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  “See, now. I’d forgotten. There’s another little thing. When do the men go at our warehouse—the fellows who don’t want to stay? This week or next?”

  Jimmy did not reflect. “Haven’t heard,” he said brightly. Let chance answer for him.

  Perriam was drumming on the table with his fingers, but he stopped. It seemed a long time before he spoke again.

  “When will you know?”

  “Well, they haven’t told me, and I haven’t asked.”

  The principal pushed his chair back noisily, paused, and then rose in pointed slowness. He began to pace the room, his head bowed in thought. As he walked, he snapped his fingers once or twice, and his resentment began to glow anew at the frivolity of this frustration of reason. He considered, with his back to Jimmy, a picture of a ship on the wall. Jimmy knew it, the old Chrysolite. Important once; now that rare lithograph. Without turning, Mr. Perriam asked, “What is your reason for saying that?”

  “No reason for it. I merely report the fact.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  Here was a man Mr. Perriam admired. He had not expected this. It was very good. Colet was a stouter fellow than he had imagined. Any one who coolly ignored the aggressiveness with which Mr. Perriam disguised his own simple hesitances was sure of his secret approbation. A sly smile moved round his set mouth, but Jimmy did not see it. Still, this young man would have to be disciplined, to get him back to his place. When Mr. Perriam swung about his face was flushed and grim, and even fanatical in its assumed determination. The principal of that important house began, with sonorous sententiousness, for his task was not easy, to advise his assistant what young Colet was, when he came there, and what he had become in that fostering office. Mr. Perriam had all the command of rhetoric of a romantic man of affairs luxuriating in the waywardness of fools. He was solemn, and eloquently reasonable. He was enjoying this. He moved hither and thither with the energy of his warm periods, as if this was a meeting, and he could not help an appeal to the better feelings of a thoughtless generation, which might, nevertheless, do well, if it would but listen to him.

  Colet hardly heard him, after the initial outburst. There was but a continuous and strenuous noise. He was meek and enduring. The room grew hot. This must end some day. But Perriam, he could see, was a figure of lasting power, able to continue, and the logic of his monomania was unanswerable. Jimmy merely waited patiently for silence to fall. It did not occur to him that he might laugh and walk out of the room and away. Nothing occurred to him.

  But his meek submission to ill-luck, which to Mr. Perriam seemed but a show of proud and enduring reserve, caused his chief to believe that this appeal for gratitude and common sense was in vain, a further offence that made Mr. Perriam flounder in his periods. He was convinced by his own eloquence. His sense of an injustice became genuine, and too quick for his words. They were not ready for his heartfelt sincerity. He began to accuse Colet with an emphasis which he felt was all too weak. He saw that this was because he was not near enough for his assistant to get a full impression. He approached Colet, with his voice raised. Jimmy looked at him then, in dreary apprehension of a puerile but menacing apparition.

  “A man like you,” Mr. Perriam was saying, “has no right to be here. There are better men. I’ll tell you what it is to take a place you can’t fill. It’s swindling. You are a fraud. That damned quietness and good-nature cheats the people who pay you.”

  Jimmy was not listening. His principal, close to him, raised an arm in trenchant reprobation. Colet glanced at the threat with indifference, and then an uncalled surge of abhorrence turned him black. He saw Perriam’s near mask as the front of all arrogant swinishness. He struck it.

  Mr. Perriam behaved as though he had no bones. He dropped, face downwards, and his unexpected falling weight, which his assistant tried to catch, sent Colet floundering. He sat on the floor, legs spread out, deferentially waiting, as it seemed, for Mr. Perriam to rise first. But Mr. Perriam did not move. Colet eyed his chief in astonishment. The room was silent. Mr. Perriam remained on the carpet, with one arm awkwardly folded under him. His bald head, resting on the Axminster roses, was absurdly out of place. His boots with their spats were spread unnaturally. The assistant scrambled to his chief’s aid, and turned him round. Some effort was necessary; and Jimmy was as surprised as if, succouring the figure of a man, he found it had the head of a tailor’s dummy. Mr. Perriam’s face was a bad parody in wax. His mouth was open, and his teeth looked dry. His tongue was large and fatuous. Mr. Perriam stared at the ceiling.

