Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

I got up. I said: “You’ve come to ask for my advice, and my advice is this — and it’s good advice; you can take it or leave it. Don’t tell me any more. Go at once to the police. Tell them the whole thing. They’ll put you inside, but that’s got to come. Do it now. Get it over. When they’ve got you inside they’ll ask you who you want to see. Then you can give them my name. They’ll notify me. I’ll come and see you. I’ll do what I can.”

A funny thing happened then. Odd, isn’t it, how I keep laughing. It was funny — damned funny... Funny in the sense of being queer and unexpected. You’d have thought when I’d said that, and like that, for I was pretty short, that he’d have gone on talking. Wouldn’t you, now? But did he? No, he did not. He surged to his feet. Yes, surged is right... He said:

“Thank’ee, sir.”

And he turned, and rolled towards the door.

Again my eyes, which wanted to go to the clock, didn’t go to the clock. They went instead to the shapeless, enormous, indefinable back. They went with that enveloping oilskin which was wrapped about it like some foul, greeny-yellow mist, went with it until that back had got to the door; until it had passed through the door, and had gone out of actual sight; until it was down the stairs and out into the courtyard, and under Dr. Johnson’s arch, and into Middle Temple Lane, and out into the Strand, and from the Strand...

That’s a bloody silly thing to say. But that’s what my eyes did...

And then, with a jerk, I got myself back to myself. I howled for Bascombe. I howled for a hat and a coat. And a taxi. Loudest of all for a taxi.

I looked at the clock, and the clock said ten twenty-five.

By the time I got there I should have lost an hour out of my life. An hour with Claire; a whole hour with the mind of Claire, that beautiful, tender, caressing, sword-like mind; a whole hour with the white body of Claire, with that glorious strong, lovely, maddening body... An hour! Sixty jeweled minutes which never could I have again, not even should Claire and I live to be as old as the world itself...

And I should have hurt Claire — not that she wouldn’t understand — but have hurt her with a hurt that would last for at least one hour; and to hurt Claire for the seventeenth part of a half second was to stab myself through with flaming, jagged spears of pain...

I heard Bascombe running. I heard him go out, leaving the oak open. I heard his old feet flapping down the stone stairs, and out again onto the cobbles of the court. He was getting my taxi. Good old Bascombe!

I went over to the door and struggled into a coat, flipped open my hat and rammed it on... And then I suddenly felt — I’m sorry I can’t describe this any better — a summons. A command from behind me. It was one of those sensations totally inexplicable but nevertheless impossible of obtaining anything else but obedience from him who feels it.

I turned. I saw my writing table, and the pool which the reading lamp made in the dusk of the low room. Arid on my writing table I saw the telephone. Beside it was that wicker basket... I thought: Damn; he’s forgotten the thing!

I went over to the table... Of course, I must phone Claire and explain. That would save her, when she knew how quickly I would be with her, perhaps ten minutes of her hurt.

I lifted the receiver and got that damn silly lumpiness in my throat... But this time it was worse, so that I dropped that phone as if it had been red hot. Actually dropped it, I mean, so that it fell sprawled on the carpet. Sprawled, with its black, stupid mouth uttering silly cackles...

I was going to stoop to pick it up. I believe I began to stoop. Began to — but I didn’t finish...

Suddenly I had a vision. A vision which, even to me who all my life have seen things with interior as well as exterior eyes, was so clear as to make me think that this sight was actual physical sight. I saw, in front of me, so near that with half out-stretched arms I could have caught her, Claire. Claire as most of all I loved to see her. Claire as Claire. With nothing to hide her loveliness but those softly rippling waves of that black, black hair, which never would I let her shear...

A great pain came to me then. A sharp, stabbing pain, which sent its hot spears through me. I gasped. I can hear even now that strange not-me sound with which that gasp rang, in those ears which were mine...

And then she wasn’t there. Not for either inward or outward eyes to see. But her presence remained; so surely, so certainly, that one half of my brain seemed to know that could I but turn in some direction impossible to man, so, surely, would I see what before I had seen.

And then, as suddenly as he had left me, that dire and terrible God whose name is Commonsense returned to me. I stooped again to the fallen telephone. I picked it up and set it upon the table. I replaced the receiver, and cut short the mundane cackling. I knew that speak into its black mouth I couldn’t. Better go to her quickly... quickly... quickly...