“I don’t have to like it,” Mr. Sutton-Cornish said bitterly.
The cabman stared down at him a little longer. “Yus,” he said. “Soho. Wardour Street like. Right you are, guv’nor.”
The trap slammed shut, the whip flicked delicately beside the horse’s right ear, and motion came to the hansom cab.
Mr. Sutton-Cornish sat perfectly still, his scarf tight around his thin neck and his stick between his knees and his gloved hands clasped on the crook of the stick. He stared mutely out into the mist, like an admiral on the bridge. The horse clop-clopped out of Grinling Crescent, through Belgrave Square, over to Whitehall, up to Trafalgar Square, across that to St. Martin’s Lane.
It went neither fast nor slow, and yet it went as fast as anything else went. It moved without sound, except for the clop-clop, across a world that stank of gasoline fumes and charred oil, that shrilled with whistles and hooted with horns.
And nobody seemed to notice it and nothing seemed to get in its way. That was rather amazing, Mr. Sutton-Cornish thought. But after all a hansom cab had nothing to do with that world. It was a ghost, an underlayer of time, the first writing on a palimpsest, brought out by ultra-violet light in a darkened room.
“Y’know,” he said, speaking to the horse’s rump, because there wasn’t anything else there to speak to, “things might happen to a man, if a man would just let them happen.”
The long whip flicked by Prince’s ear as lightly as a trout fly flicking at a small dark pool under a rock.
“They already have,” he added glumly.
The cab slowed along a curb, and the trap snapped open again.
“Well, ‘ere we are, guv’nor. ‘Ow about one of them little French dinners for eighteen pence? You know, guv’nor. Six courses of nothink at all. You ‘ave one on me and then I ‘ave one on you and we’re still ‘ungry. ‘Ow about it?”
A very chill hand clutched at Mr. Sutton-Cornish’s heart. Six-course dinners for eighteen pence? A hansom cab driver who said: “Wot war, guv’nor?” Twenty years ago, perhaps—
“Let me out here!” he said shrilly.
He threw the doors open, thrust money up at the face in the trap, hopped over the wheel to the pavement.
He didn’t quite run, but he walked pretty fast and close to a dark wall and a little slinkingly. But nothing followed him, not even the clop-clop of the horse’s hoofs. He swung around a corner into a narrow crowded street.
The light came from the open door of a shop. “Curios and Antiques” it said on the facade, in letters once gold, heavily Gothic in style. There was a flare on the pavement to attract attention and by this light he read the sign. The voice came from inside, from a little, plump man standing on a box who chanted over the heads of a listless crowd of silent, bored, foreign-looking men. The chanting voice held a note of exhaustion and futility.
“Now what am I bid, gents? Now what am I bid on this magnificent example of Oriental art? One pound starts the ball rolling, gents. One pound note coin of the realm. Now ‘oo says a pound, gents? ‘Oo says a pound?”
Nobody said anything. The little plump man on the box shook his head, wiped his face with a dirty handkerchief and drew a long breath. Then he saw Mr. Sutton-Cornish standing on the fringe of the little crowd.
“’Ow about you, sir?” he pounced. “You look as if you’d a country ‘ouse. Now that door’s made for a country ‘ouse. ‘Ow about you, sir? Just give me a start like.”
Mr. Sutton-Cornish blinked at him. “Eh? What’s that?” he snapped.
The listless men smiled faintly and spoke among themselves without moving their thick lips.
“No offense, sir,” the auctioneer chirped. “If you did ‘ave a country ‘ouse, that there door might be just what you could use.”
Mr. Sutton-Cornish turned his head slowly, following the auctioneer’s pointing hand, and looked for the first time at the bronze door.
3
It stood all by itself over against the left-hand wall of the nearly stripped shop. It stood about two feet out from the side wall, on its own base. It was a double door, apparently of cast bronze, although from its size that seemed impossible. It was heavily scrolled over with a welter of Arabic script in relief, an endless story that here found no listener, a procession of curves and dots that might have expressed anything from an anthology of the Koran to the by-laws of a well-organized harem.
