After this, inn-signs were child’s-play!
And thus Ben recognised that the sign now creaking above him, almost invisible in the increased gloaming, was the sign that had creaked near by when the Spaniard had laid an unwelcome hand upon his shoulder.
It was a depressing discovery. He had run five miles, and they had got him nowhere! But even more depressing was a discovery that dawned a few moments later, while he stood hesitating and wiping his forehead with his cap.
Voices were sounding from the road along which he had come.
As with creaks, so with voices. Again Ben was an expert, and he did not need to know their words before he knew their temper. These voices, experience told him, were panting voices. Indignant voices. Excited voices. Official voices. Determined voices …
‘Along here?’
‘Quiet, now!’
‘D’you think he stopped?’
‘What about that pub?’
And then a figure suddenly materialised close to him. It materialised in a startling flash. The voices had not sounded so close!
In a flash no less startling, Ben entered the inn. There seemed no alternative. The figure barred the way ahead, and the approaching voices barred the way behind.
He found himself in the public bar. His mind was so confused that he could not have told you at the moment whether the bar were full or empty. His whole being was concentrated on the figure that had sent him diving into this dubious sanctuary, and he stood stock still in the expectation that the figure would follow him.
But the figure didn’t follow him, and all at once his mind switched galvanically back to the voices. They were now much closer. Just outside, in fact. Where the figure would be …
‘Come on!’
‘You think he’s in there, then?’
‘Bet he’s popped in a barrel!’
A reply from the door-step, however, dissolved this picturesque theory.
‘Are you after a run-away? If you are, he’s just gone along that road there towards Southampton,’ came the amazing information. ‘Yes, and the brute knocked me clean down in his hurry, he did, so I hope you catch him!’
The pursuers shouted thanks. Feet turned, and hurried away. But Ben remained motionless. For the voice that had turned the pursuers’ feet was the voice of Molly Smith.
Molly Smith! Molly! Not in Spain! Here! …
The room began to jerk about, and through the gymnastics swam a face. A large, red, fat face, that seemed to be propelled by its two fin-like ears. The eyes in the face were pale blue, and they stared.
‘Feelin’ queer?’ asked the owner of the face.
‘Wot’s that?’ murmured Ben, mechanically.
‘Are you feelin’ queer?’ repeated the owner of the face.
Did suspicion lurk in the pale blue eyes? If so, Ben was not in a condition to combat it. He merely stared back, while the suspicion appeared to grow.
‘You’ve been runnin’!’ The statement was more like a challenge. ‘And where’s your cap, mate? Lost it?’
‘No, here it is,’ chipped in another voice.
And Molly Smith entered, cool as a cucumber, and with the cap in her hand.
‘Lying on the door-step,’ she said. ‘Did that chap they’re after barge into you, like he did into me?’
She held the cap out to Ben. Automatically, he took it, while their eyes met. They might have been strangers for all the recognition she showed. Lummy, what a kid she was, when it came to a tight corner!
‘I tell you, I was frightened proper!’ she ran on, producing a shiver. ‘And you look as if you’d had a bit of a scare up, if you don’t mind me saying it. Did you dodge in here to get out of the way, too?’
‘Tha’s right, miss,’ answered Ben, catching at the cue.
Her quick, keen mind was like a rope thrown out to him in a raging sea.
‘Well, I don’t blame you!’ she exclaimed. ‘All these Bolshies and bag-snatchers—it doesn’t seem safe to be out! But what’s this one done? Nothing to do with that murder in the town, is he?’
Another cue! She was letting him know that she knew! Yes, and how much did she know? P’r’aps more than he did!
Now another voice joined in. The voice of the barmaid this time.
‘Nothing to do with it?’ she exclaimed, polishing a glass which had lately been bathed in her fair breath. ‘I’d say he’d everything to do with it! Wouldn’t you, Joe?’
The red-faced man, addressed as Joe, nodded solemnly, and continued to stare at Ben.
‘We was just talking about it, wasn’t we, when you popped in,’ continued the barmaid, nodding towards Ben. ‘There’s two of ’em. One’s from Spain or somewhere, so they say, and the other’s a sailor what’s come off a ship.’
‘The sailor’s the one I saw!’ interposed Molly, quickly. ‘Six foot, if an inch!’
‘I heard he was little,’ said Joe.
His tone was that of a man who objects to discarding a theory. Molly, however, stuck to her point.
‘Little be boiled!’ she retorted. ‘That only shows what stories get around!’
‘She’s right there,’ agreed the barmaid. ‘What I was told was that he was little and had a yeller tooth sticking out like a tusk! But, there you are! What are you to believe? Is it true,’ she added, turning to Molly, ‘that he was in the taxi when they heard the scream, and that this sailor fellow popped out of one door while the policeman popped in at the other?’
Just in time, Ben prevented himself from denying that there had been any scream,
‘Out he jumps,’ the barmaid ran on, ‘with his knife still in his hand and the blood dripping on the pavement, there’s no sleep for me tonight, and into a house, and then escapes off the roof! And then, just when they think they’ve got him, along comes this foreigner—’
‘Spaniard, Spaniard,’ interposed Joe, irritably.
‘Spaniard, was it? They’re all the same. And he knocks a policeman out, and off they bolt together.’
‘Wot, tergether?’ blinked Ben.
‘That’s right. They was both in it. It’s my belief the sailor done it, and then passes the pocket-book on to this Spaniard. Well, anyhow, let’s hope they’re both caught. Ain’t anyone going to drink to it?’
‘Pocket-book, eh?’ murmured Ben. ‘Was there a pocket-book?’
‘Well, I didn’t say a coal-scuttle, did I?’ retorted the barmaid. ‘Easy to see you don’t know nothing about it!’
‘Ay, and mebbe you don’t know quite as much