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to an intermediate station, a

commercial traveller who had been detained overnight and was probably

looking forward to the comforts of Plymouth, comprised the list. It was

within a minute of starting time, and he was beginning to think that he

had wasted his time getting up so early, when he saw two men walk on to

the platform.

 

One was a warder, and the other a thin man in an ill-fitting blue suit.

The warder disappeared into the booking-office and came back with a

ticket, which he handed to the other.

 

‘So long, Ingle!’ said the officer, and held out his hand, which the

ex-convict took grudgingly.

 

Ingle stepped into the carriage and was turning to shut the door when Elk

followed him and the recognition was immediate. Into the keen eyes of

Arthur Ingle came a look of deep suspicion.

 

‘Hallo! What do you want?’ he asked harshly.

 

‘Why, bless my life, if it isn’t Ingle!’ said Elk with a gasp. ‘Well,

well, well! It doesn’t seem five years ago—’

 

‘What do you want?’ asked Ingle again.

 

‘Me? Nothing! I’ve been up to the prison making a few inquiries about a

friend of one of those mocking birds, but you know what they are—it was

love’s labour lost, so to speak,’ said Elk, lighting a cigar and offering

the case to his companion.

 

Ingle took the brown cylinder, smelt it and, biting off the end savagely,

accepted the light which the detective held for him. By this time the

train was moving and they were free from any possibility of interruption.

 

‘Let me see: I heard something about you the other day… What was it?’ Mr

Elk held his forehead, a picture of perplexity. ‘I’ve got it!’ he said.

‘There was a burglary at your flat.’

 

The cigar dropped from the man’s hand.

 

‘A burglary?’ he said shrilly. ‘What was stolen?’

 

‘Somebody opened the safe in your locker room—’

 

Ingle sprang to his feet, his teeth bared, his eyes glaring. ‘The safe!’

He almost screamed the words. ‘Opened the safe—damn them! They’re not

satisfied with sending me to five years of this hell, but they want to

catch me again, do they… ?’

 

Elk let him rave on until, in his rage, the man’s voice sank to a hoarse

rattle of sound.

 

‘I hope you didn’t lose any money?’

 

‘Money!’ snarled the man. ‘Do you think I’m the kind who puts money in a

safe? You know what I lost!’ He pointed an accusing finger at the

detective. ‘You fellows did it! So that’s why you’re here, eh? A prison

gate arrest, is it?’

 

‘My dear, good man!’ Elk was pained. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking

about! You’re no more under arrest than I am. You could walk out of that

door as free as the air, if the train wasn’t moving.’ And then he asked:

‘What did they pinch?’

 

It was a long time before the man recovered himself. ‘If you don’t know

I’m not going to tell you,’ he said. ‘Some day—’ He ground his teeth and

in his eyes glared; the fires of fanaticism. ‘You, and the like of you,

call me a thief!’ His voice rose again as he talked rapidly. ‘You branded

me and put me into prison—segregated me from my kind… a pariah, a

leper! For what? For skimming off a little of the stolen cream! For

taking a little of the money wrested from sweating bodies and breaking

hearts! It was mine—mine!’ He struck his chest with a bony fist, his

eyes blazing. ‘The money belonged to me—to my fellows, to those men

there!’ He pointed back to where, beyond the brow of a rise, lay the grim

prison building. ‘I took it from those fat and greasy men and I’m glad of

it! One jewel less for their horrible women; one motor-car fewer for

their slaves to clean!’

 

‘Great idea,’ murmured Elk sympathetically.

 

‘You! What are you? The lackey of a class,’ sneered Ingle. ‘The hired

torturer—the prison-feeder!’

 

‘Quite right,’ murmured Elk, listening with closed eyes.

 

‘If they found those papers they’ve something to think about—do you

hear?—something to spoil their night’s sleep! And if there is sedition

in them I’m willing to go back to Princetown.’

 

Elk opened his eyes quickly. ‘Oh, was that what it was?’ he asked,

disappointed. ‘Revolution stuff?’

 

The man nodded curtly.

 

‘I thought it was something worth while!’ said Elk, annoyed. ‘Silly idea

though, isn’t it. Ingle?’

 

‘To you, yes. To me, no,’ snapped the other. ‘I hate England! I hate the

English! I hate all middle-class people, the smirking self-satisfied

swine! I hated them when I was a starving actor and they sat in their

stalls with a sneer on their overfed faces… ‘ He choked.

 

‘There’s a lot to be said for fat people,’ mused Elk. ‘Now take

Harlow-though you wouldn’t call him a fat man.’

 

‘Harlow!’ scoffed the other. ‘Another of your moneyed gods!’ Evidently he

remembered something, for he stopped suddenly.

 

‘Moneyed gods—?’ suggested Elk.

 

‘I don’t know.’ The man shook his head. ‘He may not be what he seems. In

there’—he jerked his head backwards—‘they say he’s crook to his back

teeth! But he doesn’t rob the poor. He takes it in large slabs from the

fat men.’

 

‘If that’s so, I’ve nothing to say. He’s on the side of law and order,’

said Elk gently. ‘A man who hands out police stations as Christmas

presents can’t be wholly bad!’