The two leaves of the door were only part of the thing. It had a wide, heavy base below and a superstructure topped by a Moorish arch. From the meeting edge of the two leaves a huge key stuck out of a huge keyhole, the sort of key a medieval jailer used to wear in enormous clanking bunches on a leather belt around his waist. A key from “The Yeomen of the Guard”—a comic-opera key.
“Oh…that,” Mr. Sutton-Cornish said in the stillness. “Well, really, you know. I’m afraid not that, you know”
The auctioneer sighed. No hope had ever been smaller, probably, but at least it was worth a sigh. Then he picked up something which might have been carved ivory, but wasn’t, stared at it pessimistically, and burst out again:
“Now ‘ere, gents, I ‘old in my ‘and one of the finest examples—”
Mr. Sutton-Cornish smiled faintly and skimmed along the cluster of men until he came close to the bronze door.
He stood in front of it leaning on his stick, which was a section of polished rhinoceros hide over a steel core, dull mahogany in color, and a stick even a heavy man could have leaned on. After a while he reached forward idly and twisted the great key. It turned stubbornly, but it turned. A ring beside it was the doorknob. He twisted that, too, and tugged one half of the door open.
He straightened, and with a pleasantly idle gesture thrust his stick forward through the opening. And then, for the second time that evening, something incredible happened to him.
He wheeled sharply. Nobody was paying any attention. The auction was dead on its feet. The silent men were drifting out into the night. In a pause, hammering sounded at the back of the shop. The plump little auctioneer looked more and more as if he were eating a bad egg.
Mr. Sutton-Cornish looked down at his, gloved right hand. There was no stick in it. There was nothing in it. He stepped to one side and looked behind the door. There was no stick there, on the dusty floor.
He had felt nothing. Nothing had jerked at him. The stick had merely passed part way through the door and then—it had merely ceased to exist.
He leaned down and picked up a piece of torn paper, wadded it swiftly into a-ball, glanced behind him again and tossed the ball through the open part of the door.
Then he let out a slow sigh in which some neolithic rapture struggled with his civilized amazement. The ball of paper didn’t fall to the floor behind the door. It fell, in midair, clean out of the visible world.
Mr. Sutton-Cornish reached his empty right hand forward and very slowly and carefully pushed the door shut. Then he just stood there, and licked his lips.
After a while: “Harem door,” he said very softly. “Exit door of a harem. Now, that’s an idea.”
A very charming idea, too. The silken lady, her night of pleasure with the sultan over, would be conducted politely to that door and would casually step through it. Then nothing. No sobbing in the night, no broken hearts, no blackamoor with cruel eyes and a large scimitar, no knotted silk cord, no blood, no dull splash in the midnight Bosphorus. Merely nothing. A cool, clean, perfectly timed, and perfectly irrevocable absence of existence. Someone would close the door and lock it and take the key out, and for the time being that would be that.
Mr. Sutton-Cornish didn’t notice the emptying of the shop. Faintly he heard its street door close, but without giving it any meaning. The hammering at the back stopped for a moment, voices spoke. Then steps came near. They were weary steps in the silence, the steps of a man who had had enough of that day, and of many such days. A voice spoke at Mr. Sutton-Cornish’s elbow, an end-of-the-day voice.
“A very fine piece of work, sir. A
bit out of my line—to be frank with you.”
Mr. Sutton-Cornish didn’t look at him, not yet. “Quite a bit out of anybody’s line,” he said gravely.
“I see it interests you, sir, after all.”
Mr. Sutton-Cornish turned his head slowly. Down on the floor, off his box, the auctioneer was a mere wisp of a man. A shabby, unpressed red-eyed little man who had found life no picnic.
“Yes, but what would one do with it?” Mr. Sutton-Cornish asked throatily.
“Well—it’s a door like any other, sir. Bit ‘eavy. Bit queerlike. But still a door like any other.”
“I wonder,” Mr. Sutton-Cornish said, still throatily.
The auctioneer gave him a swift appraising glance, shrugged and gave it up. He sat down on an empty box, lit a cigarette and relaxed sloppily into private life.
“What are you asking for it?” Mr. Sutton-Cornish inquired, quite suddenly. “What are you asking for it, Mr.—”
“Skimp, sir. Josiah Skimp. Well, a twenty-pound note, sir? Bronze alone ought to be worth that for art work.” The little man’s eyes were glittering again.
