Gilroy closed his eyes. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“It’s simple enough,” Doc returned. “I can coach you. We can fake a few tricks so that he’ll believe you’re the goods. Then when he’s paid up, we can slide out. We’ll discuss the details tonight with Rollo. I just wanted to make sure that you’d be willing to do it.”
Gilroy nodded. “If it is as simple as all that,” he said, “but are you sure?”
“We have to find out exactly what he wants us to do, of course,” Doc said, “but I think it will be simple enough. The man is not right in his head.”
“You don’t believe in voodoo?” Gilroy asked the question very casually.
Doc laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Do you?”
Gilroy shrugged. “They believe in it in my country,” he returned, “but then, we are only ignorant niggers.”
Doc looked at him sharply. “You aren’t,” he said. “There’s something about you I don’t quite understand.”
Gilroy stood up. “Suppose we talk this over with Rollo?” he said. “Tonight?”
Doc looked up at him. “I thought there might have been difficulties . . .” he said as if he were thinking aloud. “ You’ll help us?”
Gilroy nodded. “I’ll do the thing you want me to do,” he returned. “If that’s what you mean.”
Doc got to his feet. “A thousand pounds is not to be sneezed at,” he said, following Gilroy to the door. “I’ll have it all worked out by tonight.”
Gilroy opened the door. “I’m sure you will,” he said. “Until tonight, then.”
Doc paused as he was moving into the passage. “I’d give up using scent if I were you,” he said. “People might jump to conclusions.”
Gilroy lifted his shoulders. “I don’t have to bother with people,” he said firmly and closed the door in Doc’s face.
* * *
155A Fulham Road was a large, semi-detached house separated from the street by a low wall and a long flight of white steps that led to the front door. The house was owned by Cedric Smythe who had, a few years ago, forsaken one of the best-known repertory companies in the country to take up an equally prosperous career in the board and resident business.
Cedric Smythe ran the house on his own. A woman came in three times a week to do the rough work, but Cedric did everything else. He had six regular boarders —Susan Hedder was one of them—and he reckoned that he was unlucky if he did not have two or three temporary ones— “Chits that pass in the night” as he called them.
Apart from Susan and the temporary boarders who were, more often than not, chorus girls working for a couple of weeks at the Fulham Empire, the remaining boarders were elderly and staid.
One of them managed a bank, two of them were L.C.C. school teachers, another worked in the hat department of Peter Jones and the other, a professor of sorts, spent most of his time in the Reading Room of the British Museum.
Although interested in all his boarders, Cedric singled Susan out for his special attention. He thought she was a nice, sensible girl and since she was young, pretty and on her own, he regarded her as his own particular responsibility. He was always on at her to change her wet shoes, to take a hot drink before going to bed and not to stay out too late at night. He also followed her romance with George with considerable interest.
Susan had no idea that Cedric knew anything about George. She thought he was a little odd but harmless, and she found his fussy kindness rather touching.
Cedric, who was forty-five and running to fat, led a lonely life. He missed his theatrical friends, the boisterous parties and the far-into-the-night drinking sessions that followed the weekly first nights of the various plays put on by his repertory company. Except for a hurried excursion to the shops each morning, he was chained to the house. The running of the house kept him occupied more or less continuously for nine hours of the day. It was not to be wondered at then that he gradually began to rely on the activities of his boarders for his mental recreation. Having investigated the private affairs of his five elderly and staid boarders and found them, without exception, exceedingly dull, Cedric concentrated on Susan’s private affairs.
He soon discovered that she was in love. Youth in love always seemed to Cedric to be a very beautiful and inspiring phenomenon. It was a pity, of course, that Susan was so secretive about her romance. Nothing would have pleased Cedric better than to have had the opportunity of listening to her confidences over a cup of strong tea. That was to Cedric the height of bliss. Strong tea and a cosy gossip gave him more pleasure than anything else.
Susan, however, was most discouraging when Cedric offered her the obvious openings and no matter how hard he pumped her, she refused to be drawn.
His curiosity, however, soon got the better of him and as he had long since learned to recognize George’s crabbed handwriting, he, rather guiltily at first and then with increasing confidence, intercepted Susan’s letters, steamed them open in the privacy of his kitchen and, in this way, kept in touch with Susan’s romance.
Intercepting George’s letters was really quite a simple and safe business.
Susan left the house a quarter of an hour or so before the postman arrived. Cedric therefore had plenty of time to steam open the letters, read them, seal them again and put them on the hallstand ready for Susan on her return from work.
George’s final letter came as a great shock to Cedric. He read the letter through three times before it dawned on him that there would be no more letters to steam open and no more romance to thrill him and brighten his dreary routine. He sat all the morning by the fire, the letter in his hand, wondering what he should do. He would have liked, of course, to have broken the news gently to Susan, but that he knew was out of the question.
He hoped that this time perhaps she would confide in him and he rehearsed a little speech of kindness and comfort which so moved him that his eyes became misty and a lump formed in his throat.
When, at last, he heard the front door open and he recognized Susan’s brisk step, he opened the kitchen door silently and watched her pick up the letter. He shook his head sadly as he watched her go up the stairs. What a shock for the poor lamb, he thought and feeling that he must do something for her, he began heating some milk and put on a kettle for a hot water bottle.
Cedric was quite elated with the prospects and his dismay was devastating when, just as he was pouring the milk into a glass, he heard Susan run downstairs and a moment later the front door slam.
That was the last straw. Cedric felt so miserable that he immediately went to bed, taking the milk and the hot water bottle with him, but even then he did not sleep. When he heard Susan return, he put on the light and stared in astonished horror at his watch. Twenty minutes past two!
But worse was to follow. Instead of leaving the house at her usual time, Susan did not get up until nine o’clock and she did not leave her bedroom until twenty to ten.
Cedric made a point of being in the hall when she came downstairs. He looked at her sharply expecting to see her white-faced and red-eyed from weeping, but not a bit of it. Susan looked radiant.
Her eyes were bright, her cheeks were flushed and she actually smiled happily at him as she slipped past him to the front door. He was so dumbfounded that she had gone before he could think of anything to say.
The postman added to the mystery by bringing a letter with a City postmark for Susan which contained her Employment and National Health Insurance cards and a curt note saying that she had forgotten to collect them from the cashier when she had given notice.
Cedric, who had no qualms whatsoever in steaming open this letter was flabbergasted. What in the world was the poor child going to do? he asked himself over and over again. Why had she left her job? What had she been doing last night?
And—this was the most perplexing of them all—why had she looked so excited and happy this morning?