“I thought you were. I think-you are.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you. Did you really think you’d married a dope king? However, unless you want a husband in jail, I’m the better bargain. If Fosicker didn’t manage to get clear to-day, he’ll be arrested to-morrow. Personally I hope he got clear, because of Bobby-otherwise I’d be very pleased to see him go down for a five years’ stretch. Anyway the game was up-and that, my dear, was why I put a spoke in your wheel. There’s going to be a slump in dope.”
“How do you know,” said Anna, “if you’re not- Fosicker?” Her voice seemed to fade a bit when she got to the name. I thought she was frightened to say it.
“Drop it!” he said. “Fosicker’s bolted. I wasn’t in with him, and I don’t care a hang what happens to him. Bobby told me all I know, and that’s not much. He came to me to get him out of the scrape. And now you’ll go home.”
They began to move away. I could hear her saying something, and I could hear him shutting her up. And then I couldn’t hear them any more.
I’d have a very interesting time listening, but I was most awfully glad when they were gone. I’d had a bit of cypress tickling my left ear, and I didn’t dare scratch it, to say nothing of having been stuck in one position for about ten minutes without being able to move. It felt much longer than ten minutes, but I expect it was about that.
I stretched myself and stamped my feet, and felt my neck to see if there were really spiders or caterpillars crawling on it. There weren’t any.
I came out of the bushes and made my way to the gate. I’d got plenty to think about. The thing that stuck out on top was Anna being married to Arbuthnot Markham. I thought that was pretty good news for the family, but a bit rough on him. I didn’t like the man, but if I had to choose between five years’ penal servitude and being married to Anna, they’d find me beating at the prison gates and begging them to let me in. I’ll say this, Arbuthnot seemed to have her pretty well in hand. It was an eye-opener to me the way she knuckled down to him.
I began to sort out what I’d heard. I wondered if Arbuthnot had been telling the truth about the packet I’d come to retrieve. If it contained nothing worse than salt, there didn’t seem to be much point in my taking it away with me.
I got it out, opened one of the little packages, picked up a grain or two, and tasted it rather gingerly. Salt it was- decent, honest salt. It came over me how funny it was, and I backed up against the wall and shook with laughter, all by myself in the dark. Anna’s great melodramatic revenge and silly-idiot hatred, her lies, her intrigues, and her bogus telegrams, all fizzling out like this!
I took up the nice little harmless dollops of salt, and I was just going to empty them out, when I thought of something better. I put them back in their box, rummaged out a pencil, and wrote as well as I could in the dark, “A. Markham Esq.”; and under that, “A Present for a Good Boy.” I sucked the pencil to make it as black as possible, and hoped the result would be legible.
I’d just got it done, when Anna’s car came down the drive. The lights dazzled for a moment, and then were gone. It struck me it was a pity I couldn’t get her to give me a lift, when she was going to Linwood and so was I.
I went up the drive. There were no lights showing in the house. I came under the portico, mounted the steps, and pushed Arbuthnot’s present into the letterbox. I wondered what he would make of it.
I laughed again, and ran back along the drive to the gate. But when I got there, I stood still, because I hadn’t thought what I was going to do next. The laughter went out of me like the air from a pricked balloon. One minute I was as pleased as Punch and full of laughter and the spirit of adventure, and the next I was flat and cold and tired.
And right into the middle of that flat, cold moment there came two things, very suddenly. The first was a torch turned full in my face, with a policeman behind it. And the second was the recollection of the Queen Anne bow.
I had forgotten all about it.
The torch hit my face, and the idea hit my mind, one after the other-right-left-bang! Between them I lost my head. Instead of saying “Good evening, constable,” and behaving as if I’d every right to be there I was, I gave the whole show away by taking to my heels and bolting up Olding Crescent.
I heard the policeman’s whistle go behind me, and I thought I’d never heard such a beastly row in my life; it sounded as if it would wake the dead. But it didn’t wake those dark houses on the other side. They stayed in their black silence; not a blind moved, not a window opened, not a spark of light showed in the whole grim crescent.
I kept in under the trees. After the first start I took it fairly easy. I used to be able to touch two minutes for the half mile, so I wasn’t really worrying about any policeman. I aimed at getting round the corner and cutting up the first side road. The minute I began to run, I felt quite happy and confident again.
It’s rather odd how you can think of two things at once. I had my eye on the corner of Churt Row, and my ears cocked for the sound of the bobby behind me; and at the same time I was most awfully taken up with the question of whether Arbuthnot Markham was, or wasn’t, Fosicker. I can’t think why I should have bothered about it, but I did. All the time that I was running, I was trying to make up my mind.
First of all I thought he was speaking the truth. And then I wondered why he had talked about Fosicker at all, out there in a dark shrubbery with at least the possibility that some one might be near enough to overhear what he was saying. Anna had seen a match struck, and he had come out with a torch to see who was there, and on the top of that he had gone out of his way to talk about not being Fosicker. All at once it came to me that the beam from his torch had struck through a gap in my cypress bush and hit me in the face. It was quite a little gap, and I thought he hadn’t seen me; but now I wondered whether he had.
I didn’t think all this in words; it just came in my mind, like a picture comes in water. And then something broke the whole thing up, as you break a reflection when you pitch a stone into the middle of it. The policeman behind me blew his whistle again-he was a long way behind-and just round the corner of Churt Row another whistle answered it, and, blip round the corner, there came policeman number two, running for all he was worth.
I stopped bothering about Arbuthnot Markham. The second policeman was only about thirty yards away. I thought about tackling him low; but if he managed to get a grip of me anywhere, the other man would have time to come up. I only had a second to make up my mind. Just ahead the trees hung so low that they would only just clear me. I ran up close to the wall and felt above my head for a sizeable branch. As luck would have it, my hands closed on a limb as thick as my wrist. I pulled on it and brought a larger branch within reach, and, scuffling, scraping and sliding, I went up the wall.
I was nearly up, when I remembered the chevaux dé frise on the top. It was a perfect beast to negotiate, but the tree stood my friend and saw me through. I got hold of a higher branch, swung myself over, and dropped.
Just as I let go, two torches flashed up their light from below, and two hearty police voices shouted to me to come down out of it. I came down with a thud-but not on their side of the wall.
It was good soft falling-leaf-mold a foot deep-and I was up in a moment. I didn’t think they’d try to climb the wall. I shouldn’t have liked to take it on myself in a heavy tunic, or in cold blood. They’d have to go back to the gate, and my idea was to cut across the garden, climb the wall anywhere I could, and get away. I didn’t know, of course, whether there was a road on the other side of the garden, or the grounds of a house; but it didn’t really matter.
I pushed through the shrubbery, got out on to a lawn, and started to run across it. Away from the trees it wasn’t so dark. There was no actual light; but the sky wasn’t black, and the trees were, so I could get my direction. All at once something was right in front of me. I put out my hands just in time to save myself from running headlong into a holly hedge. As it was, I got scratched.