Fellow Passenger by Geoffrey Household Page B

said.
     
    ‘But the magistrates won’t believe it of Saxminster police,’ I assured him.
     
    I told him to pack up his drawing-board and pencils and to precede me up the stairs to the gallery. He, of course, assumed that we were going out by the cellar door. So we were - but my difficulty was to prevent him seeing that it led nowhere.
     
    He waited opposite the door for me to turn the handle, and I pretended to think that he was meditating escape. I ordered him sharply to turn round and lock his hands behind his head.
     
    ‘You don’t want another six months for resisting the police, do you?’ I asked in the reasonable, firm tone that was so familiar to me.
     
    While he stood with his back to me, facing the hall, I opened the door.
     
    ‘Six paces backwards - march!’
     
    He obeyed, grumbling. It was luck that he had never been in the hands of the civil police before, but I think he may have had trouble with the military. At any rate he shambled backwards into the cellar as if he were used to meaningless severity. I then turned him about, and shut the door on the pair of us.
     
    ‘Could we possibly have some light?’ he complained.
     
    I found it hard to be polite to a nasty piece of work which lived by robbing collection boxes. An honest burglar - whom, of course, I could never have deceived for a moment - would have been far more congenial company in the cellar. However, there was nothing for it but to use a sympathetic approach. A struggle in the dark might be overheard, or end with the wrong man being hit over the head by a bottle.
     
    ‘You’re a very lucky fellow,’ I said.
     
    ‘And why?’ he sneered.
     
    ‘Because I am not a detective.’
     
    ‘My opinion of the police is restored. Shall we go on?’
     
    ‘We’ve arrived,’ I answered. ‘There is no on.’
     
    That made him think a bit. It was pitch dark and he was at the far end of the cellar. All he could feel were stone walls. I myself was in the little bay where the wine was kept. He could tell by my voice that I was in some other passage, but he could not possibly guess that the space was as confined as it was.
     
    ‘Are you hungry?’ I asked him - not that I had anything to offer, but I wanted to know with what sort of man I had to deal.
     
    ‘Not particularly.’
     
    ‘Then why the collecting-boxes?’ ‘Because I myself am a more deserving charity than ancient timbers. What’s your racket?’
     
    ‘Very simple. I want your clothes in exchange for mine, and your sketches and drawing-board.’
     
    ‘You won’t get ‘em.’
     
    ‘Yes, I will. I’m a deserving charity, too.’
     
    ‘By God!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re the escaped spy!’
     
    ‘Quite right. And you’re shut up in the dark with him in a place he knows and you don’t.’
     
    ‘Try that game, and the noise we’ll make will be the end of you.’
     
    ‘End of you, too. I’ll bet you left your fingerprints on a dozen church boxes before you took to using gloves. Besides, be reasonable! What do you care whether I’m a spy or not?’
     
    ‘Well, I don’t much. And that’s a fact,’ he answered in a tone of surprise and self-satisfaction. ‘Curious how one can never get rid of primitive reactions!’
     
    ‘In that case you have everything to gain. You’ll get six or seven pounds from any dealer for my suit, and that will make up for your own clothes and the quid I’m going to borrow off you.’
     
    ‘I haven’t got a quid,’ he said.
     
    ‘I’ll make it two - if it isn’t in your trouser pocket when you hand ‘em over.’
     
    ‘Damn you! They’re too long for you.’
     
    ‘Too wide, but about long enough. Hurry!’
     
    ‘Look here,’ he protested, ‘how do I know you won’t leave me here stark naked?’
     
    ‘You don’t know. And if I have to leave you here, it won’t matter.’
     
    ‘Well, if you want to be hanged—’ he began.
     
    ‘You bloody fool!’I answered with gusto. ‘Don’t you realize