Murderer’s Trail. J. Farjeon Jefferson

advice.

      Ben’s accomplishments were few, but he could carve little statues out of cheese, and he could bite. He bit now, and fortunately what he bit proved vulnerable. The spectre emitted a savage oath—there was no doubt now that it possessed a tongue—and Ben felt a pain somewhere. He didn’t know where. There wasn’t time to find out. But he knew he felt it, and the knowledge was so acute that he was urged to give a second bite. The second bite produced a second oath and a temporary loosening of the tentacles around him. He slid down, dodged left, slid up, dodged right, twisted, turned and ran.

      He heard a heavy fall behind him. The chain that had once proved his enemy now proved his friend. His pursuer had tripped over it.

      Profiting by this incident, Ben ran as he had never run before. That is to say, his legs moved as they had never moved before. For some reason, born of the nightmare atmosphere, his body seemed to be insisting on slow-motion, and as his legs raced beneath him he had a queer feeling that he was travelling in first gear.

      That wasn’t the only trouble. As he ran, everything about him appeared to have increased in size and in height. The posts he sped by had grown four yards. The iron rings in the posts could have encircled Carnera. A wooden partition actually became taller as he passed it. The roof of a vast shed was as distant as the stars. And while his eyes grappled with these grim illusions, his brain grappled with the grim realities that had brought him to this sorry pass. The realities formed themselves into another chain, a chain this time in his mind. It was a chain of six links. Rat—cry—poster—body—splash—spectre. Rat—cry—poster—body—splash—spectre. But wasn’t there something else? Wasn’t there a girl somewhere? A girl who had blundered into his arms? And a man who had hurriedly left a coffee-stall without waiting for his change? Girl—man—rat—cry

      Oi! What was this? Another link? The dark world began to swim. The spectre was behind him, twenty feet, or two, but this new apparition was before him. Short, thick-set, and stumpy. And motionless.

      Ben, also, became motionless. When you’re the middle of the sandwich, you just wait to see which way you get it from. He expected to get it from the new apparition, and couldn’t understand the delay. Then, all at once, he discovered the reason. The new apparition had his back to him.

      Fate was giving him a chance, and he took it. He could not advance, and he could not retreat, and on his right was a brick wall. On his left was another wall, but this was of iron, and in the iron a black hole gaped. It was a short distance from Ben’s feet to the hole. Just the length of a board that spanned a few inches of water.

      ‘’Ere goes fer Calcutter!’ thought Ben.

      And into the hole he shot.

       3

       The Stomach of a Ship

      The ship you know is probably a very pleasant affair. It has scrupulously scrubbed decks, luxuriously carpeted stairways, palatial dining-rooms, and snug cabins. In these surroundings you meet clean, trim officers, talk with some of them on polite subjects, stretch, yawn and play shovel-board. But the ship you probably do not know—the ship that provides the real service for which you pay—is a very different matter.

      It is dark, and it is hot. It is honeycombed with narrow passages and iron ladders. You go up the ladders or down the ladders or along the ladders. Some are fixed at an angle, some are vertical, and their only object seems to be to lead to other ladders. Your Mecca may be the scorching side of a huge boiler, or a little gap in the blackness through which hell peeps, or a metal excrescence bristling with a thousand nuts, or a mountain of coal. None invite you to stop, unless economic pressure has forced them upon you, or some other strange necessity has brought you to seek their ambiguous consolation. On you go, sweating, through the bewildering labyrinth, from ladder to ladder, from passage to passage, from dimness to dimness, from heat to heat. A germ in the ship’s stomach.

      And so Ben went on. When he had first entered the black hole in the ship’s side he had shot across a dark space in a panic, and then, striking something—whether human or not he had no notion—he had shot across another dark space in another panic. He had stopped dead on the edge of a dip. He had heard a movement near him. Human, this time, he swore. He had shot down the dip, fallen, clutched, and discovered a rail. Thus he had arrived at the first of the interminable ladders.

      Now he was in a maze of ladders. A metallic city of descents. But he did not always descend. Sometimes he went up. The main thing was to keep moving, and to move in the least impossible direction. Presently one would come to a dead end, and then one would stop because one had to.

      It is probable that if Ben had never been in a ship’s stomach before he would have been killed or caught during the early stages of his journey. A ship’s interior is not designed for the speed of those who dwell in it. In his zenith, however, Ben had stoked with the best of them, and a long-dormant instinct was now reasserting itself and leading him towards coal.

      But it was the simple law of gravitation that finally brought him there. He was descending a particularly precipitous ladder, a ladder that seemed to be hanging down sheerly into space, and all at once something caught his eye between the rungs. He became conscious of a sudden flutter. A small shape, like a detached hand, loomed momentarily, and it gave him a shock that loosened his grip. ‘Oi!’ he gulped. The rung he had been grasping shot upwards, while he shot downwards. A short, swift flight through space, and he landed on the coal

      He was oblivious to the impact. As his long-suffering frame rebelled at last against the indignity of consciousness, he swam into a velvet blackness, and this time the blackness was utterly obliterating.

       Thud-thud! Thud-thud! Thud-thud!

      Ben opened his eyes. He came out of the greater blackness into the lesser. Cosmos was replaced by coal.

      Coal was