from THIS GUN FOR HIRE

Graham Greene

CHAPTER 1

Murder didn’t mean much to Raven. It was just a new job. You had to be careful. You had to use your brains. It was not a question of hatred. He had only seen the minister once: he had been pointed out to Raven as he walked down the new housing estate between the little lit Christmas trees—an old, rather grubby man without any friends, who was said to love humanity.

The cold wind cut his face in the wide continental street. It was a good excuse for turning the collar of his coat well up above his mouth. A harelip was a serious handicap in his profession. It had been badly sewn in infancy, so that now the upper-lip was twisted and scarred. When you carried about you so easy an identification you couldn’t help becoming ruthless in your methods. It had always, from the first, been necessary for Raven to eliminate the evidence.

He carried an attaché case. He looked like any other youngish man going home after his work: his dark overcoat had a clerical air. He moved steadily up the street like hundreds of his kind. A tram went by, lit up in the early dusk: he didn’t take it. An economical young man, you might have thought, saving money for his home. Perhaps even now he was on his way to meet his girl.

But Raven had never had a girl. The harelip prevented that. He had learned, when he was very young, how repulsive it was. He turned in to one of the tall gray houses and climbed the stairs, a sour, bitter, screwed-up figure.

Outside the top flat he put down his attaché case and put on gloves. He took a pair of clippers out of his pocket and cut through the telephone wire where it ran out from above the door to the lift shaft. Then he rang the bell.

He hoped to find the minister alone. This little top-floor flat was the socialist’s home. He lived in a poor, bare solitary way, and Raven had been told that his secretary always left him at half-past six—he was very considerate with his employees. But Raven was a minute too early and the minister half an hour too late. A woman opened the door, an elderly woman with pince-nez and several gold teeth. She had her hat on, and her coat was over her arm. She had been on the point of leaving, and she was furious at being caught. She didn’t allow him to speak, but snapped at him in German, “The minister is engaged.”

He wanted to spare her, not because he minded a killing but because his employers might prefer him not to exceed his instructions. He held the letter of introduction out to her silently: as long as she didn’t hear his foreign voice or see his harelip she was safe. She took the letter bitterly and held it up close to her pincenez. Good, he thought, she’s shortsighted. “Stay where you are,” she said and walked primly back up the passage. He could hear her disapproving governess’ voice, then she was back in the passage, saying, “The minister will see you. Follow me, please.” He couldn’t understand the foreign speech, but he knew what she meant from her behavior.

His eyes, like little concealed cameras, photographed the room instantaneously: the desk, the easy chair, the map on the wall, the door to the bedroom behind, the wide window above the bright cold Christmas street. A little oil stove was all the heating, and the minister was using it now to boil a saucepan. A kitchen alarm clock on the desk marked seven o’clock. A voice said, “Emma, put another egg in the saucepan.” The minister came out from the bedroom. He had tried to tidy himself, but he had forgotten the cigarette ash on his trousers. He was old and small and rather dirty. The secretary took an egg out of one of the drawers in the desk. “And the salt. Don’t forget the salt,” the minister said. He explained in slow English, “It prevents the shell cracking. Sit down, my friend. Make yourself at home. Emma, you can go.”

Raven sat down and fixed his eyes on the minister’s chest. He thought, I’ll give her three minutes by the alarm clock to get well away. He kept his eyes on the minister’s chest: Just there I’ll shoot. He let his coat collar fall and saw with bitter rage how the old man turned away from the sight of his harelip.

The minister said, “It’s years since I heard from him. But I’ve never forgotten him, never. I can show you his photograph in the other room. It’s good of him to think of an old friend. So rich and powerful, too. You must ask him when you go back if he remembers the time—” A bell began to ring furiously.

Raven thought, the telephone. I cut the wire. It shook his nerve. But it was only the alarm clock drumming on the desk. The minister turned it off. “One egg’s boiled,” he said and stooped for the saucepan. Raven opened his attache case: in the lid he had fixed his automatic fitted with a silencer. The minister said, “I’m sorry the bell made you jump. You see, I like my egg just four minutes.”

Feet ran along the passage. The door opened. Raven turned furiously in his seat, his harelip flushed and raw. It was the secretary. He thought, my God, what a household. They won’t let a man do things tidily. He forgot his lip, he was angry; he had a grievance. She came in flashing her gold teeth, prim and ingratiating. She said, “I was just going out when I heard the telephone.” Then she winced slightly, looked the other way, showed a clumsy delicacy before his deformity which he couldn’t help noticing. It condemned her. He snatched the automatic out of the case and shot the minister twice in the back.

