Mr. Zero (12 page)

Algy went on up to his room and proceeded to have a bath. The capacity to produce boiling hot water at any hour of the day or night was one of Mrs. Barker's shining virtues. She had others. Her pastry was a dissolving dream, her pancakes melted in the mouth, and her soups were of an infinite variety. With these things she had doubtless ensnared the heart, head and stomach of Barker, who had rightly esteemed them above the attractions of face and figure. Vast and shapeless was Mrs. Barker, small of eye and scanty of hair, emerging only at the rarest intervals from the underground kitchen where she stoked fires and meditated rare sauces and omelettes.

Algy wallowed in his bath and anticipated his dinner with pleasure. When the telephone bell rang he cursed it bitterly. Never is a hot bath so agreeable as when you have to leave it. Never is the voice of a friend less welcome than when you listen to it girt with a hastily snatched towel. Algy dripped, Algy cursed, Algy contorted his agreeable features into a scowl. He said “Who's there?” in the voice that means “Why weren't you drowned at birth?” and heard Gay Hardwicke say rather breathlessly,

“Oh, Algy, is that you?”

It was the sort of ridiculous thing that girls did say. Because if it was, why ask him, and if it wasn't, why call him Algy? But the scowl subsided into a mere frown as he replied,

“It's me. I'm dripping all over the Barkers' new carpet.”

“Why?” said Gay in an interested voice.

“Because I was in the middle of having a bath.”

He distinctly heard her laugh. Then she said,

“Darling, how grim! Go away and finish having it and then come back all clean and tidy and ring me up.”

“Can't you tell me what you want?”

She laughed again, a little nervously he thought.

“Not whilst you drip. I want you in your very best mood. You sounded perfectly ferocious when you asked who I was.” She hung up, and Algy went back to his bath.

When he rang up ten minutes later she enquired anxiously after his temper.

“I thought it sounded quite feverish just now.”

“It's in the pink,” said Algy.

“Really? Because I want to ask you something, and I'd rather know beforehand if you're likely to blow up.”

Algy smiled at the pattern of humming-birds and roses on his sitting-room wall.

“No explosives on the premises. You wrong me, my child. I am known as Algernon, the man who never lost his temper.”

“How awful that sounds! Has anyone really ever called you Algernon?”

“My grandmother did. I can just remember her saying, ‘Here are threepence, Algernon. Do not spend them all at once.'”

“And did you?”

“Of course. And then she died and left me a great deal more than threepence, bless her. Did I ring you up to talk about grandmothers? I mean, was that the original intention, or were you just asking after my temper?”

Gay's voice dropped. She said,

“Well, I want to ask you something.”

Algy took her up.

“Last time you said that, I offered you half my kingdom, but you only wanted to talk about being blackmailed. What is it this time?”

“Cars,” said Gay in a burst of confidence. “I mean your car. I mean—”

“What do you mean? You're not getting anywhere, you know.”

“Well, that's just what I want to do. I want to get somewhere, and—I don't see how I can without a car, and—I wondered—whether you'd lend me yours—”

Algy stopped smiling. He stared at the nearest hummingbird and received the impression that it was rather a sinister fowl. He said quite slowly,

“You want me to lend you my car. When?”

“Tonight,” said Gay.

“Can you drive? Have you got a licence?”

“I've got a licence. I've had lessons.”

Algy burst out laughing.

“My child, if bent on suicide, why involve my Bentley?”

A very small voice came back to him.

“I don't know. I thought perhaps—you would—”

Algy was smitten. She sounded like a forlorn child. He said,

“My dear, don't be idiotic. If you want to go anywhere, I'll drive you—you know that.”

He could feel her hesitation. Odd to feel it like that along the wire. And then her voice:

“I don't—know. Algy, would you—would you really?”

“Of course I would. I will.”

He heard her catch her breath.

“And not ask questions, or want to know where I'm going and what it's all about?”

“I'm afraid I'll have to know where you're going or I can't get you there. Gay, what's this all about? Can't you tell me?”

