A Gun for Sale

  'You sound as if you weren't scared at all.'

  'I knew I'd be found all right. I was in a hurry. We haven't got much time. I thought about the war all the time.'

  He said again admiringly, 'You've got nerve.'

  She began to move her hands and feet up and down quite methodically as if she were following a programme she had drawn up for herself. 'I thought a lot about that war. I read somewhere, but I'd forgotten, about how babies can't wear gas masks because there's not enough air for them.' She knelt up with her hand on his shoulder. 'There wasn't much air there. It made things sort of vivid. I thought, we've got to stop it. It seems silly, doesn't it, us two, but there's nobody else.' She said, 'My feet have got pins and needles bad. That means they are coming alive again.' She tried to stand up, but it wasn't any good.

  Raven watched her. He said, 'What else did you think?'

  She said, 'I thought about you. I wished I hadn't had to go away like that and leave you.'

  'I thought you'd gone to the police.'

  'I wouldn't do that.' She managed to stand up this time with her hand on his shoulder. 'I'm on your side.'

  Raven said, 'We've got to get out of here. Can you walk?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then leave go of me. There's someone outside.' He stood by the door with his gun in his hand listening. They'd had plenty of time, those two, to think up a plan, longer than he. He pulled the door open. It was very nearly dark. He could see no one on the landing. He thought: the old devil's at the side waiting to get a hit at me with the poker. I'll take a run for it, and immediately tripped across the string they had tied across the doorway. He was on his knees with the gun on the floor; he couldn't get up in time and Acky's blow got him on the left shoulder. It staggered him, he couldn't move, he had just time to think: it'll be the head next time, I've gone soft, I ought to have thought of a string, when he heard Anne speak: 'Drop the poker.' He got painfully to his feet; the girl had snatched the gun as it fell and had Acky covered. He said with astonishment, 'You're fine.' At the bottom of the stairs the old woman cried out, 'Acky, where are you?'

  'Give me the gun,' Raven said. 'Get down the stairs, you needn't be afraid of the old bitch.' He backed after her, keeping Acky covered, but the old couple had shot their bolt. He said regretfully, 'If he'd only rush I'd put a bullet in him.'

  'It wouldn't upset me,' Anne said. 'I'd have done it myself.'

  He said again, 'You're fine.' He nearly forgot the detectives he had seen in the street, but with his hand on the door he remembered. He said, 'I may have to make a bolt for it if the police are outside.' He hardly hesitated before he trusted her. 'I've found a hide-out for the night. In the goods yard. A shed they don't use any longer. I'll be waiting by the wall tonight fifty yards down from the station.' He opened the door. Nobody moved in the street; they walked out together and down the middle of the road into a vacant dusk. Anne said, 'Did you see a man in the doorway opposite?'

  'Yes,' Raven said. 'I saw him.'

  'I thought it was like—but how could it—?'

  'There was another at the end of the street. They were police all right, but they didn't know who I was. They'd have tried to get me if they'd known.'

  'And you'd have shot?'

  'I'd have shot all right. But they didn't know it was me.' He laughed with the night damp in his throat. 'I've fooled them properly.' The lights went on in the city beyond the railway bridge, but where they were it was just a grey dusk and the sound of an engine shunting in the yard.

  'I can't walk far,' Anne said. 'I'm sorry. I suppose I'm a bit sick after all.'

  'It's not far now,' Raven said. 'There's a loose plank. I got it all fixed up for myself early this morning. Why, there's even sacks, lots of sacks. It's going to be like home,' he said. 'Like home?' He didn't answer, feeling along the tarred wall of the goods yard, remembering the kitchen in the basement and the first thing very nearly he could remember, his mother bleeding across the table. She hadn't even troubled to lock the door: that was all she cared about him. He'd done some ugly things in his time, he told himself, but he'd never been able to equal that ugliness. Some day he would. It would be like beginning life over again: to have something else to look back to when somebody spoke of death or blood or wounds or home.

  'A bit bare for a home,' Anne said. 'You needn't be scared of me,' Raven said. 'I won't keep you. You can sit down a bit and tell me what he did to you, what Cholmondeley did, and then you can be getting along anywhere you want.'

