The Attic Murder. S. Fowler Wright
fear that the police, being human, would give an amount of attention to such an escape disproportionate to any importance it might have to impartial eyes. It was certain that the assistance of the press would be invoked: that his description would be promptly circulated with the full and accurate details that the police cords would supply.
He had, of course, worn his own clothes in the dock. He was not embarrassed by prison garb. But there was little comfort in that while they could describe not only his appearance in every detail, but every garment that he had on. And he saw that, if he should go out after the next edition of evening papers had reached the street, not the police only, but every man he met, would be his potential foe.
In imagination, he ran from pursuing crowds; he heard police whistles rousing those ahead to obstruct his way; he jumped walls: he trod deeply in garden dirt; he was horribly cornered in cul-de-sacs; he crouched in corners, hearing voices that became louder with the sound of approaching feet.
And to avoid such ends he must think—think and plan—in the short hours of security that were his, while the search spread past him, and outward on every side. As he got up from the table, and moved to a fireside chair, leaving a well-cleared tray—for what certainty was there as to where or when his next meal would be?—he even had a faint transient smile for that abortive search on which he rightly guessed that so much energy was being wasted, while he had been taking a quiet meal almost within sight of the door out of which he walked.
CHAPTER TWO
As Francis Hammerton reflected thus, Mrs. Benson came in to clear.
He knew her name already from inspection of a business card that occupied a prominent position among the heterogeneous mantelpiece ornaments, and as he now parried questions to which accurate replies would have been of too startling a character, and assured himself with some difficulty that they were prompted by nothing more than a natural curiosity, he looked, with concealed anxiety, at the woman who might hold his fate in her hands in the next hour.
He supposed that she would be likely to indulge herself with an evening paper. It was less probable that she would go out to buy it. It would be pushed under her door. That might be any time now. Or she might prefer to have the final edition, two—even three—hours later than this.
If she should have it earlier, it might not be read till she had finished her washing up, and got other evening tasks off her mind. But, sooner or later, she would be certain to pick it up. Very soon she would see that headline: PRISONER ESCAPED FROM—. It was the kind of thing she would be certain to read. The financial news—the semi-final at Bolton—the trouble in Abyssinia—any of these she might be very likely to miss. But the escape of a prisoner in the next street! No, she would not overlook that.
Equally certain was it that she would guess who her new lodger was most likely to be. She would remember how he had let himself into the hall. She would calculate the time of his arrival, comparing it with that at which Harold Vaughan had escaped. She would read his description, and recognize some convincing detail.
Probably she might make excuse to come up, and refresh her memory, after which she would go or send to the police.
Should he give her time to do that? No, at the first sign of suspicion, he must make a quick bolt from the house. His over-excited imagination saw her obstructing him, attempting to hold him till the police should arrive. He struck at her clutching hands. He pushed her roughly away. She fell, and her head struck that sharp edge at the base of the table-leg, showing under the untidy table-cloth that drooped too far on this side. She lay still. He broke from the house, perhaps a hunted murderer now. She had to repeat her question of whether he would like macaroni for his evening meal, with a nice bit of plum-tart she had left over from the midday dinner, before he heard it....
He decided that she might not be a bad woman with whom to deal—almost certainly of a harmless type in normal circumstances, but that if she guessed who he was she might betray him for half-a-crown.
Yet, was betrayal a fair word? He had come to her with a false name and a lying tale, and had bluffed her with a gesture of offering money he did not possess. And the crime of which he had been convicted was not of a pleasant kind.... No, he could not blame her should she decide that inclination and duty pointed in the same direction.
Then should he leave at once, before suspicion could be aroused? He debated this, after she had withdrawn from the room, and it appeared in no better light.
He would be penniless, shelterless, with the knowledge that every policeman he passed would be looking, with a sharp eye, for just such a one as himself; and that to apply for a lodging anywhere within walking distance would be to invite suspicion of who he was. And with no money—no luggage—what possible resort could he have that would avoid starvation, and would not lead to instant arrest?
Pondering thus, he resolved that the risks of the open street could not be less than those of the precarious shelter that he had found, and from this decision he saw further that he might have a better chance if he should himself reveal his identity, rather than to leave it to the almost certain discovery of the next hours.
By doing so, he could at least assert his innocence; could tell his tale, perhaps, so that it would rouse the sympathy of his auditor, and avoid the prejudice that his deception would naturally excite, should she learn of it by other means.
Deciding this, he had to consider what proposal he could make for discharging the cost of his lodging.
If he could win the woman’s sympathy, he might remain there in almost absolute security, so long as he should not venture outside the door. And after a time he might walk boldly out, at least in the darker hours, trusting that the keenness of the first search would have relaxed, and that wherever it might be pursued, it would not be most active around the place of his conviction, with the immediate vicinity of which he had had no other connection, and to which it might seem particularly improbable that he would return.
But to remain in hiding thus would give him little opportunity of engaging in any occupation of a remunerative character. He could not hope for a sympathetic hearing if he should add to the fact that he was a convict dodging arrest a proposal that he should be fed and boarded free for an indefinite period, or until he should be recaptured by the police, and disappear for that which his sentence required.
This consideration naturally turned his thoughts to the money that was his, in his true name, and which he could obtain tomorrow by the simple process of cashing a cheque, if he should be prepared to face the risk of a walk through the streets, or of boarding a bus in the daylight hours, and of entering the bank, where he would be known, with the vague improbable risk that the police would have ascertained that Harold Vaughan and Francis Hammerton were the same, and be on the watch for him to enter so well-baited a trap.
He was not sure how he would attempt to reach it, but it was the thought of that available money that gave him courage for the present purpose he had in mind. He would tell the woman just how he was placed: would admit that he had lied about his luggage and other things. But he would add that he could get funds from his bank in the morning, and that he would then pay her in advance as he had first proposed; and she might well prefer, even if her sympathies remained unstirred, to take the money of so quietly-disposed a lodger, rather than have the barren satisfaction of turning him out.
Anyway, it could be tried, on the proverbial argument that a poor chance is better than none at all.... If he should be dissatisfied with her response, he would walk out at once to the street where already the twilight fell.... He need not delay to pack!
With these thoughts, being of a nature to challenge fate rather than dodge its blows, he went out to the hall and descended the basement stairs, down which he had heard Mrs. Benson’s steps recede after she had cleared his table.
He was guided by the sound of a woman’s voice along an ill-lighted passage to the door of her private retreat, and was about to knock when he was deterred by the words which he could clearly hear.
CHAPTER THREE
Francis Hammerton, if we are to think of him by his true name, had not considered the probability that Mrs. Benson might not be the sole