They put Luke Maddison in a private ward, and one morning they left
a little temperature chart within his view, and he saw that his name
was Smith.
“How long have I been Smith?” His voice was extraordinarily strong,
remembering that only a few days before he had not been able to speak
above a whisper.
The good-natured nurse grinned cheerfully.
“If we don’t know people’s names we call them Smith--preferably Bill,”
she said. “But you’re going to be good, aren’t you, and tell us
yours?”
He shook his head.
“No, I don’t think so. Smith is a very good name, borne by some very
nice people. If my name had been Smith I might have been a better
man,” he added whimsically.
Since they had moved him into the private ward the burly-looking
policeman who had loomed out of his dreams, and seemed part of them,
had been taken away. That day they thought he was dying a police
magistrate had been summoned to take his deposition; but he had told
nothing which was of the slightest consequence or value. Moreover, he
had heard one detective say to another that he would not be of the
slightest value as a witness at the inquest. So he could afford to lie
and watch the hours pass, and the pale light of the sun move across
the green wall, and night come and the lights.
From where he lay he could hear the distant jangle of the trams; came
to know the bell of one, and marked its comings and goings. He did not
think of Margaret for longer than a few seconds. Resolutely he put her
out of his mind. Once he had an idea of sending for Stiles, but the
appearance of the manager would have betrayed his identity, and he was
anxious to save the name of the bank--or was it Margaret? Again and
again he told himself that he would not raise his hand to save
Margaret--but he knew that he was lying. It was for Margaret’s sake
that he was content to remain Bill Smith.
They brought him newspapers, but he refused to read them. That was
another reason why Bill Smith was so acceptable. If Maddison’s Bank
had suspended payment, there was an extra good reason why he should
never be Luke Maddison again.
He was curiously apathetic as to the state of the bank, curiously
apathetic about almost everything and everybody. There was a time when
he believed and hoped he was dying, and that in the final oblivion of
things he would find the complete and absolute forgetfulness which his
aching heart craved. But his heart was no longer aching. Presently the
time would come when he would leave hospital, and then----? He was
apathetic as to the prospect, too. What did anything matter? Perhaps
he would sell flowers, like that jolly girl he had seen in St. James’s
Street one snowy day. Or he might become a soldier; he was not too
old, and he had been a member of the O.T.C. when he was at Eton. Or go
abroad. He smiled faintly. “And shoot lions?” asked his own sarcastic
voice.
He did not care really what happened after. It was his sixteenth or
seventeenth day in bed--he was not sure which--when the sister came
in.
“A friend of yours wishes to see you,” she said. “He says he knows
you.”
Luke frowned.
“A friend?” he repeated. “I’m sure he’s mistaken me for somebody
else.”
“No, he particularly asked for you. He said the man who was stabbed;
of course, I didn’t tell him your name was Smith, because it isn’t.”
“Oh, yes, it is, sister--I’m profoundly curious; let him come in.”
Who was it? For one moment of lunacy he had pictured a penitent
Margaret. He would have instantly laughed at the thought, except that
laughing hurt his chest.
The man who came in he had never seen before. His shabbiness was
relieved by a collar of such surprising whiteness that Luke guessed it
had been bought for the occasion, as also had the violent necktie. He
was a man with a very small face, sharp featured; his heavily lidded
eyes glanced furtively left and right before he came stealthily to the
bed.
“All right, sister.” His voice was high and husky (Luke remembered
that Lewing’s voice was that way, and wondered if this was a
relative).
“Is this your friend?” asked the nurse.
The man nodded.
“That’s him all right, miss.”
The nurse disappeared, and the man bent over the bed. He smelt musty
and unsavoury, as though his clothes had been stored in a damp place.
“Joe says that as you didn’t squeak he’s going to make things right
for you.”
“Didn’t what?” asked Luke.
“Squeak. Don’t be funny! When you come out, see him.” He slipped a
dirty piece of paper under the pillow, and Luke heard a
well-remembered rustle. “There’s a fiver there for you. Joe says he’ll
look after you.”
“God bless him!” said Luke soberly, “for if ever there was a man who
wanted looking after, it’s me!”
The day before his discharge from hospital the sister asked Luke
Maddison if he would like to see a barber. He fingered his bristly
face, and his smile was almost one of boyish amusement.
“No, I rather like myself,” he said. “Can I indulge in the vanity of a
mirror?”