 

By the time the train pulled into Plymouth station, Detective-Inspector

Elk was perfectly satisfied that there was nothing further to be learnt

from the man. He went to the post office and sent a telegram to Jim which

was short and expressive.

 

‘Revolution stuff. Nothing important.’

 

He was on the same train that carried Mr Ingle to London, but he did not

occupy the same compartment, except for half an hour after the train

flashed through Bath, when he strolled into the carriage and sat down by

the man’s side; and apparently he was welcome, for Ingle started talking.

 

‘Have you seen anything of my niece? Docs she know about the burglary? I

think you told me, but I was so angry that I can’t remember.’ And, when

Elk had given him the fullest particulars: ‘Harlow! Why did he come? He

met Aileen at Dartmoor, you say?’ He frowned and suddenly slapped his

knee. ‘I remember the fellow. He was sprawling in his car by the side of

the road when we came back from the field that day. So that was Harlow!

Does he know Aileen?’ he asked suspiciously.

 

‘They met at Dartmoor; that’s all I know.’ Ingle gave one of his

characteristic shrugs.

 

‘I suppose he’s running after her? She’s a pretty sort of girl. With that

type of man, money’s no object. She’s old enough to look after herself

without my assistance.’ So this Utopian left Aileen Rivers to her fate.

CHAPTER 7

HE HAD wired from Plymouth asking her to call at the flat that night, and

she arrived just as he had finished a dinner he had cooked for himself.

 

‘Yes, I’ve heard about the burglary,’ he said, cutting short her

question. ‘They’ve got nothing that was worth a shilling to them, thank

God! Why did you call in the police?’

 

And then he had a shock.

 

‘Who else should I have called in—a doctor?’ she asked.

 

It was the first time he had met her in a period of freedom. She had had

her instructions to look after the flat, smuggled out of prison by a

discharged convict; and their talks during the brief visiting hours had

been mainly on business.

 

‘What does one usually do when a burglary is discovered?’ she asked. ‘I

sent for the police—of course I sent!’

 

He stared at her fiercely, but she did not flinch. It was his eyes which

dropped first.

 

‘I suppose it’s all right,’ he said, and then: ‘You know Harlow, don’t

you?’

 

‘I met him at Dartmoor, yes.’

 

‘A friend of yours?’

 

‘No more than you are,’ she said; and he had his second shock. ‘I’m not

going to quarrel with you, and I don’t see why you should want to be rude

to me,’ he snapped. ‘You’ve been useful, but I’ve not been ungenerous.

Harlow is a friend of yours—’

 

‘He called here on the night of the burglary to offer me a job,’ she

replied, without any visible evidence other rising anger. ‘I met him at

Princetown and he seemed to think that because of my relationship with

you, I should find it rather difficult to get employment.’

 

He muttered something under his breath which she did not catch and it

occurred to her that she had cowed this bullying little man, though she

had had no such intention.

 

‘I shall not want you any more.’ He took out his pocket-book, opened it

and extracted a banknote. ‘This is in the nature of a bonus,’ he said. ‘I

do not intend continuing your allowance.’

 

He expected her to refuse the money and he was not wrong.

 

‘Is that all?’ she asked. She did not attempt to take the note.

 

‘That is all.’

 

With a nod she turned and walked to the door. ‘The charwoman is coming

tonight to clean up,’ she said. ‘You had better make arrangements for her

to stay on—but I suppose you’ve already made your plans.’

 

Before he could reply, she was gone. He heard the street door slam after

her, took up the money and put it back in his case; and he was without

regret for, if the truth be told, Mr Arthur Ingle, despite the largeness

of his political views, was exceedingly mean.

 

There was a great deal for him to do: old boxes to open and sort, papers

and memoranda to retrieve from strange hiding-places. The seat of the big

settee on which Aileen had sat so often waiting for the cleaner to finish

her work, opened like a lid and here he had documents and, in a steel

box, books that might not have come to light even if the police had been

aware of the flat at the time of his arrest, an had made their usual

search.

 

Ingle was a man of wide political activities. No party man in the sense

that he found a party to match his own views; rather, he was one of those

violent and compelling thinkers who are unconsciously the nucleus of a

movement. His grudge against the world was a sincere one. He saw

injustice in the simplest consequences of cause and effect. His opinions

had not made him a thief; they had merely justified him in his disregard

for the law and his obligation to society.

 

Imprisonment had made him neither better nor worse, had merely confirmed

him in certain theories. Inconsistently, he loathed his prison

associates, men who had been unsupported by his high motives in their

felonies. The company of them was contamination. He hated the chaplain;

and only one inmate of that terrible place touched what in him still

remained tender. That was the old, blind horse who had his stable in the

prison, and whose sight seemed to have been destroyed by Providence that

he might not witness the degradation of the superior mammals that tramped

the exercise ring, or went trudging and shuffling up the hill and through

the gates.

 

He was the one man in the prison who was thankful when the cell door

closed on him and the key turned in the lock.

 

The foulness of these old lags, their talk, their boasts,

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