Ladies’ Bane

CHAPTER 2-1

CHAPTER 2The dining-room at Fenella’s club was one of those rooms where you don’t notice very much what the weather is like outside. At lunchtime in the middle of January the light would be on anyhow, so it was not until they had lingered over their coffee and Fenella remembered that she had an appointment to try an absolutely new hair-do that either of them noticed the fog.

“And if I really can’t drop you, darling, I’d better fly, or goodness knows if I’ll get there!”

Ione’s “No—quite the wrong direction” was gathered up in the rush of departure. She stood for a moment on the pavement outside the club before deciding that it was no use trying to do any more shopping, and that she had better just walk round to the nearest Tube station and go home. At the time it seemed not only a sensible thing to do, but a perfectly easy one. She knew this part of London like the back of her hand, and the station was not more than five minutes’ walk. Yet before the five minutes were up she was lost.

She had somehow missed a turning which she ought to have taken. Well, that was quite simple—she must go back and find it. She turned, walked for another five minutes, and knew that she had got right off the track. And what was worse, she had walked into a much denser patch of fog. If it had been like this in front of the club, she would never have started out. As it was, she had no idea of how far she had come, or in what direction. She found that she had no ideas about anything. No amount of darkness is so bewildering as fog, since it not only baffles, but confuses every sense. The eye still sees, but what it sees bears no relation to reality. The ear still hears, but it can no longer decide what is near and what is far. Everything is unnatural, distorted.

Well, she must keep on walking. These London fogs vary very much in density. She might at any time emerge from the worst of it, or at the very least come out upon some thoroughfare where she could ask her way. If it was as thick as this, it would be too much to hope that the buses would be running, or that there would be a taxi, but someone would be able to tell her the way to the Tube. Someone? It came over her that it was a good many minutes now since she had so much as heard a passing footstep.

She began to walk again without the least idea of where she was going. She found it extremely difficult to keep a straight line. Her left foot would slip from the kerb with a jerk, and a minute or two later her right, groping, would bruise itself against the wall in front of a house. The street-lamps really made everything worse. They showed only as dim orange cocoons which lighted nothing except the fog.

It was when she was passing one of them that she made her first contact with another human being. A step sounded—somewhere beside her, behind her, she didn’t know which—and a hand came out of the fog to snatch at her bag. It missed, because she stepped sideways into the road and ran for it, her heart thudding against her side. When she pulled up, there was no other sound but her own labouring breath. Stupid to have been so startled. It was only some petty thief who wanted her bag, and would have had it, his eyes being probably better at this kind of thing than hers, if she hadn’t swerved almost before the snatching hand shot out.

She came after this to a more frequented place. People went by, singly for the most part and at fairly long intervals. It must be about four o’clock, and of course no one who could help it would be out. After the attempt to snatch her bag she no longer thought of asking the way. You hear a footstep, and it tells you hardly anything at all. Or does it? She found herself getting interested in the footsteps. The slow, heavy one which might belong to an elderly tradesman full of solid worth or to the mother of six. Or perhaps to a prosperous burglar out to do a little quiet housebreaking in the fog. The light hurrying step of someone who would probably scream if you spoke to her. The hesitating step of someone who was probably as lost as herself, but who could be by chance another lurking thief.

She thought afterwards that she must have turned a corner without knowing it, because there were no more footsteps. The street seemed narrow, and the lamps a good deal farther apart. She pictured it as one of those quiet backwaters set with neat narrow-fronted houses all alike. She knew that the fronts were narrow, because there was a balustrade—so many dumpy stone pillars and three or four steps up to the front door. That the balustrade was there to guard an area upon which the basement windows looked out, she was to learn in rather a painful manner. Under the pressure of that odd disposition to bear either to one side or to the other a right-hand swerve brought her up against an area gate. She hit it hard with her knee, and it gave and let her through. Half stumbling, half falling, she came down quite a lot of steps and finished up on her hands and knees upon damp stone.

It was painful enough, but she was all in one piece. Her hat hung over an ear, her stockings were certainly laddered, and her gloves were slimy. She took them off, straightened her hat, and groped about for the bag which had flown out of her hand. She had just found it, when there was a sound. It came from over her head. A key had been turned in a lock and a bolt drawn back. The front door of the house was opening.

Her first thought was that someone had heard her fall down the area steps. Anyone in one of the front rooms could hardly have helped doing so. She was just thinking that it would look better if she were on her feet, when a voice said,

“I’m a dependable man—I can’t put it any stronger than that. My worrd is my bond. There’s not a man living that can say I ever let him down. A sure friend in trouble and a dependable man—that’s me.”

Three things were borne in upon Ione. The gentleman who was speaking hailed at one time or another from the far side of the Scottish border. He had fortified himself against the fog by recourse to his native beverage. And neither he nor the person whom he was addressing had the slightest idea that anyone had just made a crash landing in the area.