She brought a small hand glass, and he saw reflected in the polished
oval a strange, untidy-looking man with long hair and a shapeless
beard. The face was still pale, the nose pinched, but the eyes shone
as brightly as ever.
“Good lord!” he murmured, and whistled.
“You’re not very pretty, are you?” said the good-humoured sister.
“I never was,” answered Luke cheerfully. Then suddenly he frowned. “Is
that infernal policeman coming back again?”
She shook her head.
“No, he has given you up as a bad job. The inquest on that poor man
was finished last week. Didn’t you read the newspaper?”
Luke hadn’t read the newspaper.
“I can’t read,” he said, but she laughed at this.
So the inquest on “that poor man” was concluded, and presumably the
coroner had accepted his statement that he met Lewing by accident and
was walking with him when the assault occurred. A long time later he
read the newspaper account, and saw himself described as “William
Smith, of no fixed abode.” The paragraph ran.
The man is still in a critical condition, and witness said that it was
unlikely that he could give evidence for a month, or that he could
throw any light upon the murder.
That afternoon Luke spent sitting in a chintz-covered armchair looking
out across the river. Opposite were the Houses of Parliament. It was
curious that he knew personally at least fifty men whose presence in
that building was indicated by the Union flag on the clock
tower--fifty men, any one of whom would come flying across Westminster
Bridge to help him. But he did not require help.
He reviewed his position with the calm detachment of a third party.
All the objectives in life had been wiped out by a terrific gunfire.
He was homeless in the truest sense, for there was no place or being
that stood for comfort or happiness. He was in the centre of horizons
that showed no beacon light to indicate a destination. In the acid
bath of his experience ambition had been burned out; the very desire
for life had gone. He would have cheerfully and gratefully died.
It was curious that he seldom thought of Lewing’s death or of the
knife thrust that had brought him, on the point of dissolution, to an
operating room stinking of disinfectants. He had no grievance against
the man who knifed him; was rather amused than otherwise to find
himself unconsciously the victim of a vendetta in which he had no
part.
He read again the slip of paper that the mysterious man had left with
him.
Go to Mrs. Fraser, 339 Ginnett Street, Lambeth. She will look after
you.
He chuckled faintly at this. So there was somebody in the world who
wanted to look after him. It was rather funny.
The first time he had read this short message he had all but torn up
the paper and thrown it away; until his last day in hospital he had
not the slightest intention of interviewing the lady--she only came
into consideration after he had exhausted all the possibilities of
conduct. To go back to the office was impossible. He had a country
house somewhere, but he dimly remembered having made this over to
Margaret in the deed.
He could go abroad, of course, but that would cost money. He had not
the slightest intention of touching again any of the strings which
would lead him back to the old life. That episode had finished. There
was interest and adventure somewhere in the world--who knew if it
might not begin in the shabby purlieus of Ginnett Street?
He left the hospital on a sunny afternoon, and could walk out without
assistance, for he had carried no baggage. He was strong enough to
walk, for he had taken an appreciable amount of exercise on the
terrace of the hospital; but he had lost weight and his clothes hung
loosely upon him.
Ginnett Street was not discovered without difficulty, but he found it
at length; an unsavoury thoroughfare in the Borough. Number 339 was a
greengrocer’s shop that stood at the corner of a narrower street, in
which was a gateway leading evidently to a small yard at the back of
the premises. The shop was not particularly inviting; faded bills
pasted on the window announced that the best household coal and
firewood were procurable. The interior was dirty and dingy. Behind the
counter was a shelf where, in sloping compartments, were a number of
dyspeptic-looking potatoes, whilst a few weary and rusty cauliflowers
were displayed for sale in the window. In one corner of the shop was a
heap of coal and a weighing machine--evidently the people of Ginnett
Street purchased their coal by the pound.
He pushed open the door; a cracked bell clanged, and after a while
there emerged through a door leading to the shop parlour a
sharp-featured woman with brassy hair, who greeted him with all the
superficial unfriendliness which he discovered was the normal attitude
of the small tradesman in this neighbourhood.
“I am Mrs. Fraser,” she said.
“I was told to call and see you,” he began, when she interrupted him
quickly.
“Are you the man from the hospital--Smith?”
Luke smiled and nodded. She lifted the flap of the counter.
“Come in, will you?” Her tone was respectful, almost fawning. “I
thought you wasn’t coming out till to-morrow.”
She led the way into a frowsy little parlour and closed the door
communicating with the shop carefully.