  'I couldn't go any farther if you paid me.' He had to put his hands under her shoulders and hold her up against the tarred wood, while he put more will into her from his own inexhaustible reserve. He said, 'Hold on. We're nearly there.' He shivered in the cold, holding her with all his strength, trying in the dusk to see her face. He said, 'You can rest in the shed. There are plenty of sacks there.' He was like somebody describing with pride some place he lived in, that he'd bought with his own money or built with his own labour stone by stone.

  2

  Mather stood back in the shadow of the doorway. It was worse in a way than anything he'd feared. He put his hand on his revolver. He had only to go forward and arrest Raven—or stop a bullet in the attempt. He was a policeman; he couldn't shoot first. At the end of the street Saunders was waiting for him to move. Behind, a uniformed constable waited on them both. But he made no move. He let them go off down the road in the belief that they were alone. Then he followed as far as the corner and picked up Saunders. Saunders said, 'The d-d-devil.'

  'Oh no,' Mather said, 'it's only Raven—and Anne.' He struck a match and held it to the cigarette which he had been holding between his lips for the last twenty minutes. They could hardly see the man and woman going off down the dark road by the goods-yard, but beyond them another match was struck. 'We've got them covered,' Mather said. 'They won't be able to get out of our sight now.'

  'W-will you take them b-b-both?'

  'We can't have shooting with a woman there,' Mather said. 'Can't you see what they'd make of it in the papers if a woman got hurt? It's not as if he was wanted for murder.'

  'We've got to be careful of your girl,' Saunders brought out in a breath.

  'Get moving again,' Mather said. 'We don't want to lose touch. I'm not thinking about her any more. I promise you that's over. She's led me up the garden properly. I'm just thinking of what's best with Raven—and any accomplice he's got in Nottwich. If we've got to shoot, we'll shoot.'

  Saunders said, 'They've stopped.' He had sharper eyes than Mather. Mather said, 'Could you pick him off from here, if I rushed him?'

  'No,' Saunders said. He began to move forward quickly. 'He's loosened a plank. They are getting through.'

  'Don't worry,' Mather said. I'll follow. Bring up three more men and post one of them at the gap where I can find him. We've got all the gates into the yard picketed already. Bring the rest inside. But keep it quiet.' He could hear the slight shuffle of cinders where the two were walking; it wasn't so easy to follow them because of the sound his own feet made. They disappeared round a stationary truck and the light failed more and more. He caught a glimpse of their moving shadows and then an engine hooted and belched a grey plume of steam round him; for a moment it was like walking in a mountain fog. A warm dirty spray settled on his face; when he was clear he had lost them. He began to realize the difficulty of finding anyone in the yard at night. There were trucks everywhere; they could slip into one and lie down. He barked his shin and swore softly; then quite distinctly he heard Anne whisper, 'I can't make it.' There were only a few trucks between them; then the movements began again, heavier movements as if someone were carrying a weight. Mather climbed on to the truck and stared across a dark desolate waste of cinders and points, a tangle of lines and sheds and piles of coal and coke. It was like a No Man's Land full of torn iron across which one soldier picked his way with a wounded companion in his arms. Mather watched them with an odd sense of shame, as if he were a spy. The thin limping shadow became a
human being who knew the girl he loved. There was a kind of relationship between them. He thought: how many years will he get for that robbery? He no longer wanted to shoot. He thought: poor devil, he must be pretty driven by now, he's probably looking for a place to sit down in, and there the place was, a small wooden workman's shed between the lines. Mather struck a match again and presently Saunders was below him waiting for orders. 'They are in that shed,' Mather said. 'Get the men posted. If they try to get out, nab them quick. Otherwise wait for daylight. We don't want any accidents.'

  'You aren't s-staying?'

  'You'll be easier without me,' Mather said. 'I'll be at the station tonight.' He said gently: 'Don't think about me. Just go ahead. And look after yourself. Got your gun?'

  'Of course.'

  'I'll send the men along to you. It's going to be a cold watch, I'm afraid, but it's no good trying to rush that shed. He might shoot his way clear out.'

  'It's t-t-t-tough on you,' Saunders said. The dark had quite come; it healed the desolation of the yard. Inside the shed there was no sign of life, no glimmer of light; soon Saunders couldn't have told that it existed, sitting there with his back to a truck out of the wind's way, hearing the breathing of the policeman nearest him and saying over to himself to pass the time (his mind's words free from any impediment) the line of a poem he had read at night-school about a dark tower: 'He must be wicked to deserve such pain.' It was a comforting line, he thought; those who followed his profession couldn't be taught a better; that's why he had remembered it.