Mr. Sutton-Cornish nodded absently. “I don’t know much about that,” he said.
“’Ell of a lot of it, sir.” Mr. Skimp hopped off his box, patted over and heaved the leaf of the door open, grunting. “Beats me ‘ow it ever got ‘ere. For seven footers. No door for shrimps like me. Look, sir.”
Mr. Sutton-Cornish had a rather ghastly presentiment, of course. But he didn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t. His tongue stuck in his throat and his legs were like ice. The comical contrast between the massiveness of the door and his own wisp of a body seemed to amuse Mr. Skimp. His little, round face threw back the shadow of a grin. Then he lifted his foot and hopped.
Mr. Sutton-Cornish watched him—as long as there was anything to watch. In fact he watched much longer. The hammering at the back of the shop seemed to get quite thunderous in the silence.
Once more, after a long time, Mr. Sutton-Cornish bent forward and closed the door. This time he twisted the key and dragged it out and put it in his overcoat pocket.
“Got to do something,” he mumbled. “Got to do—Can’t let this sort of thing—” His voice trailed off and then he jerked violently, as though a sharp pain had shot through him. Then he laughed out loud, off key. Not a natural laugh. Not a very nice laugh.
“That was beastly,” he said under his breath. “But amazingly funny.”
He was still standing there rooted when a pale young man with a hammer appeared at his elbow.
“Mr. Skimp step out, sir—or did you notice? We’re supposed to be closed up, sir.”
Mr. Sutton-Cornish didn’t look up at the pale young man with the hammer. Moving a clammy tongue he said:
“Yes…Mr. Skimp…stepped out.”
The young man started to turn away. Mr. Sutton-Cornish made a gesture. “I’ve bought this door—from Mr. Skimp,” he said. “Twenty pounds. Will you take the money—and my card?”
The pale young man beamed, delighted at personal contact with a sale. Mr. Sutton-Cornish drew out a note case, extracted four five-pound notes from it, also a formal calling card. He wrote on the card with a small, gold pencil. His hand seemed surprisingly steady.
“No. 14 Grinling Crescent,” he said. “Have it sent tomorrow without fail. It’s…it’s very heavy. I shall pay the drayage, of course. Mr. Skimp will—” His voice trailed off again. Mr. Skimp wouldn’t.
“Oh, that’s all right, sir. Mr. Skimp is my uncle.”
“Ah, that’s too—I mean, well, take this ten-shilling note for yourself, won’t you?”
Mr. Sutton-Cornish left the shop rather rapidly, his right hand clutching the big key down in his pocket.
An ordinary taxi took him home to dinner. He dined alone—after three whiskeys. But he wasn’t as much alone as he looked. He never would be any more.
4
It came the next day, swathed in sacking and bound about with cords, looking like nothing on earth and conducting itself with rather less agility than a concert grand.
Four large men in leather aprons perspired it up the four front steps and into the hall, with a good deal of sharp language back and forth. They had a light hoist to help them get it off their dray, but the steps almost beat them. Once inside the hall they got it on two dollies and after that it was just an average heavy, grunting job. They set it up at the back of Mr. Sutton-Cornish’s study, across a sort of alcove he had an idea about.
He tipped them liberally, they went away, and Collins, the butler, left the front door open for a while to air the place through.
Carpenters came. The sacking was stripped off, and a framework was built around the door, so that it became part of a partition wall across the alcove. A small door was set in the partition. When the work was done and the mess cleared up Mr. Sutton-Cornish asked for an oil-can, and locked himself into his study. Then and only then he got out the big bronze key and fitted it again into the huge lock and opened the bronze door wide, both sides of it.
He oiled the hinges from the rear, just in case. Then he shut it again and oiled the lock, removed the key and went for a good long walk, in Kensington Gardens, and back. Collins and the first parlormaid had a look at it while he was out. Cook hadn’t been upstairs yet.
“Beats me what the old fool’s after,” the butler said stonily. “I give him another week, Bruggs. If she’s not back by then, I give him my notice. How about you, Bruggs?”
“Let him have his fun,” Bruggs said, tossing her head. “That old sow he’s married to—”
“Bruggs!”
