Beggar’s Choice

XXXV

I shut the skylight behind me. I was on a steepish slope which ran down to meet the next house. I slid down into the trough between the two houses. It was dark, but not quite dark. I could see the edge of the roof, and I could see above me the twin skylight to the one I had just come out of. It wasn’t so easy to climb up as it had been to slide down, and when I got there, the window was bolted on the inside-at least I suppose it was bolted, for I couldn’t get it to budge. I slid down again into the trough and went and looked over the edge. There was a nasty long drop to the street. The knocking had stopped. That meant that the police were in the house:-talking to Mrs. Bell, perhaps searching my room, perhaps finding the ladder still propped against the trap-door.

I went to the back of the house and looked over there. If Fay had kept her head and put the ladder away, and if I hadn’t been seen letting myself into the house, they might just go away after searching my room. There were too many ifs. They had probably had a man watching for me to come home. I couldn’t risk staying where I was, and there was only one way of getting anywhere else, and that was over the ridge of the roof. I didn’t like the idea a bit, but I liked it better than being caught with the Queen Anne bow on me.

I crawled to the ridge and slid down on the other side. Two more slopes, and two more skylights, and both of them bolted. I made up my mind to go on. If I found an open skylight, I might be able to get away; and if I didn’t, I should at any rate be getting farther away from the police.

I didn’t know how many roofs I crossed. I got pretty good at it, but it made me wild to think of the damage I was doing to my clothes. I should think I had put about a dozen houses behind me, when I made up my mind to take a breather and review the situation. I thought I should be quite safe, because I didn’t see the police getting across those roof-tops without making a most almighty row, so I sat down in the gutter and took stock.

I was out of breath and dirty, wet about the hands, and slimy about the knees, but I was feeling a good deal bucked-I don’t know why, but I was. I had no business to be bucked, with a stolen heirloom sewn into my coat and the police hot on my trail; but from the moment Isobel kissed me I didn’t feel as if anything could ever hurt me again. I felt as if I could take anything on and make a success of it.

My head was most extraordinarily clear. I went over what Fay had said. Anna was behind this little trick with the Queen Anne bow. And then something hit me right between the eyes. The package-the package that Isobel had brought-the long matchbox with its little separate packets done up in white paper and initialed-where did that come in? I felt perfectly certain that it came in somewhere, and I thought I saw Anna behind that too.

My thoughts began to nose round that package like terriers round a rat-hole. I certainly smelt a rat. I thought I had done a pretty good piece of work when I chucked the match-box over the wall in Olding Crescent. All the things Fay had said about peddling cocaine came back to me. If those white paper packets contained cocaine, and information had been given to the police, I might have found myself pretty well up to my neck in the soup. Because if the information concerned unlawful drugs, they’d search me and they’d find not only a boxful of neat little packets of white powder, but also a valuable piece of stolen jewelry; and if the information concerned my uncle’s stolen heirloom, they’d not only get that, but a dozen or so dollops of cocaine as well. And either way, I was for it; for if, on the one hand, I cleared myself by accusing Fay, who had planted me with the bow, I couldn’t wouldn’t and shouldn’t in any conceivable circumstances involve Isobel by admitting that she’d ever been within a hundred miles of handling that beastly package of cocaine. I thanked Heaven for Fay’s attack of conscience, and for my own feeling that a match boxful of mysterious packets was not the sort of thing to carry about.

I had got that all sorted out nice and clear, and I was just beginning to think that Fay had pulled herself together and done what she’d been told, when I heard a sort of smothered racket away behind me. I knew what it was too, without waiting to think. I’d done too much slipping and sliding on wet slates not to recognize the sound of other people doing the same thing. The police boot is a fine solid bit of furniture, but it doesn’t lend itself to a stealthy approach. I thought I’d better be going.

I slithered up the slanting roof, using the skylight as a half-way house. I’d given up expecting to find anything open, but I just tried it for luck, and it came up in my hand and nearly sent me sprawling. I caught at the sill and saved myself, but it was touch and go whether I could stop the skylight from coming down with a bang on my knuckles. It was cold and slippery, and my hands were wet, but I managed to shift my grip, lift the light right up, and crawl through. The drop was only about four feet.

As I crouched on the attic floor and pulled the skylight down, I thought the police boots sounded nearer. I lost time looking for the bolt, and when I found it it wasn’t any good. The wood of the jamb had cracked and taken the socket out of the true. Try as I would, I couldn’t get the bolt to go home; and that, of course, was why I had been able to get in. I gave up trying and went groping through the attic, feeling for the trap.

That attic was cram full of stuff. I don’t know why people put old baths and kitchen fenders up in a loft. I ran into a large birdcage, a marble slab, which I suppose was the top of a washstand, about a gross of curtain-rings, perfectly beastly to kneel on, and some frightfully dangerous wire-netting. The curtain-rings and the wire-netting were immediately over the trap, and I had to shift them before I could get it open.

I looked on to a dark landing. The stair ran down from it the opposite way to Mrs. Bell’s stair, and the landing below was lighted. I could see the banisters like black ninepins against the yellow glow. I was most frightfully glad to see a light again.

There was, of course, no ladder. The drop was nothing in itself, but there’s too much of me to drop any distance at all without making a noise; also I should have to leave the trap open behind me. It couldn’t be helped, however. I took off my shoes, suspended them round my neck, hung by my hands, and dropped, I hoped, lightly.

Whilst I was putting my shoes on again, I thought I heard a noise on the roof, and as I stood up, I did hear some one raise the skylight in the attic above. There was a sound of voices. Some one shouted. I didn’t wait to hear any more.

I made tracks down the stair, wondering all the time when somebody would put a head out of a door and scream. Nobody did. I passed the landing with a light on it and began to go down the next lot of stairs, but before I had taken a dozen steps there came a heavy banging on the front door.

Of course I knew exactly what had happened. The man who had been following me across the roofs had found the unbolted skylight and, I dare say, had taken a look inside; in which case he’d seen the open trap-door as well. He couldn’t follow me, because I don’t suppose that the law allows the police to break into a house, even in pursuit of a burglar, so he’d signaled from the roof to his pal below, and the pal was knocking at the front door. The minute any one came, there would be a request to search the house for a dangerous criminal; and with one man coming down from the skylight and another coming up from the hall, I would be fairly caught between two fires, unless I managed to get down into the basement before any one opened the door. Of course there might not be a way out of the basement.

I hadn’t a chance to find out, because I hadn’t taken two more steps down, before I could hear some one coming heavily up the basement stair. That did me in. I couldn’t go on, because the next turn would bring me in sight of the front door. I went back on to the lighted landing.

Two closed doors faced me. I listened first at one and then at the other. There wasn’t the slightest sound of any kind. I tried to see if there was a light on the other side, but I couldn’t make anything of it.

The heavy steps below reached the hall. I heard a bolt drawn back and the rattle of a chain. Then voices-one very gruff, and the other a woman’s voice, sleepy and cross. She kept saying things like “What did you say?” and “No, you can’t see her-she’s in bed.” And then, “I didn’t catch the half of that.” And then “What did you say?” all over again.

I guessed her to be an old servant, fussy, opinionated, and rather deaf. She kept the door on the chain, and had the policeman fairly bellowing before I heard her say, “Well, I’ll go and arst her.” And at the same moment I saw the handle of the farther door begin to turn.

I’ve never moved so quickly in my life. Before that handle had finished turning, I had opened the other door and was over the threshold. I heard some one coming out of the next room, and I heard the servant coming up the stairs. I shut the door and turned to see where I was.

I was in a lighted bedroom, and on the other side of it there was an old lady sitting up in bed.