Lonely Road

  She sighed. “I know he wouldn’t be doing anything wrong, not really.” And then she said: “Will we be going up to London, then?”

  “I think so,” I replied. “I think we’d better go to-morrow.”

  There was a little pause. “Just you and me?” she asked. “Staying together in a hotel, or something of that?”

  I met her eye, and laughed shortly. “That’s right,” I said. “In two separate rooms. Two hotels, if you like.”

  To my astonishment, she blushed at what I said. I stood and watched the slow colour creep from her face down her neck towards her shoulders, and she looked down and made a little pattern in the dust upon the terrace parapet. “I wouldn’t want that,” she said quietly. “Two rooms is good enough.”

  I sheered off what seemed to be an unexpectedly difficult subject for her, and we went walking down the garden in the evening light. She had come to know each flower in my garden intimately, as from the bud; I think my garden was the greatest pleasure that she had during the time she stayed with me. We strolled round in the dusk and picked a few roses for her room, till she was tired and ready for her bed. “I do get sleepy ever so quick here,” she said. She stood and looked around the hills and sea, dim and already cradled in the night. “It’s quiet here, and nice.…”

  I went with her to the open windows of the library, and paused upon the threshold as she went inside. “Good-night, Mollie,” I said quietly.

  She paused inside the window, half a yard from me. “Goodnight, Malcolm dear,” she said. “It’s been ever such a lovely day. I think it’s been the loveliest I’ve ever had.” And so she passed into the shadows of the room, and I was left alone to smoke a cigarette before I, too, went up to bed. I slept quite well, those days.

  We went to town next day by train from Exeter. I knew very little of hotels in London; it must have been some fifteen years since I stayed in one. I have my club, and that is all that I have ever needed there. I took her to one of those enormous, modernistic palaces, all glass and stainless steel, that are springing up all over the West End; we had a couple of adjoining rooms there on the third floor, and paid a pretty penny for them. I hated the place right from the very first, but everything was new to her.

  “It’s awfully nice,” she breathed. “It’s like the Regal Palace in Manchester, only much grander.”

  We got there in the middle of the afternoon. She told me that Edna did not leave work till six o’clock; if we called at the sweet-shop at about half-past six we stood a good chance of finding her. We had our tea uncomfortably in the painted lounge, while the band played somewhere out of sight and one or two couples danced languidly in the hot air on an enormous floor. I sipped the unpleasant beverage they served as tea, and wished very much that I was in my club.

  And presently we went to Hammersmith. We got there on top of a bus from Piccadilly; at Hammersmith Broadway we got off, and Sixpence took me walking for some way down the hot pavements till she stopped in front of a little sweet-shop and tobacconist.

  “This is it,” she said, and we went in.

  There was no one in the shop. It was small, and not very well stocked, with a tobacco counter on one side and a sweet counter on the other. In the back wall there was a door with a glass window in the upper half of it; through the lace curtain one could see a sitting-room, and people at the table. One of them got up and opened the door, and a fat untidy woman came out into the shop and looked at us inquiringly.

  “Good-evening, Mrs. Tinsey,” said Mollie. “I came to see if Edna was here.”

  The fat woman peered at her for a moment, and then raised her hands. “Well,” she said, “if it isn’t Mary Gordon!” She raised her voice. “Edna,” she cried. “Edna … here’s Mary Gordon come.”

  From the back room there came a girl with fair, wavy hair, bobbed, dressed in a white blouse and a dark skirt; a girl with rather a determined look about her—Billy’s girl. “Oh, my dear!” she said to Mollie, and ran at her and kissed her. “After all this time! Just fancy!”

  Mollie disengaged herself and turned to me. “Edna,” she said. “This is my friend.” I murmured something that I thought was suitable, and Edna said: “Pleased, I’m sure.”

