Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories (3 page)

He had decided on the first step. Where it was going to lead him he had no idea, but, like all true artists, he trusted to his instincts and prepared for action.

The inspiration for the second move would come, he did not doubt. Necessity, the proverbial mother, should provide.

Having committed himself to the undertaking, he went about his preparations with artistry and dispatch. The nondescript grey suit taken down from the peg in the big store where no one recognised him, since no one expected him, fitted well enough to look comfortable.

The soft shirt was equally unarresting, as were the brown shoes, socks, tie and underwear—Tadema was justly famous in theatrical circles for his passion for detail—which he collected on his journey round the shop.

At a minute before the store closed he walked out with half a dozen or so packages stowed away in a new suitcase.

Fifteen minutes later the cloakroom of Tottenham Court Road tube station received the case, and Tadema taxied home to his Mayfair flat to bathe and dine before returning to the theatre for the evening performance. He was not exactly happy, but he experienced that curious sense of elation which comes to those about to take a desperate plunge.

The discovery that Sharper, his old-maidish and inappropriately named man, had let Lessington into the study to wait for him was an unexpected blow.

Lessington was a plump, bald, fortyish person whose early effeminacy had grown up into effeteness. If his plays had not been so competent Tadema could not have tolerated him. As it was, he fraternised with him but grudgingly.

Lessington was in form. Aperitif in hand, he posed before the fire, and just had to tell old Taddy the perfectly marvellous notion he had had for the new show. He launched into a tedious recital of a plot in which a middle-aged man falls in love with a young girl, undergoes the usual misgivings, and is at last convinced that his love is reciprocated and his duty is to marry.

“Of course I shall put it over,” said Lessington. He spoke with assurance, and Tadema reflected bitterly that he would. Lessington had a knack of serving up the coldest of cold mutton on a salver worthy of better things.

“It’s just a weeny bit topical,” Lessington continued archly. “You’re not very grateful, Taddy.”

“Splendid, my dear fellow, splendid!” said Tadema with great heartiness, since a warning voice in the back of his mind bade him behave normally. If anyone should guess there was anything unusual afoot the whole strength of his project would be ruined.

He got rid of Lessington only when he was departing for the theatre. Conversation had been a great strain but he had weathered it. Lessington, he knew, would now be prepared to swear that dear old Taddy had been completely himself, and to report that they had spent a very happy hour discussing a new play.

Back at the theatre Tadema put on a very careful performance. The relieved Miss Miller found the Old Man in the best of humours. He accepted a supper invitation for midnight and agreed to give a magazine correspondent an interview after the show.

As the time wore on he was conscious of a growing nervousness, but he had made up his mind, and in the interval before the third act he wandered into De Lara’s room and stood chatting for a minute or so.

Paul Ritchie, his own understudy, who shared the dressing room, was lounging disconsolately in his corner, he saw, but the young actor said afterwards that the Old Man never once looked in his direction after the first affable nod.

After leaving De Lara, Tadema, who was wearing the striking pin stripe suit in which he appeared in the third act, was seen by Lottie Queen on the staircase leading up to the roof. He smiled at her, graciously congratulated her on her performance, and passed on.

It went through that lady’s mind that it was odd that he should be wandering about the theatre when time was getting on, but it was a habit of the company to go up to the flat roof when the weather was close, and she thought no more of the incident just then.

An electrician observed him higher up on the staircase immediately below the roof, but the man said no word passed, and that was all the evidence the united company could supply when the inquiry was instituted.

At the moment when Tadema stepped out upon the dark roof, the dizzy lights of the city below him, he was trembling with excitement, but he realised that he had very little time and moved swiftly, stepping daintily across the leads to the desolate collection of builders’ debris which he had observed there earlier in the week and the recollection of which had given him his idea.

The Gresham Theatre was an old-fashioned building whose rococo parapet was barely four feet away from its nearest neighbour, the Ever Safe Insurance Company’s premises.

