wot she meant ter do, she ain’t done it! So wot’s she done?’
The answer shot out of a shadow.
‘Is your name Ben?’ piped a small boy.
Ben eyed the urchin with disfavour as he retorted,
‘S’pose it was?’
‘Well, if it was,’ said the urchin, ‘the lidy sed you was ter go back again to the ’ouse at once. She wants yer.’