“No—no, I can't—I'll have to find some other way.”

“What time do you want to be fetched?”

“I think about ten. It'll take about two hours. I want to be there by twelve.”

An almost inaudible whistle escaped from Algy.

“Is this an all-night show?”

“Oh, I don't think so. I think we ought to be back by three.”

“Gay!”

She found words suddenly.

“Algy, I don't know why you should. There isn't any reason really. But I've got to, and it would make all the difference to know you were there—standing by. Only I can't tell you anything, and if you're going to ask questions—”

“I won't,” said Algy.

“Because I could go alone.”

“You're not going alone. I'm calling for you at ten,” said Algy, and hung up.

XVI

The Bentley ran smoothly between dark hedgerows. London was a long way behind them. Everyone in the world was a long way off. They moved in their own light, a full, clear beam stretching out before them, stretching on. They had talked whilst the streets were about them, but now they were silent. The talk had moved lightly on the surface and never broken it.

When Algy asked, “Where do you want to go?” Gay had a map to show him, ready folded.

“The name of the place is Colebrook. It's about thirty-five miles.”

“Then it won't take anything like two hours.”

And then it was, “When did you learn to drive?”

“Last summer when we were at Cromer, darling.”

“And you passed your test?”

“You're very interested.”

Algy said, “Yes. You haven't told me if you passed. Did you?”

There was pause. Then Gay said hotly,

“He was a perfect beast! How was I to know that the thing was going to do a sort of wiggle and run into a pillar-box?”

“My poor child! So he failed you? Most unfair. A low fellow.”

“I was frightfully sick,” said Gay.

Algy took a hand off the wheel to pat her shoulder.

“Bear up—there's always tomorrow. Avoid the scarlet pillar-box. But, my child, I seem to remember your saying you had a licence. How come?”

“Oh, that was Mummy's,” said Gay brightly. “She left it behind when she went to Madeira.”

“And you were going to take my unfortunate Bentley out on a fraudulent licence and ram pumps and pillar-boxes all over the Home Counties?”

“I mightn't have,” said Gay.

“Ye gods!” Algy groaned. “And you call yourself a law-abiding citizen!”

“No, I don't. I think laws are silly—at least a lot of them are. I mean, if I wanted to break one I would.”

Algy laughed.

“Come along then—what's your fancy in the way of a crime? I'd like to know.”

Gay shivered, and didn't know why. Quite suddenly she felt like a lost dog and wanted to cry. It came over her that she might at this very moment have been trying to drive this large, strange car along a dark, strange road. She felt immeasurably grateful to Algy for having saved her from this. She said in a little melancholy voice,

“I might have man-slaughtered someone. It was very nice of you to come, because I should hate to be a man-slaughterer, and be prosecuted, and go to prison. And the family would foam, because they're all tangled up in a law-suit as it is, and it doesn't look as if it was ever going to end.”

All this was behind them now. The darkness shut them in. Black, half-seen things slipped by—a big soft blur that was a house, and the long smudge that was a line of trees; water glinting for a moment and dissolving back into the gloom again. There is always a strangeness about driving at night. To have so small a visible space in which to move and yet to move so fast, to rush upon the dark and see it slide away, receding endlessly upon itself, induces an inertia of the faculties. Thought is in suspense, ready to move again when the spell is broken.

Gay had been in turmoil. She had been afraid, bold, eager, and afraid again. She had nerved herself to go down to Cole Lester. She would have nerved herself to the point of driving a strange Bentley along strange dark lanes. She would presently nerve herself to grope in a dark garden for Sylvia's blackmailer. Because Sylvia simply mustn't be allowed to hand over her husband's papers to Mr. Zero, and the only way of stopping her that Gay could think of was to butt in at the critical moment and scare Mr. Zero off the map. He was bound to be scared if he thought there was a witness to his blackmailing, and it ought to keep him quiet and prevent him from worrying Sylvia again. Gay had thought it a very good plan in London. Presently at Cole Lester she would probably not feel so sure about it. At the moment it was just a plan suspended between the time in which it had been conceived and the time at which it must be brought into action.

