The Whisper in the Gloom Read online

  “All right. How much?” said the man.

  “Five quid, they offered me.”

  “Don’t make me laugh. The price’s gone down. A quid, take it or leave it.”

  “No. I want—”

  “Tell you what. Give us yer name and address, and the gentleman’ll send yer a postal order. Two quid.”

  “I want the money now.”

  “Just give us your name and address, and the Boss’ll stump up,” wheedled the man. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “No.”

  “Deal’s off, then.”

  The spiv handed back the boat and slouched off. Bert didn’t know whether he felt more relieved or disappointed. They could have done with five quid, or even two.

  Foxy, wheeling his bike on the other side of the road now, saw the spiv go up to a gentleman in bowler hat, tight trousers and dark-gray Edwardian-style jacket, who was buying a buttonhole at the flower stall by the tube exit. The spiv asked for a light. Foxy deduced, rather than saw, that he passed something to the young gentleman. He made a sign to Copper, indicating that he would follow the gent. Copper, accordingly, tailed the spiv, who had turned on his tracks and, Copper soon realized, was following Bert.

  So they wanted to know where Bert lived. Copper was not a quick thinker, but he could smell danger when it was stuck under his nose. He ran across the road, got well ahead of Bert, then recrossed it and waved to his friend. When Bert came up with him, Copper fell into step, saying, “Don’t look round. That bloke is following you. You’d better not go home. I know. Go to my house. That’ll put him off the scent. See you later.”

  Copper sheered off. The spiv presently saw his quarry let into a house; he heard him call out, “Here I am, Mum.” He walked past, noting the number, and moved on. He had not been near enough to see the surprise on the face of Copper’s mother when Bert gave her this domestic greeting, and slipping past her, firmly shut the front door.

  Meanwhile Foxy was pedaling madly after a taxi into which the young gentleman with the buttonhole had stepped. Luckily for him, it did not go far. Foxy saw it pull up outside a tall, narrow house in Radley Gardens. The gentleman got out, carrying bowler hat and tightly rolled umbrella, the evening sun shining upon his round head of heavily pomaded, flaxen hair. Foxy watched him pay off the driver and let himself into the house. All his cockney inquisitiveness had been roused by recent events; he was pretty sure that the spiv had given their faked message to this posh young gent; the bait had hooked a very fine fish indeed.

  Leaning his bicycle against the pavement, Foxy took a ball from his pocket and began bounciing it against a wooden fence a few doors away from where the young gent had gone in. Number 34, Radley Gardens. It was a class neighborhood, thought Foxy, surveying the elegant, freshly painted houses, their front gardens full of flowers, expensive perambulators, well-groomed dogs. Number 34 was taller than the rest, newer looking, with one very large window on the second floor. A burst of radio music came out as the third floor window was opened, and a smooth, round, blond head emerged for a moment, looking down the street. When the head was withdrawn, Foxy allowed his ball to bounce toward the doorway of Number 34. As he retrieved it, he read the names on the brass plates beside the door; the occupant of the top flat was one Alec Gray. Foxy looked over his shoulder at the Bentley which stood by the pavement, then on an impulse rang the top bell.

  Almost immediately the front door buzzed at him. Foxy leaped back in alarm; he had not come across buzzing doors before, and he half put up his fists at this one. But, since the door did not attack him, or explode in his face, he cautiously tried it and found it was now unlocked. A neat gadget, he thought as he walked up the stairs; might get the Brain to fix one up for my dad’s front door. He rang the bell outside the top flat. The door opened, emitting a blast of music, and Foxy found himself looking into the eyes of the young gent of the buttonhole—slightly protuberant eyes, with a veiled insolent stare in them.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “Mr. Alec Gray?”

  “Yes.”

  “Clean your car, sir? Bob a job. Kensington Scouts, Bullfrog Patrol,” Foxy reeled off glibly.

  “No thanks. Good-by.”

  “Good cause, sir. Our holiday fund. Any job you want doing?”

  “Just clear off, will you?”

  “Tune your radio, sir?”