  We went through with them into the back room. It was chock-full of rather old and inexpensive furniture, and the table was laid for a meal. In the grate I saw the teapot stewing down before the fire; the kipper bones and cherry cake were still upon the table. We put aside their hospitality with some difficulty by assuring them that we had had our tea; I remember in particular that Mother was urgent to “run out and get another kipper—it wouldn’t take but a moment”. We compounded with them in the end by drinking cups of the stewed tea with cigarettes—“stock, my dear”—and I sat and made conversation with Mother about the state of trade, particularly the sweet-shop trade, while the girls talked. I gathered from the things I overheard that they had been together in a Palais somewhere in the south. I think that probably Edna had been an amateur and a habitué of some Palais where my girl had worked.

  The door-bell rang, and Mother rose and went out into the shop to serve a customer. As soon as she was gone, Mollie got straight to the business we had come upon. “Say, Edna,” she inquired. “Have you heard anything from Billy in the last few weeks?” She paused. “I mean, that you’d be able to tell me his address?”

  Edna nodded. “I got a letter from him somewhere.” She rose, and went hunting in a littered sort of escritoire in a corner of the room. Finally she produced a little sheaf of letters from a drawer and opened one. I saw Mollie looking at her keenly—so she kept his letters, anyway.

  “Gloucester,” she said. “That’s the last. Maybe it’d be three weeks back.” She looked at the others. “The one before that was there, and the one before that. The one before that was Birmingham, but that was Christmas, that one.”

  She glanced at Sixpence. “I’d say he was still at Gloucester with the lorry, because he said he was working from there, like.” She turned over the letter—“16 Smallpiece Lane was where he wrote from.”

  I made a note of the address. “You didn’t see him lately?” asked Mollie.

  The other girl considered for a moment. “He come here one evening last month, maybe six weeks back. It was the night after the fire at Pinsons, because I remember.”

  Mollie persisted. “You haven’t seen him since, not to speak to?”

  The other shook her head. “It ain’t no good him coming here,” she said quietly. “I told him that.”

  There was a silence after that. In the shop the bell was ringing intermittently; a string of customers was passing in and out. “It didn’t ought to be like that,” said Mollie slowly. She glanced up at the other girl. “Wouldn’t it be any good—not ever? I mean, there never was any other person for Billy, not like some.”

  I moved a little way away, so far as one could do so in that narrow room, and peered out through the curtain of the door that led in to the shop. Behind me I heard Edna say: “It ain’t no good. Seems like he’s not the man for me, Mollie. It isn’t that I want a Valentino, or anything of that. Billy’s all right. But it’d have to be just right for me to marry anyone, and it wouldn’t be just right with Billy—see? I’d rather go on working at Slimlines. Maybe you think I’m silly over it.”

  Mollie said: “Oh … I don’t know.”

  Edna pursued her point. “You wouldn’t ever take a chap unless it was just right, yourself.”

  No reply came to that one, I remember; instead, there came a little awkward pause. I turned back to the room. “It looks as if we’ll have to go on down to Gloucester,” I said easily. “We can go down there to-morrow and hunt him up.”

  “That’s right,” said Edna, “16 Smallpiece Lane. That was where he wrote from last time. I reckon he’s still there, maybe.”

  There was nothing left for us to stay for, then. We made our farewells and got out into the street after some time. When we were out of sight I hailed a taxi, and we went driving round
the Park till dinner-time, talking of Billy and the people that we saw in the street. I must say Mollie seemed to be more interested in the latter. This was a holiday to her, and she was out to get the last ounce out of it.

  We dined that night in the hotel, and danced a little afterwards to a good band. Then we went to bed, both tired with the day.

  Next morning we went down to Gloucester. We lunched there, in the best hotel that I could find, and after lunch went on to look for Smallpiece Lane. It proved to be a shabby little row of urban houses on the outskirts of the town, that ran out and ended in a field, a pasture with worn earth patches where the children of the neighbourhood had played. We found the house and knocked; the door was opened by a thin, gaunt woman in an apron.

  “Is Mr. Gordon in?” I asked.

  “In the garidge,” she replied. “You’ll find him in the garidge.”

  “Where is that?” I asked.

