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  It was not often that he pawned his watch, which was one of his few valuable possessions, but it was his practice to do so in times of emergency. Quite apart from the sense of comfort which he derived from having the money in his pocket, the act seemed to underline the importance of the adventure or predicament in his own mind. It set a seal of authority upon it, as it were.

  The transaction was accomplished without difficulty and indeed, since the watch was such a nice one, even with a certain amount of social success. He came out feeling confident and walked back to the ’bus stop, intending to get back to the office at once. Annabelle had agreed not to ring the office save in emergency and he had arranged to discover Mrs. Tassie’s telephone number and to call her as soon as he left work. On the whole the position appeared to be in hand.

  However, at that point he saw the Lagonda again. It was in a side street, standing before the door of a barber’s shop, an old-fashioned place which still carried a multi-coloured pole beside the lintel.

  Richard hardly hesitated. The familiar way in which the driver of the sports car had opened the door of Number Seven had shaken him and he found he wanted very much to know who he was. He walked past the shop, glancing in. The window was only half curtained and he caught a glimpse of a narrow, straw coloured head above a towel in the chair nearest the glass. He pushed open the door and stepped down into the scented steam-filled room which buzzed with conversation. The noise stopped abruptly as he appeared and five pairs of eyes regarded him with that slightly hostile astonishment which appears, in small establishments of the kind, to be the portion of the chance customer.

  The man in the white coat who was attending to the driver of the sports car looked at Richard inquisitively, decided rather openly that he was nothing to worry about, and waved him to a seat against the wall, where already there was one customer waiting.

  “Just a moment, sir. Percy here is just finishing. I shall be a little time on the Major, and that gentleman beside you is waiting for me. But you’ll find Perce is quite all right. A very fine scissor man Perce is, aren’t you, Perce?”

  The second barber, who was at work on the head of a fat man who was sitting like a sack with his eyes closed, took no notice at all of the remark. He was elderly, with a fine distinguished face and brooding hooded eyes.

  “Perce isn’t deaf,” continued the first barber, who emerged as the proprietor. “He’s just a foreigner. Talks sometimes.” He paused to hone the cut-throat razor with which he was about to shape the tow-coloured waves, and Richard eyed him with covert amusement. He was a dark pale-faced cockney, womanish without being emasculated, who possessed small hands, dull black eyes, and the caressing version of the local accent, which is to say it was thick and slightly unctuous, as if each word was some nice little gift which he felt sure the recipient would appreciate.

  “You make up for ’im though, don’t you, Mr. Vick?” The other man waiting, a smartish youngster of the salesman type, spoke without looking up from the sporting sheet he was studying.

  Mr. Vick bridled. “I like to be friendly, I hope,” he protested, “and when I see an old customer like the Major, naturally I get on to old times.”

  “Don’t apologise,” said the man with the paper. “I like it. It helps me concentrate.”

  “Concentrate!” Mr. Vick emitted a drawing-room scream. “You’ll never win nothing that way. The only way to win on ’orses, dogs, pools or anythink else is to take it insouciant. Fly at it, if you take my meaning.”

  “And then collect the lolly and come right off the ’andle. Drive round in an ’ired car with a tailor’s dummy and say you’re married. That was your story, wasn’t it?”

  The fat man opened his eyes while he spoke and shut them again the instant he had finished. Mr. Vick squealed with delight and appealed to the man whose hair he was cutting.

  “That’s a very old anecdote of mine,” he said, grinning at his client through the mirror. “You remember it, don’t you, Major? It was you who was so took with it.”

  “Me? Not guilty.” The driver of the sports car spoke idly and his smile was casual enough. But the denial was complete and Richard, who had not heard him speak before, looked at him sharply.

  “You’ve forgot.” Mr. Vick seemed gratified. “You laughed like a two-gallon flush. I can ’ear you now.”

  The man who sat beside Richard folded his paper.

  “Who won what?” he enquired.