  Foxy was swung round, and a hard kick in the backside landed him near the head of the stairs. Well, he’d asked for it: but he’d got the toff’s name, anyway; and Mr. Alec Bloody Gray had better watch out, that’s all. But this was not the end of the first round with Mr. Gray. Foxy heard footsteps coming up the stairs; and the next moment he was seized by the smart young gentleman and thrust inside a large closet on the landing. The footsteps mounted and passed. Before Foxy had sufficiently recovered from this shock treatment to yell out, Mr. Gray’s visitor entered the top flat. With that radio on full blast, he could not possibly hear Foxy’s cries now. Foxy investigated his prison. It contained some bottle crates and a bunker of coal. Foxy, picking out the biggest lump of coal there, hurled it at the door, which instantly flew open, revealing an empty landing.

  Thoughtfully he went down the stairs. It was perfectly clear that the Gray bastard had unlocked the closet door as soon as his visitor was inside the flat. Therefore he had only put Foxy in the cupboard to prevent him from seeing the visitor. From which it followed that the visitor must be on the crook in a big way. A passionate yearning to set eyes on this mysterious stranger invaded Foxy’s bosom; with a half-conscious impulse toward concealment of identity, he smeared his coal-blacked hands over his face as he stepped out again into the street.

  There, three doors away from Number 34, ensconced in the front gateway of a house which showed a “For Sale” notice board, Foxy settled down to wait. Sooner or later, the mysterious visitor must emerge; he would be immaculately dressed, in full evening rig, with silk-lined cloak, opera hat and long cigarette holder, like a De Reszke advertisement: or he would be a gorilla, a torpedo—padded shoulders, down-curled Fedora, eyes like a basking snake’s, a livid scar from temple to jaw. In pleasurable anticipation Foxy waited. The street was empty, the twilight deepened.

  At last he heard the front door of Number 34 open. Peering out from his concealment, Foxy saw two men in black hats and long black coats get into the Bentley. A street lamp had just lit up overhead, throwing leaf shadows like a dancing lace on the pavement as a breeze stirred the plane tree outside Number 34. Foxy’s mouth pursed in a silent whistle. The men were distinguished not only by black coats and hats; their faces were black too; and one of them moved with the gait and figure of Mr. Alec Gray. The other, the mysterious visitor, had a graceful, self-possessed, catlike walk, which Foxy had seen often enough before, on the flicks—the tread of the trigger man. As the car moved off and Foxy came out of hiding, his senses registered another thing: a faint, sweet odor, as if someone had been sucking violet cachous.

  Without any lively hope of getting further with the mystery tonight, Foxy pedaled after the car. He saw it, in the distance, swing left into Church Street. It was held up by the Bayswater Road traffic lights, so that he came close again, and turned right, behind it, when the lights went green, pursuing it for a few hundred yards more until it swept through the gateway of Millionaires’ Row. Here it was stopped by a group of policemen; while they were examining a card which the driver handed them, Foxy took the opportunity to abandon his bicycle and slip unnoticed through the side gate. The Bentley moved on slowly, then parked in a row of cars beside a huge, lighted mansion just ahead of Foxy, who saw the two men get out, hurry toward the house, run up a flight of steps, and disappear through the front door, which opened and closed as if by magic.

  As far as Foxy was concerned, it was now an open-and-shut case. A daring robbery, the thieves admitted to the house by an inside accomplice, while the family was at home. He gloated over the imminent undoing of the insufferable Mr. Alec Gray. He thought for a moment of
fetching the cops from the end of the road, then thought better of it; cops were too slow in the uptake. Foxy ran up the flight of steps, shot through the magically opening door, under the arm of a butler, only to be firmly gripped by a stalwart individual in knee breeches.

  “Burglars!” yelled Foxy: at least, he meant to yell, but it came out as a sort of croak.

  “Now then, sonny, none of that. Out you go!”

  His captor was propelling him toward the door, when a beautiful voice—a voice which reminded him afterward of a Walls choc-bar, so cool, sweet and creamy, said, “Just a minute, Anderson. Who is this boy?”

  Foxy beheld a vision advancing upon him down the stairs, a Hollywood dream come true. He had the presence of mind to take off his cap, but not quite the nerve to kiss the dazzling creature’s hand as gentlemen do on the flicks.

  “I am Lady Durbar,” she said, “This is my house. Have you an invitation?”

  “No ma’am—lady. I came—I’ve been following two—” Foxy gave a suspicious look at the pouter-breasted menservants beside him. “Can I speak to you alone, lady? It’s private.”

