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  He took the other man’s elbow and guided him out of the cobbled lane into the street which ran at right angles to it. There, beside a small and expensive antique shop, they found a flight of oak stairs leading up on to the first floor. A discreet sign written in copperplate so that it suggested a large visiting card assured them that Edna’s Midget Club was open to members only.

  At the top of the flight a small vestibule had been constructed out of the landing and in it sat a commissionaire with a visitors’ book open on a table before him. He had a large friendly face and practically no top to his head, so that the peaked cap which lay by his elbow suggested the lid of a mustard pot.

  He greeted Gerry with a great crow of pleasure.

  “No-it-isn’t-yes-it-is-’ullo-’ullo-’ullo,” he said pleasantly. “Nice to see you again, sir. You’ve bin missed, I’ll say you’ve been missed.”

  He dipped the pen in the ink, pushed the book forward and winked.

  “Jeremy Blah-blah and Mr. Richard Wah-wah,” he announced, blotting the entry with pride. “Straight in, sir. Go and get your welcome home.”

  The man in the trench coat hesitated, his face alight with the shamefaced laughing apology which Richard had begun to consider characteristic of him. Despite its admissions it was by no means unattractive and it suited the lean face and softened its deeply scored lines.

  “Is she there?” he murmured.

  The commissionaire raised his eyes and suddenly showed all his yellowing teeth in mock ferocity.

  “All ready to eat yer,” he whispered and shook with silent laughter which made him scarlet in the face.

  Gerry smiled at him briefly and his forehead wrinkled like a piece of corrugated paper.

  “Here’s for it,” he said to Richard and pushed open a door on the right.

  The Midget Club was smart of its kind and what was called by its habituées ‘exclusive, sort of’. It occupied the whole of the first floor of the small period house and was composed of a single L-shaped room divided by a large archway in which had once hung the panelled double doors of a more gracious age. Now most of the ornamentation had been achieved with paper, a design of white candelabra on grey on the darker walls and an explosion of gilt stars upon crimson on the lighter ones. In the first and smaller half of the room there was a long bar, its supports painted to simulate flat Regency pillars, while in the larger, darker portion of the place there was a mock window, a television set and a number of easy chairs with coffee tables before them. The air was heavy with perfume and alcohol and blue with cigarette smoke, but the main crowd had not yet arrived.

  A knot of pretty girls, doubtless young actresses, were sitting in one corner with their heads together, their voices lowered and sibilant over the latest wrong. In an alcove two dark-coated men were squaring up some private account, little black books and banknotes on the glass-topped table before them, while on a high stool by the bar, his feet drawn up under him, there sat the inevitable hunched individual whose entire body down to the smallest facial muscle appeared to be in the grip of paralysis. He sat there, patient and motionless, as if he were being slowly petrified into red sandstone, and nobody took any notice of him at all.

  The one personality the room contained was behind the bar, talking to the yellow-haired lady-companion who appeared to be serving there. This was a tall dark woman of thirty-two or three who wore a severely tailored suit in grey cloth and whose hair was brushed into a smooth hard shape like a shell.

  From a conventional point of view she was good looking, with regular features and eyes which were a trifle more slate colour than blue under decided brows. But her main distinction lay in her nervous force and the suggestion of quiet capability and hardness which enveloped her.

  It was evident that she was the Edna of the club’s title, general manageress and at least part-owner.

  Richard himself was a good-looking youngster, not conceited but accustomed to making an impression in his own quiet way. He was aware of her quick appraising glance and was looking at her when her eyes left him and passed to his companion. A wave of feeling so violent that he actually saw it sweep over her, leaving her cautious and expressionless. Her educated voice, schooled to be friendly, greeted them crisply.

  “Hullo, Gerry, gin?”

  “And ginger. Richard here insists on bitter but doesn’t mind it bottled. Can you oblige him?”