  Jimmy shook him, and called to him, in the sudden anger of dismay. Mr. Perriam continued to stare at the ceiling. Jimmy loosened his chief’s collar in fumbling haste, swore at the knot of the neck-cloth, tore roughly at the starch which held the collar-stud; but Mr. Perriam did not object. His big rough chin was warm but docile. His limp submission was horrible. Jimmy saw that he was dead; and waited on his knees, hoping that some one would come in. The church clock chimed nine. Only the cat looked in at the door, in round-eyed surprise, but did not enter.

  Jimmy went to his own room, grabbed his hat to hurry for assistance, yet returned irresolutely to his principal’s room, because, naturally, one would expect to see Mr. Perriam in his chair. But he was still on the floor. Colet left the office, in the confused intention to escape from that object, to get help, to think it over, to call the police.

  Chapter VI

  Colet was surprised to find that the night outside was in cool and spacious repose. Its indifference stopped his rush. The Avenue was empty. He could hear the traffic as usual in Leadenhall Street. It was still there. And then he could hear also the lonely sound of his footsteps quickly following him. That sound startled yet steadied him. As he approached Billiter Street a policeman strolled into view, paused, and yawned. Jimmy was looking for a policeman, but not for one who yawned. That sign of boredom confused him, for he was nearing the constable. His distress would have checked him with an impulse to confide, but his legs did not know that, and so he was carried on.

  He found himself in Fenchurch Street. He was walking east, but without any reason. He had merely turned to the left. He was just walking, and somewhat too hurriedly, so he slowed down. Then he came to Aldgate Pump, which is the starting-point in London for all solitary and extravagant adventures. He stopped, though not because he recognised a starting-point. He knew that pump. He was astonished to see it there. It had not changed. It was the first impartial and certain landmark to show distinctly since he took his eyes off the Axminster carpet.

  What should he do? He thought of this as he continued to walk eastwards. He did not know what he expected to find in that direction, but the vista ahead, he had seen, was more friendly with a larger crowd. The crowd, somehow, looked helpful. He wanted to get into it. One more does not seem to matter so much when the crowd is large. Nobody looked at him. This steadied him still more. He did not want to be looked at.

  Something ought to be done. Should he telephone to Mrs. Perriam? “Is that Mrs. Perriam? I have just killed your husband. I couldn’t help it.” Seemed rather silly. She might be upset.

  Was there anything he could do? He considered that, and continued his easterly drift. Perhaps there was nothing he could do. Now and again the image of that yawning policeman came before him, to be instantly expunged. That fellow would not understand; he didn’t know Perriams, and never saw the boss with his arm up, bullying, and that look on his big flushed face. The look wasn’t on his face now. Where had it gone? No good trying to produce it in evidence. The little things which really count can never be shown in evidence. They do the trick, and then they vanish.

  Nobody could help Perriam now. He ought not to have died like that. Too idiotic. A man who could die so easily should have kept quiet. Bad as a swindle. He would never have believed it. Any one would think the heart was just waiting for an excuse to stop. Heavens, you couldn’t stop a decent heart like that.
/>   Had he really hit his chief? He did not remember doing it. He could not recall the feel of the contact. The violent old fool just dropped. Poor old fellow. A pity he waited till that telephone bell rang. Perriam would be alive now if he hadn’t. It was odd that he couldn’t remember the blow. But that wouldn’t do. No good, that. Either he hit the man, or else God knocked him out. Perhaps a bit of both. All the same to the police. Easy for God to prove an alibi.

  He found himself by the stalls of Aldgate. There was a distraction of hissing naphtha flares, and illuminated trams which interlaced on many tracks like short lengths of lighted streets on the move; and a confused slow tide of faces, masks that were vacant, foreign, indifferent, which expected nothing. They seemed to be upborne on shadows. They went slowly past, bobbing on the surface of nothing, and had no names, and were going nowhere. Each face had but a brief existence by the favour of a chance light, and then was gone.