At one particular point a younger man might have sprung from one roof to the other, but Tadema preferred the plank. Pulling it out from beneath the folded sacks, he pushed it into position and prepared to climb across.

It was a risky proceeding for a man of his years and unathletic habits, and it is possible that had he seriously considered the physical side of the venture his nerve might have failed him. As it was, however, his thoughts were occupied only by the other aspect of the plan, the enormity of it, the courage, the complete ruthlessness.

It took his breath away. To walk out of the theatre in costume in the midst of the play! To go on to the roof and thence to—disappear!

Told of any man it would be a piquant story, like the beginning of a mystery yarn, but when the man was Tadema—oh, the headlines would be large and the wind would seep out of Chloe’s sails! Would she start, even? Sir Geoffrey doubted it.

He stepped out on to the insurance company’s leads and thrust the plank back sharply. It clattered on to the theatre roof so noisily that for a moment he was afraid. Discovery at this juncture would be disastrous. But there was no untoward sound from below and he went on.

The fire escape descended into a narrow alley behind the building. As Tadema went down the spidery stair a new cause for alarm confronted him. London is a crowded city and the ever-watchful police are suspicious of shadowy figures on the fire escapes of dark buildings. An arrest or even an inquiry would be too embarrassing even to contemplate.

Sir Geoffrey reached the pavement white with apprehension. He went unchallenged, however, and sped through the darker streets towards Tottenham Court Road.

For the next half hour his mind was taken up completely with technical details. It is a simple thing to plan to change all one’s clothes, and with them one’s personality, in the toilet room of a large and crowded station, but it is a surprisingly complicated project to carry through. Sir Geoffrey had completely overlooked the hampering qualities of a sense of guilt.

In spite of these unexpected difficulties, however, his metamorphosis was remarkably successful. One does not dress up and pretend to be somebody else practically every night of one’s professional life without becoming an adept at the art. At twenty minutes to eleven, when Paul Ritchie was ploughing through the last act at the Gresham, a mild looking provincial gentleman walked on to Liverpool Street station, a newish suitcase in his hand.

This stranger bore a superficial resemblance to the debonair Sir Geoffrey, it is true, but, since it is a curious fact that the actual face and figure of the normal man contribute but three points out of ten to his appearance, clothes, context and colouring making up the other seven, none of the weary passengers glanced at the grey-suited figure with any sort of recognition.

Tadema himself was gradually getting the feel of his part. As he became increasingly aware of his safety he experienced a new sensation. He felt free. He had ninety pounds in cash on him in an envelope, all he had dared to collect without leaving traces of flight. His watch, studs, wallet and a letter or two were still in the clothes he had worn on leaving the theatre, and which were now stowed away in the case in his hand. He felt light and irresponsible, almost as though he had really walked out of life as cleanly and as mysteriously as the world must soon believe.

He glanced at the station clock. His train, the Yarborough mail, left in thirty-five minutes. Why he had chosen Yarborough he did not know, save that it was at a fair distance from London and was on the coast.

He had no definite plan in his head as yet, but he relied upon the long, slow journey to bring counsel. The first and most important step had been taken, and Chloe had been passed at the post. That was the main thing, and the rest, he thought superbly, would come.

The suitcase, and/or its contents, must be disposed of to the best possible advantage. Obviousness dictated the coast. Hence Yarborough, since Brighton would have been ridiculous. But all that was yet to be arranged. Inspiration would arrive.

Tadema smiled and the man who had been watching him so intently for the past ten minutes from the other side of the platform moved a little nearer.

Duds Wallace walked round Tadema, eyeing him covertly. The height was okay, he decided. So were the shoulders. And there was about the same room round the waist. But, above all, the style was right and in Duds’ opinion, style was what mattered.

With a certain section of the Railway police Duds Wallace was something of a pet and a curiosity. He was unique. His long criminal record, which comprised some sixteen convictions, related an odd history of misdemeanour and proved conclusively that whatever other qualities Mr. Wallace might have possessed the gods had not made him versatile. His programme was always the same. Whenever his somewhat finicky taste dictated that he required a new outfit he stole a suitcase.