“It’s lucky I had the room done up for you to-day,” she said. “I’m a
rare one for getting things done in time. Will you come this way, Mr.
What’s-your-name?”
Curiosity impelled him to follow her. At the first sight of that dingy
shop he had been tempted to turn back, to find a new foothold to life;
but now he went after the woman almost gaily. For that was the
ineradicable weakness of Luke Maddison: a consuming curiosity as to
what would happen next.
At some time or other there had been built a small annex to the house;
the floors were firmer, the doors seemed heavier. She opened one of
these and showed him into a room, the comfort of which was rather
staggering. He expected to see something particularly uninviting, and
it is possible that, had this been the case, he would have declined
the lodging and gone elsewhere. But the bed was neat, the sheets
spotless; the furniture, though plain, was ample, and a small fire
burned in the grate. “To air the room,” she explained, almost
apologetically, and led him to understand that this luxury was
impermanent.
On the table were a few sheets of writing paper and a pen and ink.
Their presence puzzled him, till the woman explained.
“A Certain Person thought you’d like to write to your friends,
especially as you didn’t write any letters from the hospital.”
“How the devil do they know that?” he asked in astonishment.
Mrs. Fraser smiled cryptically.
“He knows everything,” she said.
Evidently He was a person to be reverenced.
“You don’t want to have anything to do with that Lewing lot any more,”
she said, and all the time she was speaking her pale eyes were fixed
on his searchingly. “The police broke up that crowd last week, and
good luck to ’em! That Lewing would have twisted his own mother out of
her insurance money!”
“A bad lad, eh?”
“If you’d done any jobs with him, as sure as death he would have
shopped you--especially you being a gentleman born.”
“Let me put you right, Mrs. Fraser,” said Luke. “I was not a member of
Mr. Lewing’s gang or any other gang----”
“I know. He knew that. But Lewing was always boasting about the people
he could get hold of, and he was shouting the odds about you and how
you could drive. Are you a driver?”
“A motor-car driver? Yes, I am a pretty good driver,” smiled Luke.
“Won races, haven’t you?” she asked in her monotonous tone.
As it happened, Luke had won a private owners’ race at Brooklands
though he could not by any stretch of imagination be described as a
racing motorist.
“I thought so,” she nodded. “Boasting, that was Lewing’s downfall.”
Luke remembered a little conversation he had had with the dead man.
“He’s a friend of Gunner Haynes, isn’t he?”
An extraordinary change came over the woman. She made a little grimace
and blinked quickly, as though she had been confronted by a bright
light.
“I don’t know anything about Mr. Haynes,” she said, obviously on the
defensive. “The least said, soonest mended. We’ve never had any
trouble with Mr. Haynes and we don’t want none.”
There was something in her tone that told him beyond doubt that fear
was the basis of her respect for Gunner. He was “Mr.” Haynes to her;
she was obviously anxious to say nothing that might be construed as
disrespectful. Luke wondered why.
She bustled off soon after to get him a cup of tea, and he pulled up a
chair to the table. The writing paper was a great temptation; yet to
whom could he write? He did not think of Margaret.
When a mouse gets into a beehive and is killed by the outraged
occupants, they find him too heavy to move, and so they cover him with
wax, and he becomes part of their dwelling: a great lump that once
lived but now has no significance. He had embalmed and covered
Margaret in the same way. She was just an obstruction, to the
circumvention of which he had grown accustomed.
But Stiles----? What would Stiles be thinking? And then for the first
time there occurred a dreadful thought. Suppose Stiles thought he had
committed suicide? Suppose the newspapers were full of stories of a
“millionaire”--all people in his position were millionaires for
newspaper purposes--and rivers were being dragged and descriptions
being circulated? He turned cold at the thought.
Mrs. Fraser came back with a cup of tea which proved to be drinkable.
He made a desperate effort to obtain the information he could have had
by searching a newspaper file. She listened to his questions and shook
her head.
“No, there’s no news. There was a murder up in Finsbury, and that
fellow was hung who killed the old woman.”
“I seem to remember,” said Luke carelessly, “when I was in hospital,
hearing the nurses talk about a rich man who disappeared--his bank
went broke or something; there was a talk of suicide.”
She pursed her lips and shook her head.
“I never heard of it; and I should have noticed that, because my poor
mother lost all her money when the Webbick Bank went broke.…”
He breathed more freely when she had gone. Possibly Stiles had
refrained from communicating with the police except as a last
expedient.
He drew a sheet of paper to him and dipped the pen into the ink.