He looked at me sharply. “I know what you are going to say, Charles.
Don’t say it. You’re old enough to know better.”
But I stuck to my point. We must let H---- know at once, yes. Post men
at the warehouse entrance and the house entrance, certainly. Catch
Julian Raphael and his friends, decidedly. But we must give Manana Cohen
another chance. She was only a child--twenty-one or two at most.
George said: “Charles, don’t be a silly old man. She is probably as bad
as any of them. You can’t tell. Girls don’t live a life like that unless
they want to.”
I knew he was wrong. I just knew it. So I didn’t argue, but stuck to my
point. The girl must be got out of the way before the place was raided.
If the police found her there, she would be jailed--perhaps for years. I
simply wouldn’t have it. The girl was at the beginning of her life. To
jail her now would be to ruin her for all her life.
Tarlyon, of course, didn’t need to be convinced. He was only leading me
on. Tarlyon wouldn’t have put the police on a girl for trying to boil
him in oil. But I was right about Manana Cohen. Good God, don’t I know I
was right! This had been her life, was her life, these dreary streets,
these foul alleys. Julian Raphael had found her, dazzled her, seduced
her, bullied her, broken her. What chance had the girl, ever? She was
timorous, you could see. A timid girl. No matter how kindly you talked
to her, she stared at you like a rabbit at a stoat. Life was the stoat
to Manana Cohen. Who knows what the girl hadn’t already suffered in her
small life, what hell? Maybe she had loved Julian Raphael, maybe she
loved him now. That wasn’t against her. Saints love cads. It’s the only
way you can know a saint, mostly. Some of the nicest women you and I
know, Hilary, have been divorced for the love of blackguards. Well, if
Manana loved Raphael she would be punished enough by seeing him go to
prison for a long stretch. One might find her a job on the stage, with
her looks and figure. Good Lord, the way that girl looked at you when
you so much as opened your mouth, her black eyes shivering as though her
heart was hurt.
We found a taxi in the Whitechapel Road. To civilisation. Tarlyon was
quiet. I wondered if he thought I was in love with the girl. Me, at my
age. As we rattled through Cheapside--deserted on a Saturday
afternoon--Tarlyon said: “We will have to think of a way of getting the
girl out of the place beforehand. But how? If we warn her she will
naturally pass the glad news on to her man. Naturally.”
Naturally, I agreed. She wouldn’t be herself if she went back on her
man. I said I would think of a way as I bathed and dressed for dinner.
As George dropped me at my flat he said:
“Let’s say dinner in an hour’s time at White’s. Meanwhile I’ll ring up
H----. Maybe he will dine with us. I suppose it will be about midnight
before we get down there with his men. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not
going to have knives chucked at me on an empty stomach--for I’ll not be
left out of this, not for all the knives in Christendom and Jewry. This
is a real treasure-hunt as compared to chasing poppycock with children
round Regent’s Park and chickenfood with flappers up Piccadilly. I said
midnight, Charles, to give you a chance of getting Miss Manana Colquhoun
clear away. Wish you luck!”
But fate wouldn’t be bullied by George Almeric St. George Tarlyon. Fate
had ideas of her own. Or is fate a he? No, it would be a woman, for she
hates slim women. I’ve noticed that in the East, where no slim woman
ever comes to any good. I hadn’t finished glancing at my letters, while
my bath was running, when my man announced a young lady.
“A young what?” I said.
He was surprised, too. I went into the sitting-room. Manana Cohen was by
the open door, as though she was afraid to come right in.
I said: “Thank Heaven you’ve come!” Extraordinary thing to say, but I
said it.
She tried to smile. All scared eyes. I thought she was going to faint,
tried to make her sit down, fussed about. Hilary, I’m trying to tell you
I was shy.
“I’m frightened,” she said, as though that would be news for me. Then it
all came out in that jumbled way of hers. She had given Raphael the
slip, had found my address in the telephone-book, had come to me to warn
me.
“To warn me!” I gasped. The cheek of these young people! Here were we
and all Scotland Yard after them--and she had come to warn me!
“Yes. Listen.” Then she stopped. Suddenly, she blushed crimson.
I said: “Now, Manana, what is it? What on earth is there to blush
about?”
She tried not to stammer as she said: “I can’t help it. Julian’s after
you. He’s out to kill. He hates you once and he hates you twice because
he thinks I’m in love with you. I don’t know why. He’s just mad jealous.
I know Julian. And they’ll never catch him. Never. The fool police! I
just thought I’d warn you. Go away, please go away--out of London. I
feel if you die it will be my fault. He’ll throw you if you don’t go
away. I know Julian. You’ll be walking up Piccadilly one evening, this
evening perhaps. Suddenly, swish, knife in your back. No one will know
who threw it, in the crowd. He could throw it from the top of a ’bus and
no one notice. He never misses.”