  The vision gave him a deep, deep look from her blue, blue eyes; then she took him into a little room off the hall, closing the door on a hum of conversation and music.

  “I been following two crooks, lady. One of your stuffed shirts out there let them in. They’ve come to burgle the house. Probably at it already. We got to move fast.”

  “But how do you know they are criminals?”

  “S’easy, miss—lady. They blacked their faces, see?”

  “Like yours?” The lady smiled at him captivatingly, and Foxy blushed under his grime.

  “They shut me in a coal cellar. That’s how I got my face dirty. Look, you must believe me—”

  “Oh, but I do believe you. Just come with me, and see if you can identify these two men.”

  Lady Durbar led the way into a high, long room, sparkling with chandeliers, its walls lined with tables displaying more assorted grub than Foxy had ever seen in his whole puff. She walked through open windows at the far end onto a balcony and silently pointed to the garden which lay just below them. Foxy gazed. His mouth fell open. There was a great mob of people dancing there under the fairy lights, and more than half of them—both the guys and the dolls—were black.

  Foxy turned disconsolately to his hostess. Her red lips quivered, and she broke out into a delightful, irresponsible fit of giggling. He smiled at her uncertainly, then gave way to mirth himself.

  “Well, blow me down! Sort of fancy-dress do,” he said. “Dressing up like niggers?” Another long look at the crowd below suggested to him that “undressing up” might have been the more accurate description; but he had no wish to be rude—especially when confronted by Lady Durbar’s neckline, which plunged like the Big Dipper at Battersea Pleasure Gardens, and made him feel far dizzier.

  “Do you like it?” she asked. “It’s my cannibal party.”

  “Sounds a bit soft to me.”

  “I’m not sure you’re not right. Well, we can’t stop it now. Perhaps they’ll all cook and eat one another.” She indicated caldrons, with fires burning under them, dotted here and there among the trees; some of the more unbridled guests were already capering round them, shaking spears and emitting bloodthirsty but well-bred cries.

  “How boring people are,” murmured Foxy’s ravishing companion. “I must have been mad. What’s your name?”

  “My friends call me Foxy.”

  “Would you like to stay on for a bit?”

  “Whizzo! Just ask me. But look, I can’t—not in these clothes.”

  “Fancy dress optional,” she said. “Come along, and we’ll rig you out.”

  “Well, what have we here, Hesione?” said a deep voice behind them. Turning, Foxy saw a small, broad-shouldered, baldish man, hook-nosed, with eyeglasses on a thick black ribbon.

  “My new boy friend. Foxy, let me introduce you to my husband. Oh, Rudolf, he just isn’t true. It’s utter heaven. Foxy came to warn us about two black-faced burglars he saw entering the house! I was just about to pass away from boredom, but he’s quite made the evening for me.”

  “You’re incorrigible, Hesione. I must have a talk with this observant young man.” Foxy fidgeted; he did not like the way his host’s black eyes seemed to be weighing into him. Sir Rudolf continued, “He may be right. This damfool party of yours, Hesione—anyone could get in.”

  “You should have thought of that when you suggested it, my dear.”

  “Can you describe these two men?” he asked Foxy. “What made you suspicious of them? And what were you doing, in any case, hanging about outside?”

  Foxy opened his mouth to tell the whole story. Then an instinct of caution, inherited from a long line of cockney ancestors in their guerrillas with Authority, made him say instead, “Just happened to be passing, sir. Seeing the sights. They had black coats and hats; didn’t notice anything else.”

  “Were they carrying a bag? Burglars need tools.”

  Foxy decided in a flash against lying. “No sir, I don’t think so. Unless they had them under their coats.”

  “Now please stop cross-examining my Foxy,” said Lady Durbar. “He and I will search the premises.”

  Sir Rudolf gave a sort of snuffling grunt, and turned away—with reluctance, Foxy thought. The lady took him back through the long room, into the hall, up the stairs where couples were sitting out. She threw a smile and a word here and there; her voice, Foxy noticed, was different when she talked to the guests or to her old man—higher, drawly, sort of tired; a society voice, he supposed; when she talked to him, she sounded real, younger, human.

  “Why is that man dressed like Uncle Sam in the cartoons?” he asked, as they reached the first landing.

  “Oh, he’s an imaginative one, a smarty pants,” she replied vaguely. “He represents the Capitalist Cannibals’ Clique, I suppose.”