  3

  'Who's coming to dinner, dear?' the Chief Constable asked, putting his head in at the bedroom door.

  'Never you mind,' Mrs Calkin said, 'you'll change.'

  The Chief Constable said: 'I was thinking, dear, as 'ow—'

  'As how,' Mrs Calkin said firmly.

  'The new maid. You might teach her that I'm Major Calkin.'

  Mrs Calkin said, 'You'd better hurry.'

  'It's not the Mayoress again, is it?' He trailed drearily out towards the bathroom, but on second thoughts nipped quietly downstairs to the dining-room. Must see about the drinks. But if it was the Mayoress there wouldn't be any. Piker never turned up; he didn't blame him. While there he might just as well take a nip; he took it neat for speed and cleaned the glass afterwards with a splash of soda and his handkerchief. He put the glass as an afterthought where the Mayoress would sit. Then he rang up the police station.

  'Any news?' he asked hopelessly. He knew there was no real hope that they'd ask him down for a consultation.

  The inspector's voice said, 'We know where he is. We've got him surrounded. We are just waiting till daylight.'

  'Can I be of any use? Like me to come down, eh, and talk things over?'

  'It's quite unnecessary, sir.'

  He put the receiver down miserably, sniffed the Mayoress's glass (she'd never notice that) and went upstairs. Major Calkin, he thought wistfully, Major Calkin. The trouble is I'm a man's man. Looking out of the window of his dressing-room at the spread lights of Nottwich he remembered for some reason the war, the tribunal, the fun it had all been giving hell to the conchies. His uniform still hung there, next the tails he wore once a year at the Rotarian dinner when he was able to get among the boys. A faint smell of moth-balls came out at him. His spirits suddenly lifted. He thought: my God, in a week's time we may be at it again. Show the devils what we are made of. I wonder if the uniform will fit. He couldn't resist trying on the jacket over his evening trousers. It was a bit tight, he couldn't deny that, but the general effect in the glass was not too bad, a bit pinched; it would have to be let out. With his influence in the county he'd be back in uniform in a fortnight. With any luck he'd be busier than ever in this war. 'Joseph,' his wife said, 'whatever are you doing?' He saw her in the mirror placed statuesquely in the doorway in her new black and sequined evening dress like a shop-window model of an outsize matron. She said, 'Take it off at once. You'll smell of moth-balls now all dinner-time. The Mayoress is taking off her things and any moment Sir Marcus—'

  'You might have told me,' the Chief Constable said. 'If I'd known Sir Marcus was coming... How did you snare the old boy?'

  'He invited himself,' Mrs Calkin said proudly. 'So I rang up the Mayoress.'

  'Isn't old Piker coming?'

  'He hasn't been home all day.'

  The Chief Constable slipped off his uniform jacket and put it away carefully. If the war had gone on another year they'd have made him a colonel: he had been getting on the very best terms with the regimental headquarters, supplying the mess with groceries at very little more than the cost price. In the next war he'd make the grade. The sound of Sir Marcus's car on the gravel brought him downstairs. The Lady Mayoress was looking under the sofa for her Pekinese, which had gone to ground defensively to escape strangers; she was on her knees with her head under the fringe saying, 'Chinky, Chinky,' ingratiatingly. Chinky growled out of sight. 'Well, well,' the Chief Constable said, trying to put a little warmth into his tones, 'and how's Alfred?'

  'Alfred?' the Mayoress said, coming out from under the sofa, 'it's not Alfred, it's Chinky. Oh,' she said, talking very fast, for it was her habit to work towards another person's meaning while she talked, 'you mean how is he? Alfred? He's gone again.'

  'Chinky?'

  'No, Alfred.' One never got much further with the Mayoress.

  Mrs Calkin came in. She said, 'Have you got him, dear?'

  'No, he's gone again,' the Chief Constable said, 'if you mean Alfred.'

  'He's under the sofa,' the Mayoress said. 'He won't come out.'

  Mrs Calkin said, 'I ought to have warned you, dear. I thought of course you would know the story of how Sir Marcus hates the very sight of dogs. Of course, if he stays there quietly...'

  'The poor dear,' Mrs Piker said, 'so sensitive, he could tell at once he wasn't wanted.'