The minister fell across the oil stove; the saucepan upset, and the two eggs broke on the floor. Raven shot the minister once more in the head, leaning across the desk to make quite certain, driving the bullet hard into the base of the skull, smashing it open like a china doll’s. Then he turned on the secretary. She moaned at him; she hadn’t any words; the old mouth couldn’t hold its saliva. He supposed she was begging him for mercy. He pressed the trigger again; she staggered as if she had been kicked by an animal in the side. But he had miscalculated. Her unfashionable dress, the swathes of useless material in which she hid her body, perhaps confused him. And she was tough, so tough he couldn’t believe his eyes: she was through the door before he could fire again, slamming it behind her.

But she couldn’t lock it: the key was on his side. He twisted the handle and pushed. The elderly woman had amazing strength: it only gave two inches. She began to scream some word at the top of her voice.

There was no time to waste. He stood away from the door and shot twice through the woodwork. He could hear the pince-nez fall on the floor and break. The voice screamed again and stopped: there was a sound outside as if she were sobbing. It was her breath going out through her wounds. Raven was satisfied. He turned back to the minister.

There was a clue he had been ordered to leave; a clue he had to remove. The letter of introduction was on the desk. He put it in his pocket, and between the minister’s stiffened fingers he inserted a scrap of paper. Raven had little curiosity: he had only glanced at the introduction, and the nickname at its foot conveyed nothing to him: he was a man who could be depended on. Now he looked round the small bare room to see whether there was any clue he had overlooked. The suitcase and the automatic he was to leave behind. It was all very simple.

He opened the bedroom door. His eyes again photographed the scene: the single bed, the wooden chair, the dusty chest of drawers, a photograph of a young Jew with a small scar on his chin as if he had been struck there with a club, a pair of brown wooden hairbrushes initialed I. K., everywhere cigarette ash—the home of a lonely untidy old man; the home of the minister for war.

A low voice whispered an appeal quite distinctly through the door. Raven picked up the automatic again. Who would have imagined an old woman could be so tough? It touched his nerve a little just in the same way as the bell had done, as if a ghost were interfering with a man’s job. He opened the study door—he had to push it against the weight of her body. She looked dead enough, but he made quite sure with his automatic almost touching her eyes.

It was time to be gone. He took the automatic with him.

2

They sat and shivered side by side as the dusk came down. They were borne in their bright small smoky cage above the streets. The bus rocked down to Hammersmith. The shop windows sparkled like ice. “Look,” she said, “it’s snowing.” A few large flakes went drifting by as they crossed the bridge, falling like paper scraps into the dark Thames.

He said, “I’m happy as long as this ride goes on.”

“We’re seeing each other tomorrow—Jimmy.” She always hesitated before his name. It was a silly name for anyone of such bulk and gravity.

He said, “It’s the nights that bother me, Anne.”

She laughed. “It’s going to be wearing.” But immediately she became serious. “I’m happy, too.” About happiness she was always serious; she preferred to laugh when she was miserable. She couldn’t avoid being serious about things she cared for, and happiness made her grave at the thought of all the things that might destroy it. She said, “It would be dreadful now if there was a war.”

“There won’t be a war.”

“The last one started with a murder.”

“That was an archduke. This is just an old politician.”

She said, “Be careful. You’ll break the record—Jimmy.”

“Damn the record.”

She began to hum the tune she’d bought it for: “It’s only Kew to You,” and the large flakes fell past the window, melted on the pavement: “a snowflower a man brought from Greenland.”

He said, “It’s a silly song.”

She said, “It’s a lovely song—Jimmy. I simply can’t call you Jimmy. You aren’t Jimmy. You’re outsize. Detective Sergeant Mather. You’re the reason why people make jokes about policemen’s boots.”

“What’s wrong with dear, anyway?”

“Dear, dear.” She tried it out on the tip of her tongue, between lips as vividly stained as a winter berry. “Oh no,” she decided, “it’s cold. I’ll call you that when we’ve been married ten years.”

“Well—darling?”