  A group of animated young ladies greeted her with shrill cries of enthusiasm on the next floor. As they passed on, Foxy heard his hostess murmur, “Oh my God, these meaty-faced debs and their dear little dolly voices!”

  “I think you look a fair smasher, Lady Durbar,” Foxy was moved to say.

  She squeezed his hand; her mouth quivered, and Foxy saw the lovely blue eyes suddenly misted.

  “Good old Foxy,” she said, after a moment. “You’re not so bad yourself. You from the Hill?”

  Surprised, he jerked his coppery head in assent. She was a class dame all rightiyo: how come she knew the Notting Hill area by its real name?

  She led him into a bedroom which made Foxy gasp. There was enough stuff here to fit out four stalls in the Portobello Road market. As she rummaged in a deep chest, he went nosing round. Lovely stuff. He took up a little Chinese jade idol, fingering it with some wistfulness.

  “Do you like that?” she said over her gleaming shoulder. “Take it, Foxy ducks. I don’t want it.”

  “What me?” He put the idol down quickly, giving her a guilty look.

  “Yes, you,” she laughed. “Go on. Pouch it. For a keepsake.”

  “Well, O.K., I don’t mind—if you really—”

  “Now, black your face properly with this. And your hands.”

  When he had done it, she wound a turban round his head, and helped him into a sort of golden robe that came down to his ankles. Then she painted two pink blubber lips over his mouth. While he admired himself in the long glass, she wrote his name on an invitation card—a whacking great ivory card with gilt edges. “Just in case any officious bloke starts asking questions,” she said as she handed it to him. “Now I must go and look after my horrible guests.”

  This time, Foxy brought himself up to the mark. He took the divine creature’s hand, bowed deeply, and put it to his lips. Here other hand touched his cheek lightly—a royal gesture. “Wander about wherever you like, Foxy. Watch the little Society victims at play.” She winked companionably. “The grub’s good, anyway.”

  As he follo
wed her down the stairs, he heard her call out to a group of people, “Has anyone seen Alec?” So she knew the bastard. But he could tell her a thing or two about the bastard she didn’t know. Obscure emotions battled in his breast: jealousy—there had been something in her voice when she said “Alec”; an impulse to protect her, not to spoil her evening; a desire to make the most of this fabulous opportunity which had fallen into his lap. Ah, what a story he’d have for the Martians tomorrow! And what a hope of getting the skeptical Copper to believe it!

  Foxy went to the long room where the grub was laid out. It was pretty full now of guys and dolls; but he wriggled his way to a table by the wall and spent an interesting half hour sampling all the available dishes, in an order which caused the caterer’s man to raise scandalized eyebrows. He also had a glass or two of champagne—a beverage he found himself comparing quite favorably with Coca-Cola, after the initial sensation of being asphyxiated by bubbles had passed off. Voices buzzed and babbled in his ear. Nobody paid any attention to him. This was High Life. When he had eaten himself to a standstill, Foxy asked the caterer’s man, “Got any gum, mister?”

  “Gum, sir?” bleated the man. “Did you say gum? I’m afraid not.”

  “Noo gahm! The service in this joint is quate shucking,” said Foxy, sneering, in upper-class tones, and walked away.

  Presently he strolled out into the garden. The fairy lights twinkled among the trees; there were sparkles of jewels around him, flashes of white teeth in black faces. Foxy stood entranced; he was Aladdin, and this night was his robber’s cave. Walking over to one of the caldrons, he discovered that the fire beneath it was an arrangement of red paper and electric bulbs, and the caldron itself a sort of bran tub.

  “May I ask to see your invitation card, sir?” said the cannibal in attendance.

  “Granted.”

  Foxy produced his card; then thrust a hand into the caldron, withdrawing from the bran a small, hard object in tissue paper. It was a cigarette lighter, and a posh one. Rapidly pricing it at three nicker, he put it away in his pocket, under the gold robe, together with the jade idol his hostess had given him. Oh boy, what a night it was! And there were four or five more caldrons. As this grasping thought came into his mind, Foxy looked up and saw Alec Gray’s eyes upon him. Panic spurted out, like a match struck in the darkness. Foxy seized, for self-defense, the nearest available object, which turned out to be a dusky maiden in hula-hula skirt, brassière, and little else, and whisked her into the dance.