  It was about two streets away; we went on there at once. It proved to be a sort of yard behind a pair of open double gates, a place with an oily, earthen floor and a tumble-down shed at one end of it. The doors of this shed were open, and I saw the stern end of a lorry sticking out, and an old Morris car.

  We passed in at the gates, and crossed the yard towards the shed. There was a man working on the engine of the lorry; at the sound of our footsteps he straightened up and looked at us.

  “Billy,” cried Molly. “Bill-ee.…”

  He was a stocky, pleasant-looking chap, not very tall. A shock of reddish hair hung over his blue eyes; he was very dirty from his work. He wore a soiled blue suit, torn at the back and greasy on the knees with oil and mud. He came towards us, smiling and wiping his hands upon a bit of rag.

  “Ullo!” he said. “And what brought you down here, girl? This isn’t half a surprise!”

  I glanced at Sixpence, and she was glowing with pleasure. This brother meant a lot to her. “Oh, Billy, this is nice,” she said.

  “Well, well, well, well, well,” he replied succinctly. “Not half, it isn’t. But what brings you to Gloucester?”

  She said: “We wanted to find you, Billy.” And then she added: “Oh, Billy, this is my friend, Commander Stevenson.”

  I put out a hand; he rubbed his own with his rag, and shook it genially. “Pleased to meet you, sir,” he said. “Any friend of Mollie’s.…”

  The words died down upon his lips; I saw the laughter go out of his eyes as he stood looking into my face. He let go my hand and stood there staring at me, open-mouthed; I stood and watched the colour drain out of his face, and watched the apprehension creep into his eyes. In fifteen seconds he had changed into a different man. “Strewth … ” he said quietly, so quietly that I hardly heard what he had said.

  Mollie said: “Billy … whatever is the matter?”

  He pulled himself together. “Matter?” he said sharply. “Nothing’s the matter. What d’you think?”

  She stared at him. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost. Honest, you do.”

  He forced a smile. “I did get a bit of a turn. Your friend, he’s just the image of a man I met one time.” He laughed uneasily. “Funny, them turns one gets.…”

  I had been thinking quickly, studying the weather-beaten face, the shock of red, untidy hair, the friendly blue eyes. I had never seen this man before, but that might not be necessary. I smiled, and stood staring straight at him. “Maybe you’ve seen me somewhere before,” I said amicably. “Down Dartmouth way, perhaps.” I was watching closely, and I saw him blink. “I drive a Bentley Six saloon.”

  The colour had all gone from his face. “No,” he said at last. “I never seen you before.” A child could have told that he was lying. He turned suddenly on Mollie. “Here, girl,” he cried; “who is this bloke, and where does he come from? What is he to you, eh?”

  She pressed my arm. “Billy,” she said, a little hurt, “you didn’t ought to speak like that. This is my friend.”

  I stood there smiling at him grimly, still staring him in the face. “I was able to help your sister when she got into a bit of trouble,” I explained, “with the police. They found a burning motor-lorry, and they thought she might know who the driver was.”

  There was a long, awkward silence after I said that. In the distance I heard the children playing in the street outside, and the long clanking of an engine shunting in some siding near at hand. He stood there like a naughty schoolboy, looking down and scraping the earth with the toe of his boot. “You’re to do with the police?” he inquired.

  I shook my head. “Not me.”

  “Billy,” said Mollie, “he isn’t with the police. He was ever so good when I was in the station, and stopped them, and got a lawyer all the way from London, and everything. Honest, he did.”

  I wondered if that sentence was comprehensible to him. I doubt it, for he raised his head sullenly, with an ugly flush. “Then if he’s not from the police, what the hell does he want here? I do my business, and don’t worry nobody.”

  “What is your business, anyway?” I asked.

  “Lorrying,” he said defiantly. “Now you clear out o’ this. I’ve had enough of you. I’ve got my work to do.”

  Sixpence said: “But, Billy.… You can’t just push us out like that.”

  “Cheese it, girl,” he retorted, not unkindly. “You buzz off now, and I’ll write to you.”