The steps that ran up from the street to the front door were almost over her head. If she stayed where she was she would neither be seen nor heard. There was no reason at all why she should not disclose herself, find out where she was, and ask to be set upon her way. The dependable gentleman might even prove to be a dependable guide.

There was no reason—but there was an instinct. If she had told her tongue to speak, it would not have obeyed her. But she did not tell it to speak. She stayed as still as a hare stays in its form, and for the same reason. Over her head someone was whispering. She could not tell whether it was man or woman. Then the Scot again:

“Oh, I’m on my way, I’m on my way, and I’ll take my foot from the door when I’m ready. And a nice sort of an afternoon to go out in—as black as the Earl o’ Hell’s waistcoat! If ye’d a heart in ye, ye’d not be sending me out in it.”

The whispering voice said something, and the Scot laughed.

“Oh, ye’re a prudent pairson, and I’ve nothing against prudence—in reason. And if ye think it’s reasonable to turn a man out in a fog like this, ye can just consider, if I’m run over, who’ll do your dirty work for ye then? Ye can just think about that.... All right, all right, I’m going! And I haven’t said I’ll do it yet, but I’ll give it my careful consideration and let ye know. But mind, ye’ll have to think again—about the remuneration. I’ll not do it for any less than two thousand, and I’m of the opinion that I’d be a fool to do it for that. It’s my neck I’ll be risking, and I’ll not risk it for a penny less than two thousand.”

He came rolling down the steps, and the door banged to above him. She heard the key turn and the bolt go home. The rolling steps went past her and down the street to the lilt of a tune. The gentleman who was considering if he would risk his neck was whistling as he went.

“For ye’ll tak the high road,

And I’ll tak the low road,

And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye—”

The words sprang up in Ione’s mind to meet the tune, and with them the impulse to get out of this place into which she had fallen and away from the house where someone whispered, and someone haggled about the price of his neck. It was one of those impulses which take hold of you. She didn’t think about it, she didn’t even know that she was going to obey it. She just found herself running up the area steps and out into the road. It was the sheer blank wall of the fog that stopped her. The moment that she was away from the area and the steps, her sense of direction was gone. She couldn’t see the street-lamp. So far as she was concerned, it was just blotted out. All that remained in the blind world of fog was the failing strains of “Loch Lomond.” When they were gone she would be all alone.

She began to run, but almost at once she checked herself. If she was to follow him, he mustn’t hear her. She mustn’t run. As long as he went on whistling, she thought she could follow the sound. But she mustn’t let him get far ahead. The fog muffled everything. It would be dreadfully easy to lose the sound, and once it was lost, there would be nothing to guide her.

When she thought about it afterwards she found it extremely difficult to understand why she should have had any desire to follow the rolling Scot. He had certainly had too much to drink, and she had heard him discussing the remuneration he would require for what sounded uncommonly like one of the major crimes. Against this there was nothing reasonable to advance. He seemed to know where he was going—and it might quite easily be the last place on earth in which she would wish to find herself. He sounded confident, and he whistled melodiously. It was, of course, his confidence which was the lure. He had a stick in his hand, and he went along at a cheerful pace, now tapping with it on the pavement, now rattling it with noisy gusto along the line of a stone balustrade. And all the time he whistled. When he had finished with “Loch Lomond” he did tricky things with “The Bluebells of Scotland,” and then rather let himself go on “The Road to the Isles.” If he hadn’t made so much noise he might have heard her. Bye and bye she became more confident and came up as close as she dared. He seemed to know where he was going, for he turned twice—once to the left, and once, after crossing the road, to the right.

After a little while she began to make a plan. He mustn’t know that she had been following him. He mustn’t connect her in any way with the house or with the street, which were now at quite a safe distance behind them. But if she could pass him in the fog, get a little way ahead, and then turn and come back, it would look like a perfectly chance encounter, and she could ask him whether he knew where they were. The more she thought about this plan, the more she liked it. Curiously enough, she had no fear of speaking to him. He might be going to engage in high-ranking crime, but she felt perfectly sure that he wouldn’t snatch her bag or hit her over the head in the street. She passed him, running lightly, whilst he was giving a spirited rendering of “Bonnie Dundee,” and was just going to slow up and turn, when she ran slap into someone else. Her outstretched hands touched a rough coat, and a moment later her face was hard against it and her mouth full of muffler. By the time she had gasped and spat it out a man’s voice was saying over the top of her head, “I say, I am awfully sorry! Are you hurt?” and “Bonnie Dundee” was breaking off. The voice was a nice one. She gave the arm which was holding her a frantic pinch, stood on tiptoe to get as near as possible to where she thought there might be an ear, and whispered,