“Tit-tat to you, Mr. Collins,” Bruggs said and flounced out of the room.
Mr. Collins remained long enough to sample the whiskey in the big square decanter on Mr. Sutton-Cornish’s smoking table.
In a shallow, tall cabinet in the alcove behind the bronze door, Mr. Sutton-Cornish arranged a few odds and ends of old china and bric-a-brac and carved ivory and some idols in shiny black wood, very old and unnecessary. It wasn’t much of an excuse for so massive a door. He added three statuettes in pink marble. The alcove still had an air of not being quite on to itself. Naturally the bronze door was never open unless the room door was locked.
In the morning Bruggs, or Mary the housemaid, dusted in the alcove, having entered, of course, by the partition door. That amused Mr. Sutton-Cornish slightly, but the amusement began to wear thin. It was about three weeks after his wife and Teddy left that something happened to brighten him up.
A large, tawny man with a waxed mustache and steady gray eyes called on him and presented a card that indicated he was Detective-sergeant Thomas Lloyd of Scotland Yard. He said that one Josiah Skimp, an auctioneer, living in Kennington, was missing from his home to the great concern of his family, and that his nephew, one George William Hawkins, also of Kennington, had happened to mention that Mr. Sutton-Cornish was present in a shop in Soho on the very night when Mr. Skimp vanished. In fact, Mr. Sutton-Cornish might even have been the last person known to have spoken to Mr. Skimp.
Mr. Sutton-Cornish laid out the whiskey and cigars, placed his fingertips together and nodded gravely.
“I recall him perfectly, sergeant. In fact I bought that funny door over there from him. Quaint, isn’t it?”
The detective glanced at the bronze door, a brief and empty glance.
“Out of my line, sir, I’m afraid. I do recall now something was said about the door. They had quite a job moving it. Very smooth whiskey, sir. Very smooth indeed.”
“Help yourself, sergeant. So Mr. Skimp has run off and lost himself. Sorry I can’t help you. I really didn’t know him, you know”
The detective nodded his large tawny head. “I didn’t think you did, sir. The Yard only got the case a couple of days ago. Routine call, you know. Did he seem excited, for instance?”
“He seemed tired,” Mr. Sutton-Cornish mused. “Very fed up—with the whole business of auctioneering, perhaps. I only spoke to him
a moment. About that door, you know A nice little man—but tired.”
The detective didn’t bother to look at the door again. He finished his whiskey and allowed himself a little more.
“No family trouble,” he said. “Not much money, but who has these days? No scandal. Not a melancholy type, they say. Odd.”
“Some very queer types in Soho,” Mr. Sutton-Cornish said mildly.
The detective thought it over. “Harmless, though. A rough district once, but not in our time. Might I ask you what you was doing over there, sir?”
“Wandering,” Mr. Sutton-Cornish said. “Just wandering. A little more of this?”
“Well, now, really, sir, three whiskeys in a morning…well, just this once and many thanks to you, sir.”
Detective-sergeant Lloyd left—rather regretfully.
After he had been gone ten minutes or so, Mr. Sutton-Cornish got up and locked the study door. He walked softly down the long, narrow room and got the big bronze key out of his inside breast pocket, where he always carried it now.
The door opened noiselessly and easily now. It was well-balanced for its weight. He opened it wide, both sides of it.
“Mr. Skimp,” he said very gently into the emptiness, “you are wanted by the police, Mr. Skimp.”
The fun of that lasted him well on to lunch time.
5
In the afternoon Mrs. Sutton-Cornish came back. She appeared quite suddenly before him in the study, sniffed harshly at the smell of tobacco and Scotch, refused a chair, and stood very solid and lowering just inside the closed door. Teddy stood beside her for a moment, then hurled himself at the edge of the rug.
“Stop that, you little beast. Stop that at once, darling,” Mrs. Sutton-Cornish said. She picked Teddy up and stroked him. He lay in her arms and licked her nose and sneered at Mr. Sutton-Cornish.
“I find,” Mrs. Sutton-Cornish said, in a voice that had the brittleness of dry suet, “after numerous very boring interviews with my solicitor, that I can do nothing without your help. Naturally I dislike asking for that.”