No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories (22 page)

“Gavin, we’ve found her! She’s unharmed! She’s all right!”

PC Bennett, coming across the field, his uniformed legs damp from the dewy grass, saw the knife in Gavin’s hand and said, “I’ll take that, son.” And having taken it he also went to take charge of the gibbering, worthless, soul-shrivelled maniac thing that was Garry Clemens.

And so in a way old Chylos was right, for in the end nothing had come of all his works. But in several other ways he was quite wrong…

The first time Miles Benton saw the little fellow was on the train. Benton was commuting to his office job in the city and he sat alone in a second-class compartment. The ‘little fellow’—a very
ugly
little man, from what Benton could see of him out of the corner of his eye, with a lopsided hump and dark or dirty features, like a gnomish gypsy—entered the compartment and took a seat in the far corner. He was dressed in a floppy black wide-brimmed hat that fell half over his face and a black overcoat longer than himself that trailed to the floor.

Benton was immediately aware of the smell, a rank stench which quite literally would have done credit to the lowliest farmyard, and correctly deduced its source. Despite the dry acrid smell of stale tobacco from the ashtrays and the lingering odour of grimy stations, the compartment had seemed positively perfumed prior to the advent of the hunchback. The day was quite chill outside, but Benton nevertheless stood up and opened the window, pulling it down until the draft forced back the fumes from his fellow passenger. He was then obliged to put away his flapping newspaper and sit back, his collar upturned against the sudden cold blast, mentally cursing the smelly little chap for fouling ‘his’ compartment.

A further five minutes saw Benton’s mind made up to change compartments. That way he would be removed from the source of the odorous irritation, and he would no longer need to suffer this intolerable blast of icy air. But no sooner was his course of action determined than the ticket collector arrived, sliding open the door and sticking his well-known and friendly face inside the compartment.

“Mornin’, sir,” he said briskly to Benton, merely glancing at the other traveller. “Tickets, please.”

Benton got out his ticket and passed it to be examined. He noticed with satisfaction as he did so that the ticket collector wrinkled his nose and sniffed suspiciously at the air, eyeing the hunchback curiously. Benton retrieved his ticket and the collector turned to the little man in the far corner. “Yer ticket…
sir
…if yer don’t mind.” He looked the little chap up and down disapprovingly.

The hunchback looked up from under his black floppy hat and grinned. His eyes were jet and bright as a bird’s. He winked and indicated that the ticket collector should bend down, expressing an obvious desire to say something in confidence. He made no effort to produce a ticket.

The ticket collector frowned in annoyance, but nevertheless bent his ear to the little man’s face. He listened for a moment or two to a chuckling, throaty whisper. It actually appeared to Benton that the hunchback was
chortling
as he whispered his obscene secret into the other’s ear, and the traveller could almost hear him saying: “Feelthy postcards! Vairy dairty pictures!”

The look on the face of the ticket collector changed immediately; his expression went stony hard.

“Aye, aye!” Benton said to himself. “The little blighter’s got no ticket! He’s for it now.”

But no, the ticket collector said nothing to the obnoxious midget, but straightened and turned to Benton. “Sorry, sir,” he said, “but this compartment’s private. I’ll ’ave ter arsk yer ter leave.”

“But,” Benton gasped incredulously, “I’ve been travelling in this compartment for years. It’s never been a, well, a ‘private’ compartment before!”

“No, sir, p’raps not,” said the ticket collector undismayed. “But it is now. There’s a compartment next door; jus’ a couple of gents in there; I’m sure it’ll do jus’ as well.” He held the door open for Benton, daring him to argue the point further. “Sir?”

“Ah, well,” Benton thought, resignedly, “I was wanting to move.” Nevertheless, he looked down aggressively as he passed the hunchback, staring hard at the top of the floppy hat. The little man seemed to know. He looked up and grinned, cocking his head on one side and grinning.

Benton stepped quickly out into the corridor and took a deep breath. “Damn!” he swore out loud.

“Yer pardon, sir?” inquired the ticket collector, already swaying off down the corridor.

“Nothing!” Benton snapped in reply, letting himself into the smoky, crowded compartment to which he had been directed.

The very next morning Benton plucked up his courage (he had never been a
very
brave man), stopped the ticket collector, and asked him what it had all been about. Who had the little chap been. What privileges did he have that an entire compartment had been reserved especially for him, the grim little gargoyle?

To which the ticket collector replied: “Eh? An ’unchback? Are yer sure it was
this
train, sir? Why, we haint ’ad no private or reserved compartments on this ’ere train since it became a commuter special! And as fer an ’unchback—well!”

“But surely you remember asking me to leave my compartment—
this
compartment?” Benton insisted.

“’Ere, yer pullin’ me leg, haint yer, sir?” laughed the ticket collector good-naturedly. He slammed shut the compartment door behind him and smilingly strode away without waiting for an answer, leaving Benton alone with his jumbled and whirling thoughts.