  “It ’appened in Islington when I was a ’prentice.” Mr. Vick spoke through his teeth, his attention concentrated on some fine work he was doing with the razor. “A young fellow in a draper’s picked up five pounds in the street and put it all on an ’orse called Lucky Gutter, which ’e see was running in the big race that day. It came in at two ’undred to one and the excitement pushed ’im over the edge. ’E turned ’is coat inside out, pinched one of the female dummies out of the window, put a lace curtain over its ’ead, and drove round in front of ’is young lady’s ’ouse with it as if he was getting married. The shock upset ’er and she fell down the area, broke ’er leg and sued ’im. It’s a sad story really.”

  “Lucky Gutter,” remarked the salesman, who had a one-track mind. “I never heard of such a name.”

  “There was a line of them,” said the fat man, not bothering to open his eyes at all this time, “like the Cottages were later. Lucky Rooftop, Lucky Verandah, and—correct me if I’m wrong—Lucky Clocktower.”

  “You remember it now, don’t you, Major? I see you smiling.” Mr. Vick was coy.

  “It’s a staggering tale,” said the Major, catching Richard’s eye through the glass and grinning at him, “but I never heard it before.”

  Mr. Vick opened his mouth to protest and thought better of it. After a while he sniffed.

  “You’ve been coming in ’ere on and off ever since the war,” he began. “Tell me, Major, any more developments in the you-know-what business? You mentioned it last time.”

  “What was that?” The Major was friendly but cautious.

  “The h-u-s-h h-u-s-h,” spelled Mr. Vick rather unnecessarily, and the man in the chair burst out laughing, the colour flooding his coarse fair skin.

  “Oh, that’s in abeyance,” he said with disarming embarrassment, “whatever it was. You haven’t any old Rolls Royces about you, I suppose? Any age, any condition, good prices paid.”

  “Ah.” Mr. Vick seized on it. “You’re in that line now, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.” The fair man spoke lightly. “Not at all.” He closed his narrow lips and sat smiling with his eyes, while the little barber’s curiosity became as noticeable as if he had shouted it.

  “You’ve been abroad, I see,” he said suddenly, cutting clean across a pronouncement made by the fat man, who was still talking of the names of race-horses.

  “No.”

  Mr. Vick was unabashed. He picked up a single wiry lock, pulled it out of curl and let it spring back.

  “I made certain this was a bit of foreign cutting,” he said. “Isle of Wight perhaps.”

  “Or Wigan, of course,” said the Major and again his shiny brown eyes flickered and his glance met Richard’s own in the looking-glass.

  “Lucky Clocktower …” The voice of the sporting salesman was pathetic. “Who could get a tip out of a name like that. What does it mean?”

  “Invariably fast.” The eyes in the mirror laughed into Richard’s and dropped as the Major glanced at his watch. “Just like this blessed thing. What is the time exactly?”

  The question turned out to be amazingly popular with everybody. Mr. Vick turned at once to point to the flyblown disc on the wall behind him.

  “That clock is dead right by the Shakespeare Head long bar, slow by Ronnie’s next door, and fast by the B.B.C.,” he announced with incomprehensible pride.

  “It is four minutes and twenty-three—don’t stop me, twenty-four, twenty-five seconds fast pre-cisely,” said the sporting salesman, looking at his wristwatch, an impressive performance wh
ich he offset somewhat by adjusting the instrument immediately.

  “Wait,” commanded the fat man, heaving himself up and accomplishing vasty manœuvres under his shrouding cape. “This is the right time. This is the real time. Railway time, that’s what this is.” He brought out a large silver pocket watch, looked at it earnestly for some moments, shook it and put it back. “You’re not far out,” he said to the barber.

  Richard shot back his own cuff out of force of habit, remembered in time, and glanced up sharply to find the Major watching him through the glass again. The round eyes turned away at once but the younger man was left with the odd but very definite conviction that for some inexplicable reason he was pleased. He was certainly smiling as he turned to the salesman.

  “I make it a quarter to,” he remarked. “If you’re right, this wretched thing of mine has lost a minute and twenty seconds in the past half hour. Exactly thirty minutes ago I was driving over Westminster Bridge and as Big Ben chimed I put it right.”

  Richard’s pugnacious young face became blank. The lie uttered so deliberately appeared to be so unnecessary. He eyed the stranger cautiously. He looked perfectly normal and even pleasant, sitting there fiddling with his watch, but suddenly Richard became aware of something very interesting about him. He was engaged in arranging something, some definite, carefully thought out plan. He could not rid himself of the impression. There was a wariness and a sense of suppressed force about the man which was special for the occasion whatever it was.

