A Gun for Sale

'Just Mr Cholmondeley.'

  'Don't forget to pay before you go up.'

  'The first floor,' Mr Davis said. 'The room straight ahead of you. I won't be a moment,' and he waited on the stairs till she passed him. The coins clinked in his pocket as his hand groped for them.

  There was a wireless in the room, standing on a marble washstand, but there was certainly no space to dance in, for the big double bed filled the room. There was nothing to show the place was ever lived in: there was dust on the wardrobe mirror and the ewer beside the loud speaker was dry. Anne looked out of the window behind the bedposts on a little dark yard. Her hand trembled against the sash: this was more than she had bargained for. Mr Davis opened the door.

  She was badly frightened. It made her take the offensive. She said at once, 'So you call yourself Mr Cholmondeley?'

  He blinked at her, closing the door softly behind him: 'What if I do?'

  'And you said you were taking me home. This isn't your home.'

  Mr Davis sat down on the bed and took off his shoes. He said, 'We mustn't make a noise, dear. The old woman doesn't like it.' He opened the door of the washstand and took out a cardboard box; it spilt soft icing sugar out of its cracks all over the bed and the floor as he came towards her. 'Have a piece of Turkish Delight.'

  'This isn't your home,' she persisted.

  Mr Davis, with his fingers half-way to his mouth, said, 'Of course it isn't. You don't think I'd take you to my home, do you? You aren't as green as that. I'm not going to lose my reputation.' He said, 'We'll have a tune, shall we, first?' And turning the dials he set the instrument squealing and moaning. 'Lot of atmospherics about,' Mr Davis said, twisting and turning the dials until very far away you could hear a dance band playing, a dreamy rhythm underneath the shrieking in the air; you could just discern the tune: 'Night light, Love light.'

  'It's our own Nottwich programme,' Mr Davis said. 'There isn't a better band on the Midland Regional. From the Grand. Let's do a step or two,' and grasping her round the waist he began to shake up and down between the bed and the wall.

  'I've known better floors,' Anne said, trying to keep up her spirits with her own hopeless form of humour,' but I've never known a worse crush,' and Mr Davis said, 'That's good. I'll remember that.' Quite suddenly, blowing off relics of icing sugar which clung round his mouth, he grew passionate. He fastened his lips on her neck. She pushed him away and laughed at him at the same time. She had to keep her head. 'Now I know what a rock feels like,' she said, 'when the sea amen—anem—damn, I can never say that word.'

  ' That's good,' Mr Davis said mechanically, driving her back.

  She began to talk rapidly about anything which came into her head. She said, 'I wonder what this gas practice will be like. Wasn't it terrible the way they shot the old woman through her eyes?'

  He loosed her at that, though she hadn't really meant anything by it. He said, 'Why do you bring that up?'

  'I was just reading about it,' Anne said. 'The man must have made a proper mess in that flat.'

  Mr Davis implored her, 'Stop. Please stop.' He explained weakly, leaning back for support against the bedpost, 'I've got a weak stomach. I don't like horrors.'

  'I like thrillers,' Anne said. 'There was one I read the other day...'

  'I've got a very vivid imagination,' Mr Davis said.

  'I remember once when I cut my finger...'

  'Don't. Please don't.'

  Success made her reckless. She said, 'I've got a vivid imagination too. I thought someone was watching this house.'

  'What do you mean?' He was scared all right. But she went too far. She said, 'There was a dark fellow watching the door. He had a hare-lip.'

  Mr Davis went to the door and locked it. He turned the wireless low. He said, 'There's no lamp within twenty yards. You couldn't have seen his lip.'

  'I just thought...'

  'I wonder how much he told you,' Mr Davis said. He sat down on the bed and looked at his hands. 'You wanted to know where I lived, whether I worked—' He cut his sentence short and looked up at her with horror. But she could tell from his manner that he was no longer afraid of her; it was something else that scared him. He said, 'They'd never believe you.'

  'Who wouldn't?'

  'The police. It's a wild story.' To her amazement he began to sniffle, sitting on the bed nursing his great hairy hands. 'There must be some way out. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anyone. I've got a weak stomach.'