  That made the matter worse. It was meaningless. The faces just glanced once, and then went out. Eyes in a never-ending stream, that came into existence with one look of indifference as they passed into a light, and then were done. He went into a tavern to get out of it. There were many eyes floating past, a ceaseless drift of stares.

  His thoughts would not stop, and yet they did not help him. Perhaps the morning would help him. It would be all cut and dried by then. No escape. He could stand up to it then. But to what? What would there be? Only the usual cold and compelling logic of the old confusion, and those eyes all round looking on indifferently.

  He was not sure what he wanted in a public-house. A brisk potman appeared to know what, and served him. The potman had a squint. That was a good squint. It made the chap seem polite. He sat on a bench near a tough who was thumping a table with a heavy hand to emphasise a matter which had to be whispered, though huskily, to a companion who listened with his eyes shut, while sucking a pipe. “I arst yer. What would you ’ave done?” The lean man did not open his eyes. He nodded his head solemnly.

  The talker glanced furtively at Jimmy beside him, who was gazing in evident abstraction at a glass globe in its haze of tobacco smoke. The man had no collar, and he eased his thick moist neck from a constricting shirt-band with a finger, and grimaced in impatient discomfort. “I’d ’ad enough of the bitch. Too much of it. But that stopped her jaw. An’ there you are, Bill. I shan’t turn up in the mornin’.”

  The other fellow removed his pipe. “Police know?” he asked.

  Jimmy moved instantly at that word to look at them. The tough felt his movement, and swung sharply upon him with his great hands clenched on the greasy knees of his trousers. He contemplated Jimmy with lowering insolence in silence, head thrust forward, for some seconds.

  “’Ere, you—you with the whiskers. You listening to us? Know anything? By cripes, you shift your ear, or it’ll get thick.”

  Jimmy felt a change of thought. It went over him with a glow of pleasure. He smiled kindly at the tough. Good, good, that fellow was a weight.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Alarmed!” The big fellow inclined his head to his friend. “’Ear ’im, Bill? Arsts me if I’m alarmed.” His face came round with decision. “Don’t you wait ’ere any longer than you must, whiskers. This pub is unhealthy. Understand what I mean? You got anything else to do, go and do it.”

  The distraction grew still more pleasing, though Jimmy thought it might be better to go. Yet not too soon. He maintained his friendly smile, and took a drink.

  “Plenty of other things to do, when I feel like it. Don’t let me keep you from your interesting conversation with your friend.”

  The man steadily took stock of Jimmy, hesitated, and turned away, to mumble to his companion. Jimmy presently rose, wished him good night, and left the tavern. He paused, when in the shades beyond, to watch the door. The two men came out, surveyed the traffic carefully, and walked towards him. This would never do. He kept close to the wall, and continued. He took a dark and handy by-way, and lost himself in it. Those two fellows did not appear to enter it. No use having more trouble. He had an unlucky fist.

  Where was he? But it did not matter where he was. Any circumstance would do now, for he had lost the old set. Lost it? Not so easily lost as that. Anyhow, he might as well walk off his feelings till morning, when he would have to own up.

  Queer place, this. There was a wall beside him which was Cyclopean. A straight section of primordial night, like the beginning of the way down to Erebus. The just and predestined path for him. He would follow it to whatever was at the bottom of it. He did not know that it was, anciently, but the beginning of Ratcliffe Highway. The night was brooding and overcast. He could only guess that he was still going east. There were no stars. Why go east? Well, when the stars have fallen out of the sky, of course they are not there for use.

  When he came to a street lamp he could see the wall was only dingy brickwork, but it looked like the palpable residue of old chaos, something which had never seen daylight. It ranged upwards beyond the glim in the street. No end to it, above. The glass of the lamp was broken, and its flame, shaken by a draught, caused irresolution in the revealed area of the wall, which contracted and expanded, as though immemorial night were resilient, but too vast to be moved by a little light except as a local jest.