  Richard’s speculations were interrupted by the convulsion in the room caused by the fat man getting up, and by the time he was himself in the vacated seat and had persuaded the foreign assistant not to make too much of a job of the unwanted haircut, Mr. Vick and his favoured client were in full session once more.

  “If you don’t know Greenwich you don’t, Major,” the barber was saying brightly. “It was you mentioning Westminster Bridge put me in mind of it. But then of course there’s Shooters Hill. Kent is a lovely county. See much of Kent, Major?”

  “Practically nothing.” A flicker of mischief passed over the thin lips. “It’s no use, my dear chap, you’ll have to face it that I have no fixed abode.”

  Mr. Vick decided to be offended.

  “Now you’re trying to take the mickey out of me,” he said reprovingly, and stepped back from his handiwork. “Well now, that’s that, sir. That suit you? I mustn’t keep that gentleman waitin’ if ’e’s going to get ’is bets on before the one o’clock, must I?”

  It was a dismissal, and to Richard’s regret, since he was now trapped in the other chair himself, the Major rose, paid his score, and took his trench coat from the Peg.

  He then performed the second little act which the younger man found curious. On entering he had evidently stripped off his raincoat with his jacket inside it, and now he put them on in the same way, so that the outside of the jacket did not appear. The younger man, watching the performance in his own glass now, reflected that the manœuvre was the same as the lie about Westminster Bridge, not so much venal as peculiar, for despite the slovenly beginning he took some pains to dress himself, knotting his muffler carefully and arranging his collar with just the right degree of swagger. As he was drawing in his belt he appeared to relent towards the inquisitive Mr. Vick, who was still sulking.

  “I’m going to see a hero of your’s this evening,” he remarked. “I hope to do a little business with him. Moggie Moorhen.”

  At the name of the celebrated comedian the barber wavered and fell. A bouquet of refined noises escaped him and his sallow face warmed with pleasure.

  “Are you reelly? My word, that’ll be an experience. Just the very exact same off as ’e is on, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  The Major turned deliberately to Richard’s looking-glass and winked.

  “I hope not,” he said dryly, “or we’ll finish the evening swinging from the Savoy lighting fixtures.”

  He went out laughing and the door closed behind him.

  Mr. Vick paused, towel in hand, to raise himself on his toes to see over the curtain.

  “There he goes,” he remarked with feminine bitterness. “The Savoy lighting fixtures? … The Bodega more likely. He’s a very funny finger, the Major, and he’s in a very funny mood. I noticed it the moment ’e come in.”

  “I t’ink,” murmured the assistant who was cutting Richard’s hair, “that he is of the po-lice.”

  “Oh dear me no!” Mr. Vick tossed his head contemptuously. “You can relax, Perce. ’E’s got no interest in your papers. ’E’s a very funny fellow all the same. ’E’s been coming ’ere on and off for the last eight or nine years and I’ve never set eyes on ’im but in this shop, and I don’t know what ’e does from Adam. Not from Adam. That’s quite a record for me. You could call ’im one of my failures, reelly.”

  “Mystery man,” said the sporting salesman and ran a hopeful eye down the list of starters.

  “You’ve said it.” Mr. Vick dropped back on to his heels. “Charmin’ man, mind you. Never shabby. Beautiful shirt ’e was wearin’. Never grouses, which is fantastic, but talk to ’im and you might be livin’ in another world. After all this time there’s only one thing I know about ’im for certain, and that is that every now and again ’e gets up to something—puts a big deal through.” He paused. “This is one of the times.”

  “How do you know?” Richard spoke involuntarily. It was so much his own impression.

  Mr. Vick’s dull eyes acknowledged his existence.

  “Because ’e’s in the mood,” he said confidently. “We ’airdressers get to know a lot about moods. Goin’ to an ’airdresser at all is a very moody thing. Some only ’ave a trim when they’re fed up. The Major usually comes in when ’e’s bored, but now and again—not often, mind, but sometimes—he steps in ’ere as part of a little programme ’e’s set ’imself. I can tell. I can feel ’im simmering, getting excited and above ’imself. I used to think ’e was an actor working up for a first night, but that’s not it. There’s no greasepaint in that ’airline.”

