no sun,’ thought Ben, ‘corse ’e’s barmy!’
The unusual ablutions over, he returned to his bedroom and wondered how long he had been out of it. He possessed no watch and he had heard no striking clock, and he was not good at guessing time. It was not going to be easy to hit a quarter-past eight.
‘Say I was in the bedroom at four past,’ he tried to work it out. ‘Orl right. That’s four past. Then say it took me three minutes fer each ’and and a couple fer the ’ead, and then one more when I dropped the soap. Well, that’d mike it—well, whatever it’d be, wouldn’t it, so wot is it?’
He gave it up.
But help was at hand. The door suddenly opened and Mr Sutcliffe’s head came round the crack.
‘Fourteen past,’ announced the head. ‘She likes punctuality.’
Then the head disappeared. Mr Sutcliffe was a tired young man, but he possessed a languid nippiness.
At exactly a quarter-past eight, Ben knocked at the second door on the left. Miss Warren’s voice, richly sleepy, bade him come in.
She was in bed. She wore a deep blue dressing-jacket and a deep blue boudoir cap. The boudoir cap reclined luxuriously against a soft pillow with lace edges, and she radiated an atmosphere of heavy, confident attraction. If there was any confusion, it was not on her side.
‘Don’t be bashful, Mr Lynch,’ she remarked with a faint smile, after a short silence.
‘Eh? ’Oo’s bashful?’ retorted Ben.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve evidently mistaken your expression,’ she answered. ‘Never mind, we’ll soon know each other better. Of course, we’ll have to do something about your clothes. How did you sleep?’
‘Not so bad.’
‘And you needn’t be polite, either. I like to know all my guests are thinking, though I can generally guess without being told. What are your complaints?’
‘Well,’ said Ben, ‘fer one thing, I ain’t uster sleepin’ with me door locked.’
‘And for another thing?’
‘Bein’ spied on! I bar that!’
‘Who has been spying on you, Mr Lynch?’
‘I expeck you know as well as me. The bloke in the next room. ’Ow’d you like it if some ’un sent searchlights through peepholes onter you?’
‘He will do it!’ smiled Miss Warren. ‘I’ll speak to him about it. But the locked door—well, we’ll see. And is that everything?’
‘No,’ replied Ben, refusing to be rushed. He was quite sure Harry Lynch would not have permitted it. ‘I like a bit of air.’
‘I see. The windows are worrying you, too?’
‘Tork abart suffercatin’!’
‘And how about the arrangement of this room? Do you think the bed would be better against another wall? And is the colour-scheme satisfactory? And your shaving-water—what time would you like it brought?’ She was still smiling, but a quality that made Ben wary had entered her voice. Ben’s difficulty was in finding a common denominator between what he felt and what Harry Lynch would have felt. He was struggling with the difficulty now as Helen Warren continued, ‘Now, listen to me, Mr Lynch. I am going to admit at once that I find you a most unusual person, and that, when I have found out a little more about you—and I take no chances, you know—I think you will prove the very man for the difficult job you’ve been engaged for. Because of that I am ready to put up with your—peculiarities, shall we call them?—and as I like novel sensations I am even ready to enjoy certain of them. But while you are in this flat you will not question the rules of this flat—when your own sense cannot supply any reason—and you will keep to the rules of this flat. Now, is that quite clear?’
Ben returned her steady gaze for a little while without replying. ‘She’s watchin’ me,’ he thought, ‘to see ’ow I’m tikin’ it. So ’ow ’ave I gotter tike it?’
Conscious that the moment was a crucial one, he wished some invisible person could have been standing by to advise him. That dead detective, for instance, whose job Ben was carrying on—he would have known how to deal with this dangerous, soul-searching woman! Yes, and she was searching her new recruit’s soul now, all right … Then, all at once, the new recruit remembered something.
Once, on a cannibal island, he had been taken for a god by the natives. He had maintained the convenient but uncomfortable illusion, actually using it for the betterment of the island before effecting his escape, by periodically pretending to himself that he was a god. Only by yielding to the part was he able to understand and act the part. Now he would have to yield, when in doubt, to the part of Harry Lynch, to discover how he would behave.
The mental gymnastics of slipping into the skin of a crook and potential murderer were less attractive than those of entering the more ethereal surfaces of a deity. The latter gave you a sort of a glow, like. The former gave you a sort of a shudder, like. ‘Yer can’t git away from it,’ reflected Ben. ‘I fair ’ates blood!’ But it was for the blood of a dead detective he would now be assuming that red was his favourite colour, and that thought would sustain him.
‘Don’t keep me waiting, Mr Lynch, will you?’ said the woman who was watching him.
‘I do when I wanter,’ replied Mr Lynch.
‘Really?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Perhaps I’d better remind you, then, that your predecessor wanted to.’
‘Prederwotter?’
‘I must remember your dictionary is limited. The man I engaged before you.’
‘Oh! Wot ’appened to ’im?’
‘Something I hope will not happen to you.’
‘I’ll see it don’t. I mike things ’appen to other people, and I knows ’ow to tike care they don’t ’appen to me. Yer don’t think yer’ve engaged Little Lord Fowntleroy, do yer?’
‘I confess I don’t see the resemblance.’
‘I’ve twisted more necks than I can cahnt.’ He looked at her neck. ‘There was one they couldn’t untwist. Orl right. That’s me!’
Helen Warren may have been impressed, but she was not alarmed. Slipping her hand under the lace-edged pillow, she brought out a little revolver and laid it on the silk counterpane.
‘And that’s me. So now you know, Mr Lynch, what will happen to you if you don’t keep to the rules of this flat. By the way, do you intend to?’
For an instant, while her firm slender fingers tapped the revolver—the murderous weapon made an incongruous gleam on the attractive counterpane—he almost forgot he was Harry Lynch, twister of necks, for he knew that Helen Warren was ruthless and would suffer no heart-pangs if she popped him off. But the instant passed, and a wave of personal indignation helped him to maintain the role he was playing.
‘If you think I git palpertashuns when I sees
