A Gun for Sale

       She said under her breath, 'You wouldn't kill me, would you?'

       'If it's the only way,' he said. 'Let me think a bit.'

       'But I'd be on your side,' she implored him, looking this way and that for anything to throw, for a chance of safety.

       'Nobody's on my side,' Raven said. 'I've learned that. Even a crook doctor... You see—I'm ugly. I don't pretend to be one of your handsome fellows. But I'm educated. I've thought things out.' He said quickly, 'I'm wasting time. I ought to get started.'

       'What are you going to do?' she asked, scrambling to her feet.

       'Oh,' he said in a tone of disappointment, 'you are scared again. You were fine when you weren't scared.' He faced her across the kitchen with the automatic pointed at her breast. He pleaded with her. 'There's no need to be scared. This lip—'

       'I don't mind your lip,' she said desperately. 'You aren't bad-looking. You ought to have a girl. She'd stop you worrying about that lip.'

       He shook his head. 'You're talking that way because you are scared. You can't get round me that way. But it's hard luck on you, my picking on you. You shouldn't be so afraid of death. We've all got to die. If there's a war, you'll die anyway. It's sudden and quick: it doesn't hurt,' he said, remembering the smashed skull of the old man—death was like that: no more difficult than breaking an egg.

       She whispered, 'Are you going to shoot me?'

       'Oh no, no,' he said, trying to calm her, 'turn your back and go over to that door. We'll find a room where I can lock you up for a few hours.' He fixed his eyes on her back; he wanted to shoot her clean: he didn't want to hurt her.

       She said, 'You aren't so bad. We might have been friends if we hadn't met like this. If this was the stage-door. Do you meet girls at stage-doors?'

       'Me,' he said, 'no. They wouldn't look at me.'

       'You aren't ugly,' she said. 'I'd rather you had that lip than a cauliflower ear like all those fellows who think they are tough. The girls go crazy on them when they are in shorts. But they look silly in a dinner jacket.' Raven thought: if I shoot her here anyone may see her through a window; I'll shoot her upstairs in the bathroom. He said, 'Go on. Walk.'

       She said, 'Let me go this afternoon. Please. I'll lose my job if I'm not at the theatre.'

       They came out into the little glossy hall, which smelt of paint. She said, 'I'll give you a seat for the show.'

       'Go on,' he said, 'up the stairs.'

       'It's worth seeing. Alfred Bleek as the Widow Twankey.' There were only three doors on the little landing: one had ground-glass panes. 'Open the door,' he said, 'and go in there.' He decided that he would shoot her in the back as soon as she was over the threshold; then he would only have to close the door and she would be out of sight. A small aged voice whispered agonizingly in his memory through a closed door. Memories had never troubled him. He didn't mind death; it was foolish to be scared of death in this bare wintry world. He said hoarsely, 'Are you happy? I mean, you like your job?'

       'Oh, not the job,' she said. 'But the job won't go on for ever. Don't you think someone might marry me? I'm hoping.'

       He whispered, 'Go in. Look through that window,' his finger touching the trigger. She went obediently forward; he brought the automatic up, his hand didn't tremble, he told himself that she would feel nothing. Death wasn't a thing she need be scared about. She had taken her handbag from under her arm; he noticed the odd sophisticated shape; a circle of twisted glass on the side and within it chromium initials, A. C.; she was going to make her face up.

       A door closed and a voice said, 'You'll excuse me bringing you here this early, but I have to be at the office till late...'

       'That's all right, that's all right, Mr Graves. Now don't you call this a snug little house?'

       He lowered the pistol as Anne turned. She whispered breathlessly, 'Come in here quick.' He obeyed her, he didn't understand, he was still ready to shoot her if she screamed.

       She saw the automatic and said, 'Put it away. You'll only get into trouble with that.'

       Raven said, 'Your bags are in the kitchen.'

       'I know. They've come in by the front door.'

       'Gas and electric,' a voice said, 'laid on. Ten pounds down and you sign along the dotted line and move in the furniture.'

       A precise voice which went with pince-nez and a high collar and thin flaxen hair said, 'Of course, I shall have to think it over.'

       'Come and look upstairs, Mr Graves.'

       They could hear them cross the hall and climb the stairs, the agent talking all the time. Raven said, 'I'll shoot if you—'

       'Be quiet,' Anne said. 'Don't talk. Listen. Have you those notes? Give me two of them.' When he hesitated she whispered urgently, 'We've got to take a risk.' The agent and Mr Graves were in the best bedroom now. 'Just think of it, Mr Graves,' the agent was saying, 'with flowered chintz.'

       'Are the walls sound-proof?'

       'By a special process. Shut the door,' the door closed and the agent's voice went thinly, distinctly on, 'and in the passage you couldn't hear a thing. These houses were specially made for family men.'

       'And now,' Mr Graves said, 'I should like to see the bathroom.'

       'Don't move,' Raven threatened her.

       'Oh, put it away,' Anne said, 'and be yourself.' She closed the bathroom door behind her and walked to the door of the bedroom. It opened and the agent said with the immediate gallantry of a man known in all the Nottwich bars,' Well, well, what have we here?'

       'I was passing,' Anne said, 'and saw the door open. I'd been meaning to come and see you, but I didn't think you'd be up this early.'

       'Always on the spot for a young lady,' the agent said.

       'I want to buy this house.'

       'Now look here,' Mr Graves said, a young-old man in a black suit who carried about with him in his pale face and irascible air the idea of babies in small sour rooms, of insufficient sleep. 'You can't do that. I'm looking over this house.'

       'My husband sent me here to buy it.'

       'I'm here first.'

       'Have you bought it?'

       'I've got to look it over first, haven't I?'

       'Here,' Anne said, showing two five-pound notes. 'Now all I have to do...'

       'Is sign along the dotted line,' the agent said.

       'Give me time,' Mr Graves said. 'I like this house.' He went to the window. 'I like the view.' His pale face stared out at the damaged fields stretching under the fading fog to where the slag-heaps rose along the horizon. 'It's quiet country,' Mr Graves said. 'It'll be good for the children and the wife.'

       'I'm sorry,' Anne said, 'but you see I'm ready to pay and sign.'

       'References?' the agent said.

       'I'll bring them this afternoon.'

       'Let me show you another house, Mr Graves.' The agent belched slightly and apologized. 'I'm not used to business before breakfast.'

       'No,' Mr Graves said, 'if I can't have this I won't have any.' Pallid and aggrieved he planted himself in the best bedroom of 'Sleepy Nuik' and presented his challenge to fate, a challenge which he knew from long and bitter experience was always accepted.

       'Well,' the agent said, 'you can't have this. First come, first served.'