  He continued along by the wall, which was so vague that sometimes his hand knocked it. Then he remembered he had a body. Damn! He was still there. He was not a disembodied spirit yet walking in a chaste nightshirt down to Hades. But there was no need of a grave-cloth for him, to get the appropriate feeling. Was Apollyon anywhere about? It would be a pleasure to meet him. Give a fellow something to do. The trouble with Belial is that you can get no nearer to him than when in abstraction you bark your knuckles. Pretty lonely, that kind of conflict, in the valley of the shadow. The worst thing in Hell is that nobody else is there, no devil, no fire that has the merit of being everlasting, no pal, no light, no way out, and the way in behind you gone like yesterday morning.

  Were they houses, opposite? They might be houses. They were more like that than anything else. Some were the complement of the wall beside him, and the roofs of others came down almost to his level. The irregular penumbra opposite was sprinkled with lighted squares. The squares showed, surprisingly, that there might be others beside himself in this abiding-place of night; he could see into their lighted caves. Who and what were they? At times the shadow of a colossal and distorted head would appear on a window-blind, a protean shape which confused a newcomer with its grotesque mockery of order and shapeliness, reduced itself to a sudden knob, and faded off. The others here had that scope. They could take any shape they liked, and diminish to nothing suddenly while you watched. Occasionally there were wanderers like himself on the other side of the way, figures with no character, in no hurry. They only moved. Perhaps they were shapes which had come off the blinds for a change.

  At times he heard voices, but they belonged to nobody. Nobody was there to speak. Once there was a single eldritch cry. Jimmy stopped. It came from a narrow opening in the dark on the other side, to which depth was given by a distant bracket lamp on a wall. He could see nothing but the lamp up there. Its light flattened and turned blue in a gust, and then flared again, as though it had got over that trouble. Maybe the lamp had shrieked in its loneliness. A figure, which reminded Jimmy of a man, leaned against a post at the bottom of the turning. It did not stir. It did not move to look at the lamp which had screamed. Perhaps it was used to the cries of loneliness in the dark.

  Jimmy felt it was time to make out what the shapes were that haunted this region. He crossed over to see. But the figure did not look at him. Its head was on its breast, studying the road, perhaps trying to see daylight on a path that was far below the reach of daylight. There came along three other forms which appeared to be two women and a man, and they shambled together past him, singing with drawling and doleful remorse. The yowling whine of the women
was almost human in its discordance with the subjugating dark to which it was addressed.

  Jimmy, nearing another lamp, was thoughtfully regarding a truncated monument which stood under it. What did that commemorate? The top of it moved, and turned a human face to him. It was a policeman. “Good night,” said the policeman, as Jimmy got within that brief circle of knowledge.

  “Good evening,” said Jimmy, and stopped.

  “Having a midnight prowl, sir?” asked the policeman.

  “Yes,” said Jimmy. “This is a strange parish.”

  “Oh, I dunno. Not to us. We’re used to it. Not so bad as it’s painted.”

  “I thought it looked like a place where everything was hidden away.”

  “Not it. Don’t you believe it. No good for hiding in. Too many looking on. No good to come here, after a little upset like, thinking that you can get lost. Though some people do say so. I read a book the other day … funny things get into books. All about this place. But not like it is when you know it, same as I do.”

  Jimmy turned over the keys in his pocket. There wasn’t much to talk about, if you didn’t want to say anything.

  “I heard an unpleasant scream just now, at the turning above.”

  “Yers; they’re always nasty to hear. But there’s nothing in it. Take no notice, that’s the thing to do. No screams, guv’nor, take it from me, when some one’s really getting it in the neck. They take good care of that. As a rule. Only amateurs let ’em scream.” The constable was amused. “If they began with a loud noise our job would be as easy as kiss your hand. Go straight to it, couldn’t we? But they don’t oblige us. We have to find ’em afterwards.”

  The officer seemed glad of some one to talk to. He eased his helmet.

  “Take it from me, sir.” He jerked his left thumb over his shoulder. “Why, only last week a young feller up there, he tried it on. Came from another part of London. People always think they’re safe when they dunno where they are, like. Reckoned, I suppose, that anything could happen here and nobody would notice it. God bless me, the fact that he was here gave him away. What was he doing here? Of course, everybody asked that. Wouldn’t come here for pleasure, as you might say.” The constable chuckled again. “And there you are.”