  “Of course.” She smiled absently, served the drinks and took the money, moving off to the other end of the bar, only to come gliding back immediately as if she had been drawn unwillingly by a thread. “It’s a long time since you’ve been in.” The tone was bright and yet the remark sounded like a reproach.

  Gerry looked at her over his glass, his eyes meeting hers and holding them.

  “So what?”

  Her eyes widened very slightly but apart from that she gave no sign of having heard him.

  “I hope you’ve got a good story or two,” she remarked. “No one else has. We had the whole of the ‘Up the Pole’ crowd in last night and in desperation they started telling jokes out of the show, like bears doing their tricks when there was no bun in it.”

  Gerry laughed. “Which one of them said that?”

  She refilled his glass and, putting her elbows on the bar, leaned forward with a gesture which managed to convey that she was excluding everybody else in the room.

  “You haven’t had any food.”

  “We have. Better than anything we’ll get here. Smoked salmon at Ley’s. Don’t keep Richard out of this. Richard, keep your attention riveted on this woman. I may need you.”

  The boy, who was sipping the warm inferior beer he did not want, regarded them both with polite curiosity. He was in the picture but not of it. He could follow the words, as it were, but not the tune.

  Edna gave him a casual preoccupied glance which was yet not unfriendly.

  “That’s Tilly O’Dea over there,” she remarked, nodding towards a chattering lovebird of a girl in the midst of the group of actresses. “Would you care to meet her?”

  “He’d hate to. He’s civilised.” Gerry was pretending that the last two drinks had been more powerful than anyone could reasonably have supposed. “Edna, why don’t you go away?”

  Richard smiled at her faintly and stepped back with the intention of wandering off to admire the decor when a hand closed round his wrist and drew him back.

  “Keep on the bridge, Mister Christian, we may be sinking,” said the man in the trench coat.

  The woman began to speak. She was flushed and her eyes were desperate.

  “Gerry, I want to talk to you. Come into the rehearsal room for a moment. I shan’t keep you long.”

  He stepped back and looked at her and the familiar depreciating smile reappeared. It seemed certain that he was about to say something unforgivable, but he let the moment pass.

  “Oh well, it would be something to do, wouldn’t it?” he observed unexpectedly. “Richard must come too. He can dance with you while I play the piano. Then you can talk to your heart’s content. Or perhaps you’d rather sing it.”

  “You’re not so terribly amusing,” she said savagely, but she came round the bar at once and led them to the end of the further room where there was a door concealed in the crimson lincrusta papering. She unlocked it with a key from her pocket, pushed them through it, and secured the door again behind the three of them.

  Afterwards it seemed to Richard that at that moment he stepped not only through a physical wall between one house and another but also through some less tangible barrier.

  It was as if the man he was trying to discover ceased then to promise to turn out to be some ordinary character of whom he had already met other versions and began to emerge as an individual, and more sinister.

  It was not an incident which marked the change so much as an atmosphere which met him as they came into a square, comparatively light room which duplicated the one they had just left, save that here the double doors had persisted and were now clo
sed.

  It was bare save for a row of bent-wood chairs set against the further wall, and a black piano standing shabby amid a thicket of music stands. Here the window was not camouflaged as in the club but was stark and ugly and looked out on a bare wall of soot-stained yellow brick not ten feet away.

  Gerry sat down at the piano at once, strapping his trench coat belt even more tightly about him with the buckle very high on his chest. He began to play, revealing a sound if mediocre talent but a very distinctive touch. In the harsh light his skin showed very coarse and his hair more bleached, but his hands were strong looking and sensitive enough, with long spatulate fingers which turned back at the tips.

  He was improvising on a popular number, a favourite with the crooners, ‘How are you getting on with your forgetting?’, and as he let the familiar notes trickle through his fingers he watched with wide-open lazy eyes the irritated woman standing above him.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Gerry,” she began at last, “you’ll be sorry if you don’t hear this. This is serious!”