  Anne said, 'I don't know a thing. Please open the door.'

  Mr Davis said in a low furious voice, 'Be quiet. You've brought it on yourself.'

  She said again, 'I don't know anything.'

  'I'm only an agent,' Mr Davis said. 'I'm not responsible.' He explained gently, sitting there in his stockinged feet with tears in his deep selfish eyes, 'It's always been our policy to take no risks. It's not my fault that fellow got away. I did my best. I've always done my best. But he won't forgive me again.'

  'I'll scream if you don't open that door.'

  'Scream away. You'll only make the old woman cross.'

  'What are you going to do?'

  'There's more than half a million at stake,' Mr Davis said. 'I've got to make sure this time.' He got up and came towards her with his hands out; she screamed and shook the door, then fled from it because there was no reply and ran round the bed. He just let her run; there was no escape in the tiny cramped room. He stood there muttering to himself, 'Horrible. Horrible.' You could tell he was on the verge of sickness, but the fear of somebody else drove him on. Anne implored him, 'I'll promise anything.' He shook his head, 'He'd never forgive me,' and sprawled across the bed and caught her wrist. He said thickly, 'Don't struggle. I won't hurt you if you don't struggle,' pulling her to him across the bed, feeling with his other hand for the pillow. She told herself even then: it isn't me. It's other people who are murdered. Not me. The urge to life which made her disbelieve that this could possibly be the end of everything for her, for the loving enjoying I, comforted her even when the pillow was across her mouth; never allowed her to realize the full horror, as she fought against his hands, strong and soft and sticky with icing sugar.

  5

  The rain blew up along the River Weevil from the east; it turned to ice in the bitter night and stung the asphalt walks, pitted the paint on the wooden seats. A constable came quietly by in his heavy raincoat gleaming like wet macadam, moving his lantern here and there in the dark spaces between the lamps. He said, 'Good night' to Raven without another glance. It was couples he expected to find, even in December under the hail, the signs of poor cooped provincial passion.

  Raven buttoned to the neck went on, looking for any shelter. He wanted to keep his mind on Cholmondeley, on how to find the man in Nottwich. But continually he found himself thinking instead of the girl he had threatened that morning. He remembered the kitten he had left behind in the Soho café. He had loved that kitten.

  It had been sublimely unconscious of his ugliness. 'My name's Anne.'

  'You aren't ugly.' She never knew, he thought, that he had meant to kill her; she had been as innocent of his intention as a cat he had once been forced to drown; and he remembered with astonishment that she had not betrayed him, although he had told her that the police were after him. It was even possible that she had believed him.

  These thoughts were colder and more uncomfortable than the hail. He wasn't used to any taste that wasn't bitter on the tongue. He had been made by hatred; it had constructed him into this thin smoky murderous figure in the rain, hunted and ugly. His mother had borne him when his father was in gaol, and six years later when his father was hanged for another crime, she had cut her own throat with a kitchen knife; afterwards there had been the home. He had never felt the least tenderness for anyone; he was made in this image and he had his own odd pride in the result; he didn't want to be unmade. He had a sudden terrified conviction that he must be himself now as never before if he was to escape. It was not tenderness that made you quick on t
he draw.

  Somebody in one of the larger houses on the river-front had left his garage gate ajar; it was obviously not used for a car, but only to house a pram, a child's playground and a few dusty dolls and bricks. Raven took shelter there; he was cold through and through except in the one spot that had lain frozen all his life. That dagger of ice was melting with great pain. He pushed the garage gate a little further open; he had no wish to appear furtively hiding if anyone passed along the river beat; anyone might be excused for sheltering in a stranger's garage from this storm, except, of course, a man wanted by the police with a hare-lip.

  These houses were only semi-detached. They were joined by their garages. Raven was closely hemmed in by the redbrick walls. He could hear the wireless playing in both houses. In the one house it switched and changed as a restless finger turned the screw and beat up the wavelengths, bringing a snatch of rhetoric from Berlin, of opera from Stockholm. On the National Programme from the other house an elderly critic was reading verse. Raven couldn't help but hear, standing in the cold garage by the baby's pram, staring out at the black hail: 'A shadow flits before me, Not thou, but like to thee; Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.'