  I moved to the Morris Cowley and sat down upon the running-board, my elbows resting on my knees. “The police have got your lorry,” I remarked, “—the one that was burnt out. They know the number plates were false. They found the three carpet-sweepers that you left behind, two burnt up in the lorry, and one behind the hedge. They’re looking for you all over the country. They’ll have got your description by this time.” I paused reflectively. “It was a good game, but it’s finished now.”

  There was another long, uneasy silence. He stood there shuffling a little with his feet, and shooting furtive glances at me as I sat there on the running-board. “I don’t see who you are,” he said at last.

  I tried a long shot. “I’m the fellow who was in the car,” I said.

  “Oh, chuck fooling,” he said irritably. “I know that.” He was silent for a minute, and then he said: “What I want to know is—what’s the game?”

  Mollie was standing silent a little way away from us, and leaving the whole thing to me. I sat there for a minute staring out across the littered, oily yard, watching the smoke from a bonfire in a rubbish-pit curling lazily up into a light blue, summer sky. My long shot had gone home all right. “There’s no game,” I replied. “No game at all.”

  I glanced up at him, standing over me. “When you left that lorry burning on the road, the police were after you like a knife. They couldn’t find you, but they got to know that Miss Gordon was your sister, and they took her down to Dartmouth to question her about you. I came in then, and got a lawyer to look after her.”

  “That’s right, Billy,” put in Sixpence eagerly. “And all the way from London, too. It was ever so good of the Commander.”

  I smiled a little, wondering idly where she had picked that up. Only the servants call me the Commander and the men down at the yard. She must have picked it up from Rogers or one of the maids.… Then I came back to earth.

  I met his eyes. “I’m here to tell you that the police are looking for you now,” I said. “You haven’t got a chance. You can’t even get out of the country, now. If you stay here they’ll get you in a day or two. And if you run, they’ll get you in a week.”

  He burst out: “But I ain’t done nothing!” He stared at me. “Nothing, save lorrying for them, and leaving me lorry on the road. Them things aren’t crimes—they can’t do nothing to you for that. What do they want with me?”

  I motioned him to the step of the lorry opposite me. “Sit down,” I said. “There’s no sense standing up all day.” And Mollie came and sat beside me on the Cowley running-board, and I said:

  “They want you because they want the other lot. They can
’t find out anything about them—yet—but they’ll get you all right.”

  He repeated sullenly: “I ain’t done nothing wrong.…”

  Sixpence stirred irritably beside me. “Don’t act so soft,” she said. “The Commander’s all for us, not for the police or anyone. Why don’t you tell him what’s been going on?”

  He looked a little foolish, laughed, and pushed back his cap to scratch his head with an oily hand. “Reckon he knows most of it,” he said, embarrassed.

  “I’d like to hear what happened when we met before,” I remarked.

  And cutting short his tale, it came to this. He had picked up two foreigners near Newton Abbot by an assignation, and had driven on down to Dartmouth with them in the empty lorry. They arrived on the shore road at about one o’clock in the morning and stopped a few hundred yards up the road from the corner where my car was subsequently found, towards the town. From there his companions made their signal to the sea and got the reply. His two companions then went down to the shore, and Gordon stayed by his lorry. He had no part in handling the cargo.

  About half an hour later the two foreigners came back, carrying the first case; behind them came two men from the ship, carrying another one. One of these men was a young Englishman that he had seen before on these occasions; he thought that he had to do with the vessel that they used.

  It was at that point that the car appeared.

  They saw the headlights on the road two or three miles away; it was clear to them that the car was being driven very fast. As a precautionary measure they covered up the cases in the lorry, two of them got inside, and Gordon lifted the bonnet as if with engine trouble. But the car stopped short of them. They heard it come along at a great pace, and in the still night they heard the squeal of brakes as it drew up a quarter of a mile away. Then the headlights stopped motionless upon the road, and they stood staring at each other in consternation.

  Presently two of the men detached themselves, got over into the fields, and made a wide circuit in the darkness towards the strange car to investigate. Gordon stood waiting by his lorry; after a time the Englishman slipped off and went direct down to the beach.