  “Nothing is serious today,” he said, shaking his head and sliding into a rumba rhythm. “I can’t hear a word you say. Mime it. At least that’ll make it funny.” The notion seemed to amuse him for he laughed and the original tune re-emerged and grew and changed under his hands.

  Edna swung away and Richard, who was dancing already, caught her and swept her down the room. She was taken by surprise but she responded and her expression changed to startled approbation. Richard was one of those rare people who dance from the heart. Their movement is not only graceful but joyous and their delight in it is irresistible. She followed his lead effortlessly but her mind was still on the man at the piano, who watched her, still with the same half smile. The standard of the performance appeared to please him because he began to play for them, and Richard, who was young enough to be able to imagine that he was dancing with Annabelle, lost himself in the pure pleasure of the exercise.

  Edna spoilt it. She was still quarrelling. Richard was sorry for her but naturally was not attracted by the complex emotions of a woman ten years older than himself. As far as he could see, she was ravaged with fury against Gerry for not making love to her, and rage against herself for wanting him to. All the rest of her behaviour, he judged rightly but with an academic appreciation only, was a product of this initial situation. She was certainly suffering. He could feel the waves of irritation passing through her as he held her.

  “Dance,” he said suddenly and smiled at her. “Dance it off.”

  The colour came into her face and her slate-grey eyes softened. She might have been quite all right, he thought, if not tormented.

  She made the effort but it did not last.

  “I’m expecting Warren Torrenden in.” She threw the name at the piano suddenly. “Does that ring a bell?”

  “Who?” It was the first time she had raised any response at all from Gerry. Now he did not show any great interest but he played a little more softly so that he could hear her.

  “Warren Torrenden, the racing driver.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Oh, Gerry, don’t be such a silly liar. You went to Silver-stone with him on the fourteenth and you were calling yourself Hawker or something. I don’t know what you let him in for but he’s certainly looking for you. That’s what I’ve got to tell you.”

  There was no break in the music but the quality went out of it and Richard, glancing at the man, was surprised to see that his idle half-laughing expression had not changed.

  “Wild lunatic nonsense,” he observed affably. “Cracking insanity. Simply not true.”

  “But Gerry, you were there and you were with him. I saw you. I saw you myself in the paddock. Everybody in the club saw you both. It was on television. You were standing just behind the commentator in the crowd. You were on for whole minutes.”

  The tune came a little faster but his smile did not change.

  “Warren Torrenden. Silverstone. The fourteenth. No. Absolutely entirely not. Not guilty. Two other men.”

  “But I tell you I saw you. I’m trying to help you, Gerry, don’t you understand that?” She was still dancing and Richard was fascinated by the phenomenon. Gerry’s music and her movement formed a link between them which, although unconscious, was affecting the degree of their quarrel considerably.

  “You saw someone else,” he said. “It’s as easy as that.”

  “It’s not. You’re caught, Gerry. This time you can’t slide out of it. You see, I was watching with Peter Fellows, whom you don’t know, and when I said ‘There’s Gerry’ he said ‘There’s Warren’. We thought nothing of it at the time but Peter must have mentioned it to Torrenden because a few days later he came roaring in looking for you. He said your name was Gerry Hawker and I said it wasn’t.”

  Gerry took his hands off the keyboard and leant back on the stool.

  “You said it wasn’t? That was helpful.”

  “Why? It isn’t, is it?”

  “The name of the man Torrenden was with probably was Hawker.”

  “But that was you. I saw you.”

  “No. Absolutely and entirely not.”

  He began to play again but she did not dance, although Richard attempted to persuade her. She remained where she was, looking down at the pianist.

  “He comes in every day about half past four hoping to run into you, anyway,” she said grimly. “You can answer the question very easily once and for all by meeting him.”

  “Very well, I will.” He seemed to have settled the matter and his strumming became lighthearted again.

  The other two went on dancing. Edna was not satisfied but she was happier. Richard assumed at first that it was because she had got the message off her chest, but gradually the impression was borne in on him that she was principally relieved because Gerry had indicated that he would stay at least until half past four. They danced for nearly a quarter of an hour before she brought the subject up again. It was as they were passing the piano that she suddenly stopped and faced Gerry across it.