“Darling, darling. I don’t like it. It sounds as if I’d known you a long, long time.” The bus went up the hill past the fish-and-chip shops. A brazier glowed, and they could smell the roasting chestnuts. The ride was nearly over; there were only two more streets and a turn to the left by the church, which was already visible, the spire lifted like a long icicle above the houses. The nearer they got to home the more miserable she became, the nearer they got to home the more lightly she talked. She was keeping things off and out of mind: the peeling wallpaper, the long flights to her room, cold supper with Mrs Brewer and next day the walk to the agent’s, perhaps a job again in the provinces away from him.

Mather said heavily, “You don’t care for me like I care for you. It’s nearly twenty-four hours before I see you again.”

“It’ll be more than that if I get a job.”

“You don’t care. You simply don’t care.”

She clutched his arm. “Look. Look at that poster.” But it was gone before he could see it through the steamy pane. “Europe Mobilizing” lay like a weight on her heart.

“What was it?”

“Oh, just the same old murder again.”

“You’ve got that murder on your mind. It’s a week old now. It’s got nothing to do with us.”

“No, it hasn’t, has it?”

“If it had happened here, we’d have caught him by now.”

“I wonder why he did it.”

“Politics. Patriotism.”

“Well. Here we are. It might be a good thing to get off. Don’t look so miserable. I thought you said you were happy?”

“That was five minutes ago.”

“Oh,” she said out of her light and heavy heart, “one lives quickly these days.” They kissed under the lamp; she had to stretch to reach him. He was comforting like a large dog, even when he was sullen and stupid, but one didn’t have to send away a dog alone in the cold dark night.

“Anne,” he said, “we’ll be married, won’t we, after Christmas?”

“We haven’t a penny,” she said, “you know. Not a penny—Jimmy.”

“I’ll get a rise.”

“You’ll be late for duty.”

“Damn it, you don’t care.”

She jeered at him, “Not a scrap—dear,” and walked away from him up the street to number 54, praying, Let me get some money quick; let this go on this time. She hadn’t any faith in herself. A man passed her going up the road. He looked cold and strung-up as he passed in his black overcoat. He had a harelip. Poor devil, she thought, and forgot him, opening the door of 54, climbing the long flights to the top floor (the carpet stopped on the first). Putting on the new record, hugging to her heart the silly, senseless words, the slow, sleepy tune:

It’s only Kew

To you,

But to me

It’s Paradise.

They are only blue

Petunias to you,

But to me

They are your eyes.

The man with the harelip came back down the street. Fast walking hadn’t made him warm; like Kay in The Snow Queen he bore the cold within him as he walked. The flakes went on falling, melting into slush on the pavement: the words of a song dropped from the lit room on the third floor, the scrape of a used needle.

They say that’s a snowflower

A man brought from Greenland.

I say it’s the lightness, the coolness, the whitenes

Of your hand.

The man hardly paused. He went on down the street, walking fast He felt no pain from the chip of ice in his breast.

3

Raven sat at an empty table in the Corner House near a marble pillar. He stared with distaste at the long list of sweet iced drinks, of parfaits and sundaes and coupes and splits. Somebody at the next little table was eating brown bread and butter and drinking Horlick’s. He wilted under Raven’s gaze and put up his newspaper. One word, “Ultimatum,” ran across the top line.

Mr Cholmondeley picked his way between the tables.

He was fat and wore an emerald ring. His wide square face fell in folds over his collar. He looked like a real-estate man or perhaps a man more than usually successful in selling women’s belts. He sat down at Raven’s table and said, “Good evening.”

Raven said, “I thought you were never coming, Mr Chol-mondeley,” pronouncing every syllable.

“Chumley, my dear man, Chumley,” Mr Cholmondeley corrected him.

“It doesn’t matter how it’s pronounced. I don’t suppose it’s your own name.”

“After all, I chose it,” Mr Cholmondeley said. His ring flashed under the great inverted bowls of light as he turned the pages of the menu. “Have a parfait.”

“It’s odd wanting to eat ice in this weather. You’ve only got to stay outside if you’re hot. I don’t want to waste any time, Mr Cholmon-deley. Have you brought the money? I’m broke.”

Mr Cholmondeley said, “They do a very good Maiden’s Dream. Not to speak of Alpine Glow. Or the Knickerbocker Glory.” “I haven’t had a thing since Calais.”

“Give me the letter,” Mr Cholmondeley said. “Thank you.” He told the waitress, “I’ll have an Alpine Glow with a glass of kummel over it.”

“The money,” Raven said.

“Here in this case.”

“They are all fivers.”

“You can’t expect to be paid two hundred in small change. And it’s nothing to do with me,” Mr Cholmondeley said. “I’m merely the agent.” His eyes softened as they rested on a Raspberry Split at the next table. He confessed wistfully to Raven, “I’ve got a sweet tooth.”

