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A little comforted. Walter went home. The talk with the police had done him good. He thought it over. It was quite true what he had told them – that he had no enemies. He was not a man of strong personal feelings; such feelings as he had went into his books. In his books he had drawn some pretty nasty characters. Not of recent years, however. Of recent years he had felt a reluctance to draw a very bad man or woman: he thought it morally irresponsible and artistically unconvincing, too. There was good in everyone: Iagos were a myth. Latterly – but he had to admit that it was several weeks since he laid pen to paper, so much had this ridiculous business of the postcards weighed upon his mind – if he had to draw a really wicked person he represented him as a Communist or a Nazi – someone who had deliberately put off his human characteristics. But in the past, when he was younger and more inclined to see things as black or white, he had let himself go once or twice. He did not remember his old books very well but there was a character in one, The Outcast, into whom he had really got his knife. He had written about him with extreme vindictiveness, just as if he was a real person whom he was trying to show up. He had experienced a curious pleasure in attributing every kind of wickedness to this man. He never gave him the benefit of the doubt. He never felt a twinge of pity for him, even when he paid the penalty for his misdeeds on the gallows. He had so worked himself up that the idea of this dark creature, creeping about brimful of malevolence, had almost frightened him.
Odd that he couldn’t remember the man’s name. He took the book down from the shelf and turned the pages – even now they affected him uncomfortably. Yes, here it was, William … William … he would have to look back to find the surname. William Stainsforth.
His own initials.
He did not think the coincidence meant anything, but it coloured his mind and weakened its resistance to his obsession. So uneasy was he that when the next postcard came, it came as a relief.
Does this remind you of anything? he read, and involuntarily turned the postcard over. He saw a picture of a gaol – Gloucester gaol. He stared at it as if it could tell him something, then with an effort went on reading. I am quite close now. My movements, as you may have guessed, are not quite under my control, but all being well, I look forward to seeing you some time this weekend. Then we can really come to grips. I wonder if you’ll recognize me! It won’t be the first time you have given me hospitality. Ti stringo la mano. As always,
W. S.
Walter took the postcard straight to the police station, and asked if he could have police protection over the weekend. The officer in charge smiled at him and said he was quite sure it was a hoax; but he would tell someone to keep an eye on the place.
‘You still have no idea who it could be?’ he asked.
Walter shook his head.
It was Tuesday; Walter Streeter had plenty of time to think about the weekend. At first he felt he would not be able to live through the interval but, strange to say, his confidence increased instead of waning. He set himself to work as though he could work, and presently he found he could – differently from before, and, he thought, better. It was as though the nervous strain he had been living under had, like an acid, dissolved a layer of nonconductive thought that came between him and his subject: he was nearer to it now, and instead of responding only too readily to his stage directions, his characters gave themselves whole heartedly to all the tests he put them to. So passed the days, and the dawn of Friday seemed like any other day until something jerked him out of his self-induced trance, and suddenly he asked himself, ‘When does a weekend begin?’
A long weekend begins on Friday. At that his panic returned. He went to the street door and looked out. It was a suburban, unfrequented street of detached Regency houses like his own. They had tall square gateposts, some crowned with semi-circular iron brackets holding lanterns. Most of these were out of repair: only two or three were ever lit. A car went slowly down the street; some people crossed it: everything was normal.
Several times that day he went to look and saw nothing unusual, and when Saturday came, bringing no postcard, his panic had almost subsided. He nearly rang up the police to tell them not to bother to send anyone after all.
But they were as good as their word: they did send someone. Between tea and dinner, the time when weekend guests most commonly arrive, Walter went to the door and there, between two unlit gateposts, he saw a policeman standing – the first policeman he had ever seen in Charlotte Street. At the sight, and the relief it brought him, he realized how anxious he had been. Now he felt safer than he had ever felt in his life, and also a little ashamed at having given extra trouble to a hard-worked body of men. Should he go and speak to his unknown guardian, offer him a cup of tea or a drink? It would be nice to hear him laugh at Walter’s fancies. But no – somehow he felt his security the greater when its source was impersonal and anonymous. ‘P. C. Smith’ was somehow less impressive than ‘police protection’.
Several times from an upper window (he didn’t like to open the door and stare) he made sure that his guardian was still there; and once, for added proof, he asked his housekeeper to verify the strange phenomenon. Disappointingly, she came back saying she had seen no policeman; but she was not very good at seeing things, and when Walter went a few minutes later, he saw him plain enough. The man must walk about, of course; perhaps he had been taking a stroll when Mrs Kendal looked.
It was contrary to his routine to work after dinner but tonight he did – he felt so much in the vein. Indeed, a sort of exaltation possessed him; the words ran off his pen; it would be foolish to check the creative impulse for the sake of a little extra sleep. On, on. They were right who said the small hours were the time to work. When his housekeeper came in to say good night, he scarcely raised his eyes.
In the warm, snug little room the silence purred around him like a kettle. He did not even hear the door-bell till it had been ringing for some time.
A visitor at this hour?
His knees trembling, he went to the door, scarcely knowing what he expected to find; so what was his relief, on opening it, to see the doorway filled by the tall figure of a policeman. Without waiting for the man to speak, ‘Come in, come in, my dear fellow,’ he exclaimed. He held his hand out, but the policeman did not take it. ‘You must have been very cold standing out there. I didn’t know that it was snowing, though,’ he added, seeing the snowflakes on the policeman’s cape and helmet. ‘Come in and warm yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ said the policeman. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’
Walter knew enough of the phrases used by men of the policeman’s stamp not to mistake this for a grudging acceptance. ‘This way,’ he prattled on. ‘I was writing in my study. By Jove, it is cold, I’ll turn the gas on more. Now won’t you take your traps off, and make yourself at home?’
‘I can’t stay long,’ the policeman said, ‘I’ve got a job to do, as you know.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Walter, ‘such a silly job, a sinecure.’ He stopped, wondering if the policeman would know what a sinecure was. ‘I suppose you know what it’s about – the postcards?’
The policeman nodded.
‘But nothing can happen to me as long as you are here,’ said Walter. ‘I shall be as safe … as safe as houses. Stay as long as you can, and have a drink.’
‘I never drink on duty,’ said the policeman. Still in his cape and helmet, he looked round. ‘So this is where you work?’ he said.
‘Yes, I was writing when you rang.’
‘Some poor devil’s for it, I expect,’ the policeman said.
‘Oh, why?’ Walter was hurt by his unfriendly tone, and noticed how hard his gooseberry eyes were.
‘I’ll tell you in a minute,’ said the policeman, and then the telephone bell rang. Walter excused himself and hurried from the room.
‘T