  “Torrenden is wild with you,” she said hurriedly. “He tells everybody that you told him you came from Reading and had a motor business there. I don’t know what you did—he doesn’t say—but he’s after you. He’s not the type to monkey with, Gerry. He keeps trying to find out where you live. I—I didn’t tell him.”

  The man at the piano did not seem upset by the information or irritated by her implied repudiation of his original denial. He merely nodded, as if his mind was only just on the subject. His hands still moved over the keys.

  “Do you know?” he enquired pleasantly.

  “Where you live? You’re still at Lydaw Court Hotel, aren’t you?”

  “God no! I left that dreary heap nearly four months ago.”

  “But I’ve seen you in the club here since then. You never told me you’d moved. I’ve been writing and telephoning you there. That’s why I haven’t heard, I suppose?”

  “Shall we call it a contributory cause?” He laughed. “I can just see all those letters, the handwriting growing angrier and angrier, all in the residents’ rack in the lounge. It must have given the old women something to chatter about. I wonder if they steamed them open.”

  “If they did they got an earful.” She was trembling. “Where do you live now? Did you get that flat you were thinking about? Who is there with you?” She turned to Richard. “Has he got a flat?”

  “I don’t know, I’m afraid. We’ve only just met.” Richard drew away. “Time I drifted off.”

  “Oh, don’t break up the party.” The protest from Gerry was astonishingly forceful. “Let’s wait and meet this chap Torrenden. He’s making an ass of himself, but it’s a rumour one ought to scotch, I suppose. After all, one has some credit to think of.”

  He began to play the rumba again, very softly, talking all the time.

  “It’s so excruciatingly silly. I haven’t even been to Silver-stone this season.” He threw out the disclaimer and hurr
ied on before it could be queried. “Last week I went to an extraordinary meeting in Lichtenstein, of all places. Most dramatic. A chap barricaded himself in behind a great wall of oil drums and then suddenly emerged in a little yellow mystery wagon and cleared the board. Perfectly ridiculous. The maddest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  A slow red flush spread over Edna’s face and her eyes grew several shades darker.

  “Now that is typical of you,” she said bitterly. “For no reason at all you suddenly come out with a statement that a child wouldn’t believe. You haven’t been to Lichtenstein, there was no racing there, there was no wall of oil drums and no wonder car. Who the hell is impressed? Me, who’s known you far too well far too long? Or this kid who’s never seen you before this afternoon?”

  It was a savage outburst and Gerry’s good humour appeared to increase before it, just as, when she was attempting to placate him, his ill humour had grown.

  “No oil drums?” he protested lightly. “My good girl, there was a wall of them, fifteen feet high. Let me describe them. They were black, with studs all the way round top and bottom, as well as a line round the middle, and they made an absolutely impenetrable barrier with this mystery packet behind it.”

  He was playing joyously now so that Richard’s feet began to move without his being aware.

  “Edna,” Gerry went on suddenly, “do you remember our cottage at Bray?”

  “Why bring that up?”

  “Because I like to see your face change.” He was laughing, holding her glance with his own. Her sulky colour deepened and she looked cowed and as if she was going to cry, which was embarrassing because she was not at all that kind of woman.

  “It wasn’t our cottage,” she protested with a return of spirit as soon as she achieved command of herself. It was clear that while she regarded Richard as too young to be anything but negligible, she resented this past incident of her sex life being trotted out before him. “If you remember, you rented that cottage furnished for a month for an elderly couple who you said were clients of yours. They’d come down from Yorkshire, had sold up their home and were on their way to South Africa. They went off earlier than they expected and so you persuaded me down there for the odd fortnight. The poor old idiots hadn’t packed properly either, so we kept coming across things they’d forgotten. The woman had even left a handbag. I bet you never sent all that stuff on to them.”