'You said about the police…' I reminded him.
'No, Jim,' said the wife, shaking her head.
"The Hind's Whit Excursion,' said Lance Robinson. 'They think Father tried to bring it off the line.'
I smartly took off my cap, because I was lost for any other way to react. I wondered whether the police had been working away all summer, like the bees, and whether I had not put them to it myself after what I'd said in the copper shop at Manchester during my funny turn. But it was no use trying to recall just what I had said then.
'Well, they're here again,' the boy said, and I knew the house. It was behind the boy, half a dozen along at the end of the road. A wagonette and horse stood outside. There was no motorcar in sight.
The colours in this place were all too high: the boy's green suit, the whiteness of the gateposts and road dust, the colours of the flowers in the gardens; and the pillar box in the middle of the road was red like none before. But the horse was black, and the wagonette was black.
'You must still come for tea,' said the boy.
When the strangeness started I could not say; the boy was walking on, and the wife was saying too loudly, 'Master Lance, Master Lance', as if just saying his name could change something. But the boy walked on and the front door of the house opened as he did so. He walked into it, and the wife turned on her heels and fled. A moment later, I turned and followed.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The tram raced back to Blackpool and seemed to fall into the welcoming arms of the crowd at the Southern Terminus. Blackpool was where the trams belonged.
As we got up from our seat, the wife pinned the white rosette back onto her dress and the quiet of the ride was over.
'I'm sure the boy has it all wrong, you know,' she said. 'The police will just have been asking Mr Robinson questions that might lead them to someone else. They asked you questions, didn't they?'
I nodded. She liked Robinson and didn't want him to be the wrecker, so I said nothing, but my thoughts were running along these lines: perhaps he put the stone on the track not so as to stop the train, but only to stop old man Hind's heart, give him such a shock that he pegged out, while he drove alongside in his motorcar to watch. When that failed, he'd tried again, with the motorcar as the weapon.
No. It was all loopy.
When the wife climbed down from the tram, she said, 'Now where's that Tower?' then, a second later, 'Oh!'
Blackpool Tower was the tallest building in England.
'Well,' she said, quite recovered and speaking in her special Yorkshire voice, 'I'm off for me tea.'
I arranged to meet her at six outside the main entrance to the Tower, and she disappeared into the crowd. I remembered about an 'A' cigar that I'd put in my top pocket. I lit it and set off towards the Tower myself. Whether I was pressing against the flow of the crowd or going along with it I couldn't have said; sometimes one, sometimes the other. Inside ten seconds I saw two other fellows smoking big cigars. Blackpool was that sort of place. Down on the beach the crowd was especially thick and you'd see a white arm waved or the top of a pointed hat, and this was a Pierrot show going on.
I was alongside the Tower now – the wife was inside and below, taking tea in the basement.
Music was coming at me from about a dozen different places, and the jangle of it was like those contraptions they have in pubs: the polyphons, which turn very prettily, but never quite seem to play what you'd call a tune. I crossed over the Prom and leant against the railings looking out to sea for a while. There was something about the sea that made you breathe deeply. I smoked my cigar and thought about Robinson: he had lost everything over the summer suiting, and it was the old man who'd been most particularly set against him. Of that I was now certain.
I looked down, and there on the beach, giving a show, was a ventriloquist with a figure on his knee. It was the good ventriloquist from the Seashell, Henry Clarke, and the doll was… what was the name? Leonard. Young Leonard.
There were steps to the beach nearby. It was hard going, walking over the hot sand in my boots, and I fretted that the turn would end by the time I got to it.
'By gum it's hot work this, you know,' Henry Clarke was saying to the little crowd when I reached the spot. 'My head's fairly throbbing, and I'm starting to sweat all over.'
I was at the back of three rows of kids, but Clarke's voice carried pretty well. He was sitting on a folding stool. There was a bottle propped in the sand before him, with a few coppers placed inside to show that's what it was for. Underneath the bottle were some papers, and I knew what these were: handbills for the Seaside Surprises at the Seashell Music Hall.
'It's not quite polite to speak of "sweating" you know,' Henry Clarke was saying to Young Leonard. 'Now let's all hear you say the word "perspiring".'
Leonard looked up quite suddenly then stared around at all the children, his eyes seeming to get wider by the second, but they couldn't do that, so it was just something about the face.
'Oh come on now, you know you're awfully good at talking when you've a mind to be. Leonard, I would like to hear you say: "Around the ragged rock, the ragged rascal ran.'"
Leonard looked at Henry Clarke, then out at all of us. 'So would 1' Leonard said, sounding very glum.
It was all daft stuff but it was real too, and that's why it was funny.
Henry Clarke's folding stool suddenly slipped in the sand, and it was his turn to pull a funny face. This seemed to bring the show to an end, and some of the kids went forward to put money into the bottle.
I put in a penny myself and picked up one of the papers. At the top of the page was Henry Clarke's name. Above it there was nothing. The name of the other ventriloquist, Monsieur Maurice, appeared down below.
'The bill's changed,' I said.
Henry Clarke looked at me with his pleasant face. Leonard was still on his knee. Clarke smiled, perhaps nodding slightly, but saying nothing. He wasn't about to start putting on swank.
One of the kids was pointing at the figure. 'What's he?' he said. The kid was eating a penny lick.
Clarke smiled again. 'Why, this is Leonard,' he said.
Leonard suddenly smiled too, and looked at the boy, who jumped back. It was like electricity.
'He's got a good face,' said another of the kids.
'He has lots of faces really' said Henry Clarke. 'He has what we call his "By Jove, you don't say!" face.'
And those words were now spelled out in the face of Leonard, just as clearly as if they'd been written.
'And he has his… well, what we call his "thinking it over" face.'
Now the dummy was all thoughtfulness, nodding gentle-like.
'Sometimes,' said Clarke, 'he even comes to a conclusion!'
At this, a great look of surprise and happiness appeared on Leonard's face, so that he beamed like the glace kid on the boot-polish tins.
'He's not living though, is he?' said a very little kid, and it was as if he knew the truth but wanted to make quite sure.
'He is not' said Henry Clarke, which was the kindly answer I thought.
He tipped the dummy forwards and slid the head out of the neck. Leonard's head was just as lifelike as before, but now we all saw that it was on a long pole, with levers and wires attached.
'Superior Professional Movement' said Henry Clarke, and he winked at me, for this was grown-up stuff. 'Most figures have a set-up called something similar but Leonard's works are more superior and professional than most. His mouth and eyes move at the same time. That's not so out of the common, but it's the way they move. You see, the leather around his nose and eyes… It's very supple, and the levers draw it in just the right way…'