Walter found a room in a house on Maybury Street, which is two over from Corson Street, as he wanted to stay in the neighborhood. He moved in as Phillip Marshall.
Because he liked rowing on the river, and also to impress Noreen, Walter bought a sailing dinghy at a boat club below the Embankment. It was second-hand and only cost twenty pounds. The boatman was giving him sailing lessons. It needed sanding down and varnishing.
One morning he was working on the boat when the tool slipped and cut his arm. Blood spurted over a canvas and the floorboards before he could stop it, but he managed to bind the cut with his handkerchief and ran up the steps to the Black Swan.
Noreen had just driven up and was going in. When she saw him she cried, “Oh, Phil, you poor thing; that needs bandaging properly. Here, jump in and I’ll take you up to my place.”
While Noreen was bandaging his arm, her perfume, warm and inviting, surrounded him. Without realizing what he was doing, he bent down to kiss the nape of her neck beneath the soft dark curls. She turned her head at that moment and he found his lips on hers. The sensation overwhelmed him. He’d never kissed a girl before, but he soon found that didn’t matter.
It was late in the afternoon when he returned to the boat yard, elated and feeling very pleased with himself. There was still enough light, and as he wanted to get the boat in the water for the weekend, he went on working, thinking at the same time of Noreen. He’d wait a few days before asking her to marry him, he decided. After that he’d be on easy street. When he got fed up with her, as he already knew he would, he’d just have to get rid of her. There was always a way. Then he’d have lots of money and could look for one of his dream girls.
His thoughts were running riot when he heard footsteps coming down the wooden stairs to the yard. It was nearly dark but he could make out the thickset figure of Curly as he came towards him.
“Doing all right, ain’t you, Phil?”
“Just finished,” he replied, looking down at the boat as he wiped his hands. “Put her in the water tomorrow.”
Curly’s large, hard hand shot out and caught him by the front of his shirt. “I’m not talking about boats, stupid. I’m talking about Noreen; doing all right, ain’t yer, Phil?”
Curly’s leering face was close to his and reeking of liquor.
Walter stammered, “I don’t know what...”
Curly reached up with his other hand and took hold of his beard. “How about it, Wally? Like me to rip this off and take you up to the Black Swan?”
Walter struggled to get out of Curly’s grip and tried to throw a foot to trip him, but Curly gave him a shake that rattled his teeth and nearly tore the beard off.
“Try that again,” Curly growled, “and I’ll stretch you. Wally Mills, the chinless wonder of Corson Street — who’d have thought it?” and he gave a low laugh. “Didn’t know I was on to you, did you, Wally? But I won’t let on because you and me’s going to do a deal, see. Now listen: I got a load of stuff I don’t want round my place for the next two months or so. It’s hot, see, and you’re going to help me drop it in the river. You’ve got concrete mooring blocks with ropes and a float-can with a mooring ring on top, ain’t you?”
Wally nodded and Curly let go of him and took out a pack of cigarettes. When they had lit up, Wally asked, “Is — is there much of this stuff?”
Curly looked at him. “One sack — and it’s heavy.”
Wally had read of big robberies and saw a sack full of gold and silver candlesticks and plate. “I mean — what sort of stuff is it?”
“The less you know the better for you. What d’you think I am — stupid? It’s all wrapped up good and solid, so the water won’t get at it. My car’s backed up to the top of the steps, so let’s go.”
Wally hesitated and Curly came close to him.
“Would you like to go up to the Swan and have me rip that beard off in front of ’em all?”
Wally had been thinking about it and wondering if it wouldn’t be better just to take it off and be clear of the whole business. Life had been much simpler when he had been sitting on a high stool. But then he thought of how little money he had left, and of Noreen and how close he was to it. He knew Curly wouldn’t let on to anyone now he had something on him.
When the job was done, and Curly had helped him pull the boat up into the yard, they went up the stairs together.
“Don’t go getting any ideas about that stuff, Wally,” Curly said. “Two months from now, when everything’s nice and quiet again, you and me’s going to haul it up, and if it’s been touched you’ll finish up down there in place of it.”
Under the street lamp in front of the Black Swan, Curly stopped and looked at him. “Who’d have thought it? Wally the Beard,” he said, and gave him a playful jab to the mid-section that nearly doubled him up. Laughing, he vanished into the night.
It was a long time before Phillip Marshall could get to sleep that night and he woke late, feeling tired and irritable. He decided he’d walk round to Noreen’s and take her out to lunch somewhere. After he’d dressed in his smart clothes and put on his beard he felt better. He was coming down the front steps when he saw Mrs. Jones, his sharp-eyed old landlady from Corson Street. He was hoping she wouldn’t recognize him and pretended not to see her, but she came right up to him.
“Aren’t you Mr. Marshall, Walter Mills’s friend? You visited him.”
He muttered something about having to catch a bus and hurried on, but not before Mrs. Jones had noticed he was wearing a belted raincoat belonging to Walter Mills. She was sure of it because she’d repaired the belt herself.
Wise in the way of lodgers, she wondered if perhaps Walter Mills was sharing a room here with Mr. Marshall, and if this wasn’t a good opportunity to get the rent that was owing to her when he left so suddenly. She rang the bell and spoke to Phillip Marshall’s landlady, and in no time the two of them were up in Phillip Marshall’s room indulging the favorite pastime of London landladies. Mrs. Jones immediately recognized all Walter Mills’s things.
“And look at this!” she cried when they turned up a savings bank book showing he had had five hundred pounds but had drawn most of it out in the last few weeks.
When they found a canvas holdall with reddish brown stains on it, that was enough for Mrs. Jones; she didn’t read the Police Court Gazette for nothing; in her vocabulary, stains went with only one other word — blood. She went to the police.
When he got back to his lodgings late in the afternoon, Phillip Marshall’s landlady met him in the hall with the news that a couple of plainclothesmen were waiting up in his room. “And I’ll trouble you to pack and get out. I keep a respectable house,” she told him.
Well, this is it, he thought. He wondered what the sentence was for embezzling funds. It had been a bad day from start to finish. Noreen hadn’t been at home; the place had seemed deserted. And when he had asked Mabel at the Black Swan if she’d been in, Mabel told him Noreen had sent a message by Curly that she’d had to go to Brighton for a few days to look after a sister who was sick.
But why Curly? That’s what he couldn’t understand. Mabel said he’d come in with the message about ten thirty the night before, just about two hours after he had left Curly in the street.
Wally wondered if he should just walk out the door and away from it all, when a voice called down the stairwell.