“Don’t you want to hear about it?” Raven said. “The old woman—”

“Please, please,” Mr Cholmondeley said, “I want to hear nothing. I’m just an agent. I take no responsibility. My clients—”

Raven twisted his harelip at him with sour contempt. “That’s a fine name for them.”

“How long the waitress is with my parfait,” Mr Cholmondeley complained. “My clients are really quite the best people. These acts of violence—they regard them as war.”

“And I and the old man …” Raven said.

“Are in the front trench.” He began to laugh softly at his own humor. His great white open face was like a curtain on which you can throw grotesque images: a rabbit, a man with horns. His small eyes twinkled with pleasure at the mass of iced cream that was borne toward him in a tall glass. He said, “You did your work very well, very neatly. They are quite satisfied with you. You’ll be able to take a long holiday now.” He was fat, he was vulgar, he was false, but he gave an impression of great power as he sat there with the cream dripping from his mouth. He was prosperity, he was one of those who possessed things; but Raven possessed nothing but the contents of the wallet, the clothes he stood up in, the harelip, the automatic he should have left behind.

He said, “I’ll be moving.”

“Good-bye, my man, good-bye,” Mr Cholmondeley said, sucking through a straw.

Raven rose and went. Dark and thin and made for destruction, he wasn’t at ease among the little tables, among the bright fruit drinks. He went out into the Circus and up Shaftesbury Avenue. The shop windows were full of tinsel and hard red Christmas berries. It maddened him, the sentiment of it. His hands clenched in his pockets. He leaned his face against a modiste’s window and jeered silently through the glass A Jewish girl with a neat curved figure bent over a dummy. He fed his eyes contemptuously on her legs and hips; so much flesh, he thought, on sale in the Christmas window.

A kind of subdued cruelty drove him into the shop. He let his harelip loose on the girl when she came toward him with the same pleasure that he might have turned a machine gun on a picture gallery. He said, “That dress in the window. How much?”

She said, “Five guineas.” She wouldn’t “sir” him. His lip was like a badge of class. It revealed the poverty of parents who couldn’t afford a clever surgeon.

He said, “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

She lisped at him genteely, “It’s been vewwy much admired.”

“Soft. Thin. You’d have to take care of a dress like that, eh? Do for someone pretty and well off?”

She lied without interest, “It’s a model.” She was a woman; she knew all about it; she knew how cheap and vulgar the little shop really was.

“It’s got class, eh?”

“Oh yes,” she said, catching the eye of a dago in a purple suit through the pane, “it’s got class.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll give you five pounds for it.” He took a note from Mr Cholmondeley’s wallet.

“Shall I pack it up?”

“No,” he said. “The girl’ll fetch it.” He grinned at her with his raw lip. “You see, she’s class. This the best dress you have?” And when she nodded and took the note away he said, “It’ll just suit Alice then.”

And so out into the avenue with a little of his scorn expressed, out into Frith Street and round the corner into the German café where he kept a room. A shock awaited him there, a little fir tree in a tub hung with colored glass, a crib. He said to the old man who owned the café, “You believe in this? This junk?”

“Is there going to be war again?” the old man said. “It’s terrible what you read.”

“All this business of no room in the inn. They used to give us plum pudding. A decree from Caesar Augustus. You see I know the stuff, I’m educated. We used to have it read us once a year.”

“I have seen one war.”

“I hate the sentiment.”

“Well,” the old man said, “it’s good for business.”

Raven picked up the bambino. The cradle came with it all of a piece: cheap painted plaster. “They put him on the spot, eh? You see I know the whole story. I’m educated.”

He went upstairs to his room. It hadn’t been seen to: there was still dirty water in the basin, and the ewer was empty. He remembered the fat man saying, “Chumley, my man, Chumley. It’s pronounced Chumley,” flashing his emerald ring. He called furiously, “Alice,” over the banisters.

She came out of the next room, a slattern, one shoulder too high, with wisps of fair bleached hair over her face. She said, “You needn’t shout.”

He said, “It’s a pigsty in there. You can’t treat me like that. Go in and clean it.” He hit her on the side of the head, and she cringed away from him, not daring to say anything but, “Who do you think you are?”

“Get on,” he said, “you humpbacked bitch.” He began to laugh at her when she crouched over the bed. “I’ve bought you a Christmas dress, Alice. Here’s the receipt. Go and fetch it. It’s a lovely dress. It’ll suit you.”