  He dug his nails into his hands, remembering his father who had been hanged and his mother who had killed herself in the basement kitchen, all the long parade of those who had done him down. The elderly cultured Civil Service voice read on: 'And I loathe the squares and streets, and the faces that one meets, Hearts with no love for me...'

  He thought: give her time and she too will go to the police. That's what always happens in the end with a skirt, —'My whole soul out to thee'— trying to freeze again, as hard and safe as ever, the icy fragment.

  'That was Mr Druce Winton, reading a selection from Maud by Lord Tennyson. This ends the National Programme. Good night, everybody.'

  Chapter 3

  1

  MATHER'S train got in at eleven that night and with Saunders he drove straight through the almost empty streets to the police station. Nottwich went to bed early; the cinemas closed at ten-thirty and a quarter of an hour later everyone had left the middle of Nottwich by tram or bus. Nottwich's only tart hung round the market place, cold and blue under her umbrella, and one or two business men were having a last cigar in the hall of the Metropole. The car slid on the icy road. Just before the police station Mather noticed the posters of Aladdin outside the Royal Theatre. He said to Saunders, 'My girl's in that show.' He felt proud and happy.

  The Chief Constable had come down to the police station to meet Mather. The fact that Raven was known to be armed and desperate gave the chase a more serious air than it would otherwise have had. The Chief Constable was fat and excited. He had made a lot of money as a tradesman and during the war had been given a commission and the job of presiding over the local military tribunal. He prided himself on having been a terror to pacifists. It atoned a little for his own home life and a wife who despised him. That was why he had come down to the station to meet Mather: it would be something to boast about at home.

  Mather said, 'Of course, sir, we don't know he's here. But he was on the train all right, and his ticket was given up. By a woman.'

  'Got an accomplice, eh?' the Chief Constable asked.

  'Perhaps. Find the woman and we may have Raven.'

  The Chief Constable belched behind his hand. He had been drinking bottled beer before he came out and it always repeated itself. The superintendent said, 'Directly we heard from the Yard we circulated the number of the notes to all shops, hotels and boarding houses.'

  'That a map, sir,' Mather asked, 'with your beats marked?

  They walked over to the wall and the superintendent pointed out the main points in Nottwich with a pencil: the railway station, the river, the police station.

  'And the Royal Theatre,' Mather said, 'will be about there?'

  'That's right.'

  'What's brought 'im to Nottwich?' the Chief Constable asked.

  'I wish we knew, sir. Now these streets round the station, are they hotels?'

  'A few boarding houses. But the worst of it is,' the superintendent said, absent-mindedly turning his back on the Chief Constable, 'a lot of these houses take occasional boarders.'

  'Better circulate them all.'

  'Some of them wouldn't take much notice of a police request. Houses of call, you know. Quick ten minutes and the door always open.'

  'Nonsense,' the Chief Constable said, 'we don't have that kind of place in Nottwich.'

  'If you wouldn't mind my suggesting it, sir, it wouldn't be a bad thing to double the constables on any beats of that kind. Send the sharpest men you've got. I suppose you've had his description in the evening papers? He seems to be a pretty smart safebreaker.'

  'There doesn't seem to be much more we can do tonight,' the superintendent said. 'I'm sorry for the poor devil if he's found nowhere to sleep.'

  'Keep a bottle of whisky here, super?' the Chief Constable asked. 'Do us all good to 'ave a drink. Had too much beer. It returns. Whisky's better, but the wife doesn't like the smell.' He leant back in his chair with his fat thighs crossed and watched the inspector with a kind of child-like happiness; he seemed to be saying, what a spree this is, drinking again with the boys. Only the superintendent knew what an old devil he was with anyone weaker than himself. 'Just a splash, super.' He said over his glass, 'You caught that old bastard Baines out nicely,' and explained to Mather. 'Street betting. He's been a worry for months.'

  'He was straight enough. I don't believe in harrying people. Just because he was taking money out of Macpherson's pocket.'