This in itself was sufficiently unenterprising but he carried his orthodoxy a step further. Invariably he stole a suitcase from a railway station and—invariably this was the hallmark of a Wallace activity—his victim was a man who closely resembled himself in build, colouring and a quiet, inexpensive taste.

The obvious disadvantages of his unoriginal methods never seemed to dawn on him, with the result that any slightly stocky complainant of medium height who reported the loss of a good-sized suitcase was instantly handed over to Sergeant Buller, who would grant his visitor one glance and reach for the telephone.

Two or three hours later Mr. Wallace, in private life a comparatively respectable bookmaker’s clerk, would be pulled in, always astonished and explanatory, but more often than not actually clad in his victim’s missing garments.

It was typical of Duds’ mentality that he complained bitterly in court that the police would pick on him.

Buller, who was a logical-minded man, had explained the whole business to Duds over and over again, but Mr. Wallace continued to be repetitive and remained astonished.

At the moment Mr. Wallace, whose sartorial ambitions alone seemed to lead him into wrong-doing, was downright ashamed of his appearance.

He was dead shabby about the elbows and his suit had that skinny appearance which comes with age. It looked as if he and the garment had been immersed in water for some time and had dried without being separated.

His shirt was not good either. There was a long thin hole where the cuffs had frayed. Duds’ sharp brown eyes rested on Tadema’s portmanteau. There was a suit in that, he would bet on it; a suit, shirts, pyjamas and with luck a pair of shoes.

He glanced at the actor manager’s feet and those decent brown shoes with the round toes swept away his last remnants of doubt.

Having made up his mind, Duds followed his routine closely. When the train came into the main platform Tadema selected an empty second class compartment, placed his bag on the corner seat to reserve it, and, as his watcher confidendy expected, stepped out on the platform again and wandered off to look for a paper.

As soon as he was lost to sight Duds entered another empty second a little lower down the train. Instead of sitting down he passed on into the corridor and wandered up to Tadema’s compartment. His casual manner was excellent. He gripped the suitcase with just the right familiarity and carried it out into the corridor.

As he passed on down the train he glanced into each carriage inquiringly as he went by. Tadema was nowhere to be seen. It was really very simple.

When Mr. Wallace reached the end of the train, which had pulled into the shadow of the passenger bridge, he walked out of the last compartment, passed through the main booking hall and, turning up the dark hill, melted quietly into the street.

Tadema discovered his loss when it was too late to do anything about it. When he returned to his compartment the train was on the point of starting and, missing his case, he came to the conclusion that he was in the wrong carriage and walked out into the corridor to locate his property.

They had passed Ilford, at the beginning of a long non-stop run, before he was convinced that his bag was not on the train. Irritated and disconsolate, he threw himself down in a corner seat and glowered.

Apart from the normal sense of insult which invariably comes to one on discovering that the misfortunes which seem so natural in others should have overtaken oneself, Tadema felt he had a special grievance. Without his clothes there was really no point in him going to the coast at all, yet here he was, entrained for Yarborough of all places. The very foundation of the plan he had intended to evolve upon this journey was removed. Moreover, he could have no redress for the loss of his property. In the circumstances he could hardly go to the police. It was all very exasperating and augured, he could not help feeling, bad luck to the venture.

He reviewed his position gloomily. If things were not going to go right they were going to go very badly indeed. However, he comforted himself with the thought of the sensation in the morrow’s papers and, after some moments of happy contemplation, some of his old confidence returned and he leant back, content to wait for inspiration to arrive. Something, no doubt, would turn up. He slept.

He woke with a start at one minute to four in the morning to find himself bundled out on to a dark and clammily cold railway station, without overcoat or luggage. His first thought was that he was by some monstrous injustice or mistake in hell, but afterwards, when the kaleidoscopic events of the previous afternoon and evening returned to him, he reconsidered his decision and concluded he was mad.