“Well, I never!” the commuter muttered worriedly to himself. He scratched his head and then, philosophically, began to quote a mental line or two from a ditty his mother had used to say to him when he was a child:

The other day upon the stair

I saw a man who wasn’t there…

Benton had almost forgotten about the little man with the hump and sewer-like smell by the time their paths crossed again. It happened one day some three months later, with spring just coming on, when, in acknowledgement of the bright sunshine, Benton decided to forego his usual sandwich lunch at the office for a noonday pint at the Bull & Bush.

The entire pub, except for one corner of the bar, appeared to be quite crowded, but it was not until Benton had elbowed his way to the corner in question that he saw why it was unoccupied; or rather, why it had only one occupant. The
smell
hit him at precisely the same time as he saw, sitting on a bar stool with his oddly humped back to the regular patrons, the little man in black with his floppy broad-brimmed hat.

That the other customers were aware of the cesspool stench was obvious—Benton watched in fascination the wrinkling all about him of at least a dozen pairs of nostrils—and yet not a man complained. And more amazing yet, no one even attempted to encroach upon the little fellow’s territory in the bar corner. No one, that is, except Benton…

Holding his breath, Benton stepped forward and rapped sharply with his knuckles on the bar just to the left of where the hunchback sat. “Beer, barman. A pint of best, please.”

The barman smiled chubbily and stepped forward, reaching out for a beer pump and slipping a glass beneath the tap. But even as he did so the hunchback made a small gesture with his head, indicating that he wanted to say something…

Benton had seen all this before, and all the many sounds of the pub—the chattering of people, the clink of coins, and the clatter of glasses—seemed to fade to silence about him as he focussed his full concentration upon the barman and the little man in the floppy hat. In slow motion, it seemed, the barman bent his head down toward the hunchback, and again Benton heard strangely chuckled whispers as the odious dwarf passed his secret instructions.

Curiously, fearfully, in something very akin to dread, Benton watched the portly barman’s face undergo its change, heard the
hissss
of the beer pump, saw the full glass come out from beneath the bar…to plump down in front of the hunchback! Hard-eyed, the barman stuck his hand out in front of Benton’s nose. “That’s half a dollar to you, sir.”

“But…” Benton gasped, incredulously opening and closing his mouth. He already had a coin in his hand, with which he had intended to pay for his drink, but now he pulled his hand back.

“Half a dollar, sir,” the barman repeated ominously, snatching the coin from Benton’s retreating fingers, “and would you mind moving down the bar, please? It’s a bit crowded this end.”

In utter disbelief Benton jerked his eyes from the barman’s face to his now empty hand, and from his hand to the seated hunchback; and as he did so the little man turned his head towards him and grinned. Benton was aware only of the bright, bird-like eyes beneath the wide brim of the hat—not of the darkness surrounding them. One of those eyes closed suddenly in a wink, and then the little man turned back to his beer.

“But,” Benton again croaked his protest at the publican, “that’s
my
beer he’s got!” He reached out and caught the barman’s rolled-up sleeve, following him down the bar until forced by the press of patrons to let go. The barman finally turned.

“Beer, sir?” The smile was back on his chubby face. “Certainly—half a dollar to you, sir.”

Abruptly the bar sounds crashed in again upon Benton’s awareness as he turned to elbow his way frantically, almost hysterically, through the crowded room to the door. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the little man, too, had left. A crush of thirsty people had already moved into the space he had occupied in the bar corner.

Outside in the fresh air Benton glared wild-eyed up and down the busy street; and yet he was half afraid of seeing the figure his eyes sought. The little man, however, had apparently disappeared into thin air.

“God damn him!” Benton cried in sudden rage, and a passing policeman looked at him very curiously indeed.

He was annoyed to notice that the policeman followed him all the way back to the office.

At noon the next day Benton was out of the office as if at the crack of a starting pistol. He almost ran the four blocks to the Bull & Bush, pausing only to straighten his tie and tilt his bowler a trifle more aggressively in the mirror of a shop window. The place was quite crowded, as before, but he made his way determinedly to the bar, having first checked that the air was quite clean—ergo, that the little man with the hump was quite definitely
not
there.

He immediately caught the barman’s eye. “Bartender, a beer, please. And—” He lowered his voice. “—a word, if you don’t mind.”

The publican leaned over the bar confidentially, and Benton lowered his tone still further to whisper: “Er, who
is
he—the, er, the little chap? Is he, perhaps, the boss of the place? Quite a little, er,
eccentric
, isn’t he?”

“Eh?” said the barman, looking puzzledly about. “Who d’you mean, sir?”

The genuinely puzzled expression on the portly man’s face ought to have told Benton all he needed to know, but Benton simply could not accept that, not a second time. “I mean the hunchback,” he raised his voice in desperation. “The little chap in the floppy black hat who sat in the comer of the bar only yesterday—who stank to high heaven and drank
my
beer! Surely you remember him?”

The barman slowly shook his head and frowned, then called out to a group of standing men: “Joe, here a minute.” A stocky chap in a cloth cap and tweed jacket detached himself from the general hubbub and moved to the bar. “Joe,” said the barman, “you were in here yesterday lunch; did you see a—well, a—how was it, sir?” He turned back to Benton.