“You think you’re funny,” she said.

“I’ve paid a fiver for this joke. Hurry, Alice, or the shop’ll be shut.” But she got her own back calling up the stairs, “I won’t look worse than what you do with that split lip.” Everyone in the house could hear her: the old man in the café, his wife in the parlor, the customers at the counter. He imagined their smiles. “Go it, Alice, what an ugly pair you are.” He didn’t really suffer: he had been fed the poison from boyhood drop by drop; he hardly noticed its bitterness now.

He went to the window and opened it and scratched on the sill. The kitten came to him, making little rushes along the drainpipe, feinting at his hand. “You little bitch,” he said, “you little bitch.” He took a small two-penny carton of cream out of his overcoat pocket and spilled it in his soap dish. She stopped playing and rushed at him with a tiny cry. He picked her up by the scruff and put her on top of his chest of drawers with the cream. She wriggled from his hand; she was no larger than the rat he’d trained in the home, but softer. He scratched her behind the ear, and she struck back at him in a preoccupied way. Her tongue quivered on the surface of the milk.

Dinnertime, he told himself. With all that money he could go anywhere. He could have a slap-up meal at Simpson’s with the businessmen—cut off the joint and any number of vegs.

When he got by the public call box in the dark corner below the stairs he caught his name, “Raven.” The old man said, “He always has a room here. He’s been away.”

“You,” a strange voice said. “What’s your name—Alice—show me his room. Keep an eye on the door, Saunders.”

Raven went on his knees inside the telephone box. He left the door ajar because he never liked to be shut in. He couldn’t see out, but he had no need to see the owner of the voice to recognize police, plain clothes, the Yard accent. The man was so near that the floor of the box vibrated to his tread. Then he came down again. “There’s no one there. He’s taken his hat and coat. He must have gone out.”

“He might have,” the old man said. “He’s a soft-walking sort of fellow.”

The stranger began to question them. “What’s he like?”

The old man and the girl both said in a breath, “A harelip.”

“That’s useful,” the detective said. “Don’t touch his room. I’ll be sending a man round to take his fingerprints. What sort of a fellow is he?”

Raven could hear every word. He couldn’t imagine what they were after. He knew he’d left no clues: he wasn’t a man who imagined things, he knew. He carried the picture of that room and flat in his brain as clearly as if he had the photographs. They had nothing against him. It had been against his orders to keep the automatic, but he could feel it now safe under his armpit. Besides, if they had picked up any clue they’d have stopped him at Dover. He listened to the voices with a dull anger: he wanted his dinner; he hadn’t had a square meal for twenty-four hours, and now with two hundred pounds in his pocket he could buy anything, anything.

“I can believe it,” the old man said. “Why tonight he even made fun of my poor wife’s crib.”

“A bloody bully,” the girl said. “I shan’t be sorry when you’ve locked him up.”

He told himself with surprise, they hate me.

She said, “He’s ugly through and through. That lip of his. It gives you the creeps.”

“An ugly customer all right.”

“I wouldn’t have him in the house,” the old man said. “But he pays. You can’t turn away someone who pays. Not in these days.”

“Has he friends?”

“You make me laugh,” Alice said. “Him friends. What would he do with friends?”

He began to laugh quietly to himself on the floor of the little dark box: That’s me they’re talking about, me. He stared up at the pane of glass with his hand on his automatic.

“You seem kind of bitter. What’s he been doing to you? He was going to give you a dress, wasn’t he?”

“Just his dirty joke.”

“You were going to take it, though.”

“You bet I wasn’t. Do you think I’d take a present from him? I was going to sell it back to them and show him the money, and wasn’t I going to laugh?”

He thought again with bitter interest, they hate me. If they open this door I’ll shoot the lot.

“I’d like to take a swipe at that lip of his. I’d laugh. I’d say I’d laugh.”

“I’ll put a man,” the strange voice said, “across the road. Tip him the wink if our man comes in.” The café door closed.

“Oh,” the old man said. “I wish my wife was here. She would not miss this for ten shillings.”

“I’ll give her a ring,” Alice said. “She’ll be chatting at Mason’s. She can come right over and bring Mrs Mason, too. Let ‘em all join in the fun. It was only a week ago Mrs Mason said she didn’t want to see his ugly face in her shop again.”

“Yes, be a good girl, Alice. Give her a ring.”

