her.
She looked at him with her mouth hanging open. She was used to his being insolent and sarcastic to her, and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of arguing when he gave silly answers to serious questions. But this one sounded so casual it might well be the truth. But it couldn’t be true, for it was clearly absurd. She was baffled to silence.
He was parking the bike in Tulip Place one Thursday night at half past ten, before it was quite dark, after a thrilling practice run to Balloch and the banks of Loch Lomond, when a man came out of the close across the street and jabbed a finger in the small of his back. Percy jumped. In a moment’s searing intuition he saw the hoard discovered, the owner identified, and himself in jail. The early summer evening seemed no longer beautiful, but ominous, and the sun he had seen setting behind the Campsies was a signal of the doom he had come back to meet.
‘D’ye know Mr Phinn?’ the stranger whispered, his scrubby face close against Percy’s smooth chin. The electric razor was doing a very efficient job.
‘Mr Phinn?’ Percy asked hoarsely.
‘Mr Phinn,’ the stranger said, nodding his head like a hand-puppet.
Percy was frightened. He didn’t see a square man in a belted raincoat, stained and shabby, with a curly-brimmed felt hat down over his eyes and a scar from the wing of his nose to the bend of his right jawbone. This was no Glasgow bauchle. What he saw was a looming supernatural figure that he identified with a deity he thought of as Nimeesis.
‘Well, I’m Phinn,’ he said cautiously. ‘Percy Phinn. You see, I’m named after Percy Shelley the poet. You don’t mean me, do you?’
He didn’t think anyone would ever think of him as Mr Phinn, any more than you would think of Shelley as Mr Shelley, and he was puzzled. But with him that was the same thing as being frightened. The stranger shook his head, the horizontal movement as puppet-like as the vertical one had been.
‘No,’ he breathed vigorously into Percy’s face, and Percy recognized the smell of whisky. His father used to drink that stuff. With the speed of lightning, for thought is swift even in the slowest, he wondered if it would be worthwhile buying a bottle of whisky to find out what it was like, decided a bottle of wine would be a more appropriate drink for a poet, regretted he had never thought of buying a bottle of wine for communal wine-drinking at the Friday Night Service, feared his buying days were over, and simultaneously found an answer to the stranger.
‘Well, I’m Mr Phinn if you like,’ he offered, prepared to sacrifice himself to save his boys.
‘I don’t like,’ said the stranger.
‘Ye’ll jist have to like it I’m afraid,’ Percy said bravely, but he felt his belly trembling and his left leg was quivering, ‘there’s no other Phinn about here. What Mr Phinn do you mean?’
‘Who’s the janitor in that school there?’ the stranger asked, and thrust his head towards the building behind Percy.
‘Oh, you mean him?’ said Percy, and sagged in relief. Nobody could question the dead. ‘That was my father so it was. Is that who you mean?’
‘Well, what do you mean there’s no Mr Phinn here?’ the stranger demanded irritably. ‘Has he been shifted? You’re after saying your father’s here. Do you mean he’s been shifted?’
‘No, he’s no’ been shifted, but he’s no’ here now,’ Percy said brightly. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Are you kidding?’ the stranger whispered, his face so close to Percy’s that they looked like two Eskimoes making love.
‘What would I be kidding for?’ Percy answered indignantly. ‘I wouldn’t be kidding about a thing like that, would I? I can show you his grave if you don’t believe me.’
‘Oh Jesus Christ!’ said the stranger and bowed his head in grief.
Percy was impressed by the piety of the ejaculation.
‘Did you know my father?’ he asked tenderly.
They stood looking at each other under the single gas- lamp in the drab lonely alley called Tulip Place by a poetic Town Council, and the summer twilight gathered into darkness.
‘Naw, I never knew him,’ said the stranger impatiently, then slowed to a fonder utterance. ‘Och aye, I knew him well.’
‘I see,’ said Percy uneasily.
‘You see that door there, does that door lead to a cellar?’ the stranger asked, jabbing a finger abruptly at the scarred door across the pavement.
‘Oh aye, that was for the coal,’ said Percy. ‘But it’s never used now.’
‘You’ve got a key for it, have you no’?’ the stranger said with a smile so ingratiating that it put Percy in a new panic.
‘Oh no,’ he disclaimed hastily. ‘That door’s never used now, it was for the coal you see, but you see they don’t use the boilers now, cause it’s all electric, so there’s no key for it, ye canna get in that way at all, it’s no’ a door really, it’s all bricked up inside, so you see a key’s no use. Because of the bricks. Ye canna get in that way. It’s all bricked up.’
‘You mean it’s bricked up?’ the stranger glowered. ‘Then how do you get in? Tell me that!’
‘Well, there’s a door in the basement,’ Percy admitted, ‘in the school I mean, but it’s never used, you see, and nobody’s got a key to it. You see it’s no’ a cellar now, it’s just a rubbish dump and nobody has ever any call to go in there, and it’s overrun wi’ rats, you see.’
‘I see,’ the stranger said patiently. ‘Did your father ever mention any of his pals to you, doing a favour for them like, you know? Did you know your Uncle Sammy?’
Before Percy could decide on the best answer they heard someone plodding along Bethel Street. They turned together in alarm and looked at the corner. A policeman was passing on patrol. Percy knew him. It was Constable Knox, the local bobby who had often taken a wee rest in the cellar in the old days and had a cup of tea with his father. He raised a hand in greeting as Constable Knox passed and the policeman acknowledged it with a nod so dignified it was almost imperceptible. Then when he turned again to cope with the stranger Percy found he was alone. He was just in time to catch a glimmer of a raincoat scurrying through the close on the other side of Tulip Place. He set his motor-bike safely against the kerb and galloped home on a wild bronco of alarm.
CHAPTER SIX
He made quite sure the stranger wasn’t in Tulip Place or Bethel Street the following night before he went down to the cellar by the side door. He was glad it was a Friday night, for that meant every member of the Brotherhood would be present to attend the Friday Night Service. He had taught them to refer to it as the FNS, and they were drilled to accept the penalty of forfeiting a week’s money if they missed it. He let them in cautiously, opening the door no wider than was needed to admit a sidling entrance, and after the Creed and the hymn, before they came forward in single file for the share-out, he made a little speech. It was understood that any announcements he had to make would be made between the singing of the hymn and the distribution of the grace of El, so when the choir had finished the hymn and the campanologist had rung the bell three times to emphasize the end of that part of the service, he stood before Miss Elginbrod’s
