Part 3 (2/2)

Well, surely there's somewhere for him? What on earth do we pay taxes for?

Beef looked stern. It can 'ardly be expected that the authorities are to build a special mortuary in Braxham. It's not every day we get a suicide, nor yet a murder.

It's a good thing we don't, returned Simmons, if they're going to choose my hotel to do it in. Well, if you can't take him away he better be put in the club-room at the back.

Beef nodded, and the two men approached the corpse. When they had lifted it, I went to open the door into the private part of the house, through which they could reach the club-room. But Simmons detained me.

Not that way, he said, Mrs. Simmons is still up, and we don't want to run into her with it. Might give her a bad turn. We must take him round outside.

So I opened the two doors into the street, and Beef and Simmons brought their burden through.

It was while they were carrying it down the few yards of pavement to the door through which they would pa.s.s into the Mitre yard, that I observed someone watching the whole procedure. He was immediately noticeable, for at that time of night in Braxham there was n.o.body about. It gave me quite a start to see him standing on the other side of the road, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, and a black hat pulled rather far forward. He did not move when we came out, but I could see that he was watching closely. I don't know even now quite what gave me the impression that he was a foreigner. It may have been his black hat and sallow face, or the precise cut of his clothes. But I know that afterwards when I remembered him it was with that notiona silent, motionless, foreign observer of our doings.

In the club-room, after the two had laid the body of young Rogers on a rickety sofa, I turned to Beef.

Did you see that man? I asked.

Wot man?

That man on the other side of the road, watching us?

No. Just now, d'you mean?

Yes. Yes. Out there!

Beef started off as quickly as he could and Simmons and I followed him. But when we had crossed the yard and come out on to the pavement again there was no sign of the lonely watcher. Beef hurried down to the corner of the road, and looked in all directions, but no one was in sight.

You must have been seeing things, he said.

Oh no. He was there all right. No mistake about that. A foreign-looking chap.

Foreign-looking, eh? said Beef. I wonder if he was the one that came into the bar to-day when Rogers and Fairfax went out, Simmons suggested, as he turned to lock up the club-room and the yard.

Well, anyway, we can't do no more to-night, said Beef. It's time we was all in bed. Good . night, Mr. Simmons. Night, Mr. Townsend.

And this time he managed to make his departure without further delay.

I went up to bed not altogether pleased with what Beef and Simmons had just done, for the club-room was directly under my own bedroom. But I was so tired that even my proximity to that corpse could not keep me awake, and it cannot have been more than ten minutes after leaving Simmons that I drifted into a deep and satisfying sleep.

Waking up during the night is unusual with me, and when it happens it comes from some outside cause. I remember that I found myself staring at the square of the window, a visible yellow outline due to the street-lamp below. At first I supposed that it was morning, and then had that curious sense of being still deep in the small hours. I turned over, and determined to sleep again.

But no. At first almost negligible, then more insistently, came a sound from below me. A slight thud, I think, though I was too nearly asleep still to be certain. Then a vague rumour of movement.

Perhaps, I thought, it was morning. Perhaps someone was already astir, cleaning the rooms downstairs. I am not an early riser, and had no idea how light or dark it would be at the time the work of the house began. I groped for my watch on the table beside my bed, and looked at its luminous dial. Three o'clock. Then it could scarcely be a dream.

I listened, trying to persuade myself that it was nothing. But that was impossible. The sound was not definable, but there certainly was a sound.

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