Raven reached up his hand and took the bulb out of the fitment: he stood up and flattened himself against the wall of the box. Alice opened the door and shut herself in with him. He put his hand over her mouth before she had time to cry.

He said, “Don’t you put the pennies in the box. I’ll shoot if you do. I’ll shoot if you call out. Do what I say.” He whispered in her ear. They were as close together as if they were in a single bed. He could feel her crooked shoulder pressed against his chest. He said, “Lift the receiver. Pretend you’re talking to the old woman. Go on. I don’t care a damn if I shoot you. Say, Hello, Frau Groener.”

“Hello, Frau Groener.”

“Spill the whole story.”

“They are after Raven.”

“Why?”

“That five-pound note. They were waiting at the shop.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’d got its number. It was stolen.”

He’d been double-crossed. His mind worked with mechanical accuracy like a ready-reckoner. You only had to supply it with the figures and it gave you the answer. He was possessed by a deep sullen rage. If Mr Cholmondeley had been in the box with him he would have shot him: he wouldn’t have cared a damn.

“Stolen from where?”

“You ought to know that.”

“Don’t give me any lip. Where from?”

He didn’t even know who Cholmondeley’s employers were. It was obvious what had happened: they hadn’t trusted him. They had arranged this so that he might be put away. A newsboy went by outside calling, “Ultimatum. Ultimatum.” His mind registered the fact, but no more; it seemed to have nothing to do with him. He repeated, “Where from?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

With the automatic stuck against her back he tried to plead with her. “Remember, can’t you? It’s important. I didn’t do it.”

“I bet you didn’t,” she said bitterly into the unconnected phone.

“Give me a break. All I want you to do is remember.”

She said, “On your life I won’t.”

“I gave you that dress, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t. You tried to plant your money, that’s all. You didn’t know they’d circulated the numbers to every shop in town. We’ve even got them in the café.”

“If I’d done it, why should I want to know where they came from?”

“It’ll be a bigger laugh than ever if you get jugged for something you didn’t do.”

“Alice,” the old man called from the café, “is she coming?”

“I’ll give you ten pounds.”

“Phony notes. No thank you, Mr Generosity.”

“Alice,” the old man called again; they could hear him coming along the passage.

“Justice,” he said bitterly, jabbing her between the ribs with the automatic.

“You don’t need to talk about justice,” she said. “Driving me like I was in prison. Hitting me when you feel like it. Spilling ash all over the floor. I’ve got enough to do with your slops. Milk in the soap dish. Don’t talk about justice.”

Pressed against him in the tiny dark box she suddenly came alive to him. He was so astonished that he forgot the old man till he had the door of the box open. He whispered passionately, out of the dark, “Don’t say a word or I’ll plug you.” He had them both out of the box in front of him. He said, “Understand this. They aren’t going to get me. I’m not going to prison. I don’t care a damn if I plug one of you. I don’t care if I hang. My father hanged. … What’s good enough for him … Get along in front of me up to my room. There’s hell coming to somebody for this.”

When he had them there he locked the door. A customer was ringing the café bell over and over again. He turned on them. “I’ve got a good mind to plug you. Telling them about my harelip. Why can’t you play fair?” He went to the window; he knew there was an easy way down: that was why he had chosen the room. The kitten caught his eye, prowling like a toy tiger in a cage up and down the edge of the chest of drawers, afraid to jump. He lifted her up and threw her on his bed; she tried to bite his finger as she went. Then he got through onto the leads. The clouds were massing up across the moon, and the earth seemed to move with them, an icy barren globe, through the vast darkness.

4

Anne Crowder walked up and down the small room in her heavy tweed coat; she didn’t want to waste a shilling on the gas meter, because she wouldn’t get her shilling’s worth before morning. She told herself, I’m lucky to have got that job. I’m glad to be going off to work again. But she wasn’t convinced. It was eight now; they would have four hours together till midnight. She would have to deceive him and tell him she was catching the nine-o’clock, not the five-o’clock train, or he would be sending her back to bed early. He was like that. No romance. She smiled with tenderness and blew on her fingers.

The telephone at the bottom of the house was ringing. She thought it was the doorbell and ran to the mirror in the wardrobe. There wasn’t enough light from the dull globe to tell her if her makeup would stand the brilliance of the Astoria Dance Hall. She began making up all over again; if she was pale he would take her home early.

The landlady stuck her head in at the door and said, “It’s your gentleman. On the phone.”