  The Chief Constable suddenly could bear it no longer. He said, 'Alfred Piker's my best friend. I won't have you say he wasn't wanted,' but no one took any notice of him. The maid had announced Sir Marcus.

  Sir Marcus entered on the tips of his toes. He was a very old, sick man with a little wisp of white beard on his chin resembling chicken fluff. He gave the effect of having withered inside his clothes like a kernel in a nut. He spoke with the faintest foreign accent and it was difficult to determine whether he was Jewish or of an ancient English family. He gave the impression that very many cities had rubbed him smooth. If there was a touch of Jerusalem, there was also a touch of St James's, if of some Central European capital, there were also marks of the most exclusive clubs in Cannes.

  'So good of you, Mrs Calkin,' he said, 'to give me this opportunity...' It was difficult to hear what he said; he spoke in a whisper. His old scaley eyes took them all in. 'I have always been hoping to make the acquaintance...'

  'May I introduce the Lady Mayoress, Sir Marcus?' He bowed with the slightly servile grace of a man who might have been pawnbroker to the Pompadour. 'So famous a figure in the city of Nottwich.' There was no sarcasm or patronage in his manner. He was just old. Everyone was alike to him. He didn't trouble to differentiate.

  'I thought you were on the Riviera, Sir Marcus,' the Chief Constable said breezily. 'Have a sherry. It's no good asking the ladies.'

  'I don't drink, I'm afraid,' Sir Marcus whispered. The Chief Constable's face fell. 'I came back two days ago.'

  'Rumours of war, eh? Dogs delight to bark...'

  'Joseph,' Mrs Calkin said sharply, and glanced with meaning at the sofa.

  The old eyes cleared a little. 'Yes. Yes,' Sir Marcus repeated. 'Rumours.'

  'I see you've been taking on more men at Midland Steel, Sir Marcus.'

  'So they tell me,' Sir Marcus whispered. The maid announced dinner; the sound startled Chinky, who growled under the sofa, and there was an agonizing moment while they all watched Sir Marcus. But he had heard nothing, or perhaps the noise had faintly stirred his subconscious mind, for as he took Mrs Calkin in to the dining-room he wh
ispered venomously, 'The dogs drove me away.'

  'Some lemonade for Mrs Piker, Joseph,' Mrs Calkin said. The Chief Constable watched her drink with some nervousness. She seemed a little puzzled by the taste, she sipped and tried again. 'Really,' she said, 'what delicious lemonade. It has quite an aroma.'

  Sir Marcus passed the soup; he passed the fish. When the entree was served, he leant across the large silver-plated flower bowl inscribed 'To Joseph Calkin from the assistants in Calkin and Calkin's on the occasion...' (the inscription ran round the corner out of sight) and whispered, ' Might I have a dry biscuit and a little hot water?' He explained, 'My doctor won't allow me anything else at night.'

  'Well, that's hard luck,' the Chief Constable said. 'Food and drink as a man gets older...' He glared at his empty glass: what a life, oh for a chance to get away for a bit among the boys, throw his weight about and know that he was a man.

  The Lady Mayoress said suddenly, 'How Chinky would love these bones,' and choked.

  'Who is Chinky?' Sir Marcus whispered.

  Mrs Calkin said quickly, 'Mrs Piker has the most lovely cat.'

  'I'm glad it isn't a dog,' Sir Marcus whispered. 'There is something about a dog,' the old hand gestured hopelessly with a piece of cheese biscuit, 'and of all dogs the Pekinese.' He said with extraordinary venom, 'Yap, yap, yap,' and sucked up some hot water. He was a man almost without pleasures; his most vivid emotion was venom, his main object defence: defence of his fortune, of the pale flicker of vitality he gained each year in the Cannes sun, of his life. He was quite content to eat cheese biscuits to the end of them if eating biscuits would extend his days.

  The old boy couldn't have many left, the Chief Constable thought, watching Sir Marcus wash down the last dry crumb and then take a white tablet out of a little flat gold box in his waistcoat pocket. He had a heart; you could tell it in the way he spoke, from the special coaches he travelled in when he went by rail, the Bath chairs which propelled him softly down the long passages in Midland Steel. The Chief Constable had met him several times at civic receptions; after the General Strike Sir Marcus had given a fully equipped gymnasium to the police force in recognition of their services, but never before had Sir Marcus visited him at home.