  'Ah,' the Chief Constable said, 'but that's legal. Macpherson's got an office and a telephone. He's got expenses to carry. Cheerio, boys. To the ladies.' He drained his glass. 'Just another two fingers, super.' He blew out his chest. 'What about some more coal on the fire? Let's be snug. There's no work we can do tonight.'

  Mather was uneasy. It was quite true there wasn't much one could do, but he hated inaction. He stayed by the map. It wasn't such a large place, Nottwich. They ought not to take long to find Raven, but here he was a stranger. He didn't know what dives to raid, what clubs and dance halls. He said, 'We think he's followed someone here. I'd suggest, sir, that first thing in the morning we interview the ticket collector again. See how many local people he can remember leaving the train. We might be lucky.'

  'Do you know that story about the Archbishop of York?' the Chief Constable asked. 'Yes, yes. We'll do that. But there's no hurry. Make yourself at 'ome, man, and take some Scotch. You're in the Midlands now. The slow Midlands (eh, super?). We don't 'ustle, but we get there just the same.'

  Of course, he was right. There was no hurry, and there wasn't anything anyone could do at this hour, but as Mather stood beside the map, it was just as if someone were calling him, 'Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Or you may be too late. ' He traced the main streets with his finger; he wanted to be as familiar with them as he was with central London. Here was the G. P. O., the market, the Metropole, the High Street; what was this? the Tanneries. 'What's this big block in the Tanneries, sir?' he asked.

  'That'll be Midland Steel,' the superintendent said and turning to the Chief Constable he went on patiently, 'No, sir. I hadn't heard that one. That's a good one, sir.'

  'The mayor told me that,' the Chief Constable said. 'He's a sport, old Piker. Do you know what he said when we had that committee on the gas practice? He said, 'This'll give us a chance to get into a strange bed.' He meant the women couldn't tell who was who in a gas mask. You see?'

  'Very witty man, Mr Piker, sir.'

  'Yes, super, but I was too smart for him there. I was on the spot that day. Do you know what I said?'

  'No, sir.'

  'I said, "You won't be able to find a strange bed, Piker." Catch me meaning? He's a dog, old Piker.'

  'What are your arrangements for the gas practice, sir?' Mather asked with his finger jabb
ed on the Town Hall.

  'You can't expect people to buy gas masks at twenty-five bob a time, but we're having a raid the day after tomorrow with smoke bombs from Hanlow aerodrome, and anyone found in the street without a mask will be carted off by ambulance to the General Hospital. So anyone who's too busy to stop indoors will have to buy a mask. Midland Steel are supplying all their people with masks, so it'll be business as usual there.'

  'Kind of blackmail,' the superintendent said.' Stay in or buy a mask. The transport companies have spent a pretty penny on masks.'

  'What hours, sir?'

  'We don't tell them that. Sirens hoot. You know the idea. Boy Scouts on bicycles. They've been lent masks. But of course we know it'll be all over before noon.'

  Mather looked back at the map. 'These coal yards,' he said, 'round the station. You've got them well covered?'

  'We are keeping an eye on those,' the superintendent said. 'I saw to that as soon as the Yard rang through.'

  'Smart work, boys, smart work,' the Chief Constable said, swallowing the last of his whisky. 'I'll be off home. Busy day before us all tomorrow. You'd like a conference with me in the morning, I dare say, super?'

  'Oh, I don't think we'll trouble you that early, sir.'

  'Well, if you do need any advice, I'm always at the end of the 'phone. Good night, boys.'

  'Good night, sir. Good night.'

  'The old boy's right about one thing.' The superintendent put the whisky away in his cupboard. 'We can't do anything more tonight.'

  'I won't keep you up, sir,' Mather said. 'You mustn't think I'm fussy. Saunders will tell you I'm as ready to knock off as any man, but there's something about this case... I can't leave it alone. It's a queer case. I was looking at this map, sir, and trying to think where I'd hide. What about these dotted lines out here on the east?'

  'It's a new housing estate.'

  'Half-built houses?'

  'I've put two men on special beat out there.'