  “I picked up a packet once on Greasepaint,” said the salesman. “Short back and sides, if you please, Mr. Vick, and I won’t have the old curry comb.”

  The barber acknowledged the order but continued to talk thoughtfully about the previous customer.

  “It amazes me I don’t know more about ’im after all this time,” he said, “but I tell you one extraordinary thing. This is the third or fourth time I’ve seen ’im do it, and no one would be more amazed than ’e’d be ’imself if you told ’im of it. Unconscious, it is. But when ’e’s in one of these off-the-’andle now-for-it sort of moods ’e’s always in a tizzy about the right time. ’E always mentions it, ’e always gets the whole shop arguin’ about it, and it’s a very funny thing but ’e nearly always picks up the man who ’asn’t got a watch.”

  “Then he wasn’t lucky today,” said the salesman. “I wonder if I shall be. He’s a crook, that’s what you mean, is it?”

  “No, sir, I certainly don’t.” Mr. Vick was shocked. “’E’s a regular customer. Sometimes ’e doesn’t come in for a month or two but if ’e’d been inside I should notice it at once. It takes nearly seven months to get rid of the prison ’aircut. Besides, whatever ’e is ’e’s something unusual, something one doesn’t meet every day.”

  At this point the assistant barber removed the cape from Richard’s shoulders and gave his neck a cursory whisk.

  “I ’tink he is of the po-lice,” he repeated, sighing. “Anyhow he has left his belongings.”

  He nodded towards the corner where a wooden box, the coil of rope and the starting handle sprawled in an untidy heap.

  “There now!” Mr. Vick’s scream was like a toy train. “’E brought them out of the street for safety and then forgot them. That proves ’e’s no p’liceman. You’ll see. ’E’ll be back. I’ve known ’im do that before. Ah, what did I tell you? No sooner out of my mouth then … There they are, Major.”

  The door had
shuddered open and the man in the trench coat appeared on the threshold. He was grinning and deeply apologetic, and his smile included Richard, who was putting on his jacket.

  The wooden box seemed to be remarkably heavy and when he had hoisted it into his arms he was fully laden. Richard gathered up the rope and the handle.

  “I’ll bring these.”

  “Will you? Thanks a lot. My old ’bus is outside.”

  When he had set the box carefully on the back seat he spoke again.

  “That’s more than kind of you. I’m drifting down to the West End. Can I give you a lift?”

  Richard was looking at the starting handle he was carrying. The worn label tied to his shaft had fluttered over and the pencilled inscription upon it was just readable. “Hawker. Rolf’s Dump, S.E.”

  He scarcely saw it. As if it had attracted his attention for the first time the Major leaned over and pulled it off, pitching it into the gutter.

  “Coming?” he enquired.

  Richard looked up.

  “Thank you,” he said with sudden deliberation, “I should like that.”

  Chapter 6

  LUNCHEON PARTY

  MATTHEW PHILLIPSON, SENIOR PARTNER of Southern, Wood and Phillipson, family solicitors of Minton Terrace, West, was a spare elderly man with the figure of a boy and the pathetic face of a marmoset. At the moment he was very happy, an unusual condition with him, and his cold eyes had softened as he watched Polly Tassie as she bent over the stove.

  He had telephoned to ask if he could drop round and see her. She had invited him to lunch as he knew she would and here he was, sitting in her kitchen waiting for his steak to be done just as he liked it, hard outside, rare inside.

  The room, he reflected, looking at it with appreciation, was exactly like its owner, ordinary, comfortable and obstinately itself. There was a red linoleum on the floor patterned like a Turkey carpet, out of date for forty years. Staffordshire china greyhounds stood on the mantelshelf, pots of gloxinia and musk of all things were in the window, and there was a solid kitchen table with a white cloth on it for him to sit at. He had a hassock under his feet and a waisted glass of dark ale in his hand, and under the flowered cheese-dish cover he had already discovered as nice a piece of Blue Cheshire as he had ever seen. There was, moreover, a cottage loaf, a delicacy he had thought extinct, and while she was still busy he broke the top from the bottom and was engaged in slicing off the soft sponge between the two when she turned and caught him. He laughed, his sallow cheeks flushing.