They came in Colebrook and stopped. One of the little bright yellow signs put up by the A.A. informed them that they had arrived. At a quarter before midnight there would certainly have been no one abroad to settle the question. The village was fast and dreamlessly asleep about its green, its pond, and its overgrown churchyard.

Algy said, “Well?” and waited. When there was no answer, he said, “What next?”

“I'm trying to think,” said Gay.

She had been to Cole Lester once when Sylvia was engaged, but it was more than a year ago, and it had been daylight. She had to shut her eyes and call the daylight picture back. Mrs. Thrale, and Marcia, and Sylvia and herself in the car which Francis had sent for them. Mrs. Thrale twittering all the way. And they had gone on past the church and along a lane, and then there were big gates, big wrought-iron gates, and a stone pillar on either side with a thing like a pineapple on top. Mrs. Thrale had given a sort of little gasp, and Marcia had chattered about what a lovely place it was, but Slyvia had just sat there and smiled without a word to say. Then Francis had met them and taken them all over the house, and the garden, and the grounds—

Gay opened her eyes and said,

“We turn up by the church—we've got to find the church.”

“Church all present and correct,” said Algy—“on the left.”

“Then we turn up by it, and there's a lane, and you come to some big gates.”

And suppose they were shut
.

This thought, which might have occurred to Gay in town, bobbed up with horrid suddenness now. You simply can't take a blackmailer by surprise if you have to knock up a lodge and get yourself admitted in a flourish of trumpets.

The gates were open. Gay seemed to remember that the drive was a very long one. She wondered whether she dared let Algy drive her in. It would be nice to feel that he was somewhere near, and it would be very nice not to have to walk up that dark drive all by herself. But could she risk it? She didn't think she could, and when Algy said, “Do we drive in?” she made her voice as firm as possible and said, “No.”

“What happens?”

“You stay here—I go in.”

“Gay—”

“You said you wouldn't ask any questions.”

“I'm not asking questions. But I don't like it. Why not tell me what it's all about?”

He heard an odd little laugh.

“Isn't that a question?”

“I suppose it is in a way, but not he way you meant. Look here, my dear, I'm not an absolute fool, and I can't very well drive you to Cole Lester without guessing—”

“You're not to guess. And I never said a word about Cole Lester, and—Algy, you
promised
.”

“All right—my head's in a bag. I've never heard of Cole Lester—it's rather famous, you know—I don't know that it belongs to Francis Colesborough, and I shouldn't dream of guessing.”

“You're not to, you're not to! Oh, Algy, you
did
promise!”

“Yes—I was a fool. Well, I stay here. Are you going to be long?”

“I don't know,” said Gay in rather a small voice.

“You'd better have a torch.” He put it into her hand. “If I'm asleep when you get back, just wake me.” He shut the door between them.

Gay looked at it with a horrid sinking feeling, and then turned away.

They had stopped just short of the gates, and Algy had switched off the headlights. She put on her little torch, found her way between the gateposts, and then put it out again. She must do without it if she possibly could, because her plan depended wholly on being able to get to the yew walk without being seen.

It was terribly black in the drive. She stood still and shut her eyes whilst she counted a hundred. When she opened them again she could see the black tracery of the trees against the sky, and the sky wasn't black—there was light coming through it, and she could see a star. She began to walk up the drive. Once or twice she blundered into a holly or a yew, but for the most part she was able to keep fairly straight, and as she went on her eyes began to see more and more. There was one blackness of a dense bush, and another of a tree. She kept a hand stretched out before her to save her face, but she didn't use the torch again.

In the end she came out upon the broad sweep in front of the house and could see it plainly as a great mass rising up against the sky. There was no light anywhere. The front seemed windowless, without a gleam. She stood at the edge of the trees and tried to think which way she must go. She had to get round to the back of the house. And there was a path—she remembered that there was a path.