“On the phone?”

“Yes,” the landlady said, sidling in for a good chat, “he sounded all of a jump. Impatient, I should say. Half barked my head off when I wished him good evening.”

“Oh,” she said despairingly, “it’s only his way. You mustn’t mind him.”

“He’s going to call off the evening, I suppose,” the landlady said. “It’s always the same. You girls who go traveling round never get a square deal. You said Dick Whittington, didn’t you?”

“No, no; Aladdin.”

She pelted down the stairs. She didn’t care a damn who saw her hurry. She said, “Is that you, darling?” There was always something wrong with their telephone. She could hear his voice so hoarsely vibrating against her ear she could hardly realize it was his. He said, “You’ve been ages. This is a public call box. I’ve put in my last pennies. Listen, Anne, I can’t be with you. I’m sorry. It’s work. We’re onto the man in that safe robbery I told you about. I shall be out all night on it. We’ve traced one of the notes.” His voice beat excitedly against her ear.

She said, “Oh, that’s fine, darling. I know you wanted …” But she couldn’t keep it up. “Jimmy,” she said, “I shan’t be seeing you again. For weeks.”

He said, “It’s tough, I know. I’d been dreaming of … Listen. You’d better not catch that early train; what’s the point? There isn’t a nine-o’clock. I’ve been looking them up.”

“I know. I just said—”

“You’d better go tonight. Then you can get a rest before rehearsals. Midnight from Euston.”

“But I haven’t packed. …”

He took no notice. It was his favorite occupation, planning things, making decisions. He said, “If I’m near the station, I’ll try—”

“Your two minutes up.”

He said, “Oh hell, I’ve no coppers. Darling, I love you.”

She struggled to bring it out herself, but his name stood in the way, impeded her tongue. She could never bring it out without hesitation. “Ji—” The line went dead on her. She thought bitterly, he oughtn’t to go out without coppers. She thought, it’s not right, cutting off a detective like that. Then she went back up the stairs. She wasn’t crying; it was just as if somebody had died and left her alone and scared, scared of the new faces and the new job, the harsh provincial jokes, the fellows who were fresh; scared of herself, scared of not being able to remember clearly how good it was to be loved.

The landlady said, “I just thought so. Why not come down and have a cup of tea and a good chat? It does you good to talk. Really good. A doctor said to me once it clears the lungs. Stands to reason, don’t it? You can’t help getting dust up, and a good talk blows it out. I wouldn’t bother to pack yet. There’s hours and hours. My old man would never of died if he’d talked more. Stands to reason. It was something poisonous in his throat cut him off in his prime. If he’d talked more he’d have blown it out. It’s better than spitting.”

5

The crime reporter couldn’t make himself heard. He kept on trying to say to the chief reporter, “I’ve got some stuff on that safe robbery.”

The chief reporter had had too much to drink. They’d all had too much to drink. He said, “You can go home and read The Decline and Fall—”

The crime reporter was a young earnest man who didn’t drink and didn’t smoke; it shocked him when someone was sick in one of the telephone boxes. He shouted at the top of his voice, “They’ve traced one of the notes.”

“Write it down, write it down, old boy,” the chief reporter said, “and then smoke it.”

“The man escaped—held up a girl—It’s a terribly good story,” the earnest young man said. He had an Oxford accent; that was why they had made him crime reporter: it was the news editor’s joke.

“Go home and read Gibbon.”

The earnest young man caught hold of someone’s sleeve. “What’s the matter? Are you all crazy? Isn’t there going to be any paper or what?”

“War in forty-eight hours,” somebody bellowed at him.

“But this is a wonderful story I’ve got. He held up a girl and an old man, climbed out of a window—”

“Go home. There won’t be any room for it.”

“They’ve killed the annual report of the Kensington Kitten Club.”

“No ‘Round the Shops.’"

“They’ve made the Limehouse Fire a News in Brief.”

“Go home and read Gibbon.”

“He got clean away with a policeman watching the front door. The Flying Squad’s out. He’s armed. The police are taking revolvers. It’s a lovely story.”

The chief reporter said, “Armed. Go away and put your head in a glass of milk. We’ll all be armed in a day or two. They’ve published their evidence. It’s clear as daylight a Serb shot him. Italy’s supporting the ultimatum. They’ve got forty-eight hours to climb down. If you want to buy armament shares hurry and make your fortune.”

“You’ll be in the army this day week,” somebody said.

“Oh no,” the young man said. “No, I won’t be that. You see, I’m a pacifist.”

The man who was sick in the telephone box said, “I’m going home. There isn’t any more room in the paper if the Bank of England’s blown up.”

A little thin piping voice said, “My copy’s going in.”

“I tell you there isn’t any room.”

“There’ll be room for mine. Gas Masks for All. Special Air Raid Practices for Civilians in every town of more than fifty thousand inhabitants.” He giggled.

“The funny thing is—it’s—it’s—” But nobody ever heard what it was. A boy opened the door and flung them in a pull of the middle page: damp letters on a damp gray sheet; the headlines came off on your hands. “Yugoslavia Asks for Time. Adriatic Fleet at War Stations. Paris Rioters Break into Italian Embassy.” Everyone was suddenly quite quiet as an airplane went by, driving low overhead through the dark, heading south, a scarlet tail-light, pale transparent wings in the moonlight. They watched it through the great glass ceiling, and suddenly nobody wanted to have another drink.

The chief reporter said, “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

“Shall I follow up this story?” the crime reporter said.

“If it’ll make you happy, but that’s the only news from now on."

They stared up at the glass ceiling, the moon, the empty sky.

6

The station clock marked three minutes to midnight. The ticket collector at the barrier said, “There’s room in the front.”

“A friend’s seeing me off,” Anne Crowder said. “Can’t I get in at this end and go up front when we start?”

“They’ve locked the doors.”

She looked desperately past him. They were turning out the lights in the buffet; no more trains from that platform.

“You’ll have to hurry, miss.”

The poster of an evening paper caught her eye, and as she ran down the train, looking back as often as she was able, she couldn’t help remembering that war might be declared before they met again. He would go to it. He always did what other people did, she told herself with irritation, but she knew that that was the reliability she loved. She wouldn’t have loved him if he’d been queer, had his own opinions about things; she lived too closely to thwarted genius, to second touring company actresses who thought they ought to be Cochran stars, to admire difference. She wanted her man to be ordinary, she wanted to be able to know what he’d say next.

A line of lamp-struck faces went by her. The train was full, so full that in the first-class carriages you saw strange shy awkward people who were not at ease in the deep seats, who feared the ticket collector would turn them out. She gave up the search for a third-class carriage, opened a door, dropped her Woman and Beauty on the only seat, and struggled back to the window over legs and protruding suitcases. The engine was getting up steam, the smoke blew back up the platform: it was difficult to see as far as the barrier.

A hand pulled at her sleeve. “Excuse me,” a fat man said, “if you’ve quite finished with that window. I want to buy some chocolate.”

She said, “Just one moment, please. Somebody’s seeing me off.”

“He’s not here. It’s too late. You can’t monopolize the window like that. I must have some chocolate.” He swept her on one side and waved an emerald ring under the light. She tried to look over his shoulder to the barrier: he almost filled the window. He called, “Boy, boy,” waving the emerald ring. He said, “What chocolate have you got? No, not Motorist’s, not Mexican. Something sweet.”

Suddenly through a crack she saw Mather. He was past the barrier; he was coming down the train looking for her, looking in all the third-class carriages, running past the first-class. She implored the fat man, “Please, please do let me come. I can see my friend.”

“In a moment. In a moment. Have you Nestlé’s? Give me a shilling packet.”

“Please let me.”

“Haven’t you anything smaller,” the boy said, “than a ten-shilling note?”

Mather went by, running past the first-class. She hammered on the window, but he didn’t hear her, among the whistles and the beat of trolley wheels, the last packing cases rolling into the van. Doors slammed, a whistle blew, the train began to move.

“Please. Please.”

“I must get my change,” the fat man said, and the boy ran beside the carriage counting the shillings into his palm. When she got to the window and leaned out they were past the platform: she could only see a small figure on a wedge of asphalt who couldn’t see her. An elderly woman said, “You oughtn’t to lean out like that. It’s dangerous.”

She trod on their toes getting back to her seat: she felt unpopularity well up all around her: everyone was thinking, “She oughtn’t to be in the carriage. What’s the good of our paying first-class fares when …” But she wouldn’t cry; she was fortified by all the conventional remarks that came automatically to her mind about spilled milk and it will all be the same in fifty years. Nevertheless she noted with deep dislike on the label dangling from the fat man’s suitcase his destination, which was the same as hers, Nottwich. He sat opposite her with the Spectator and the Evening News and the Financial Times on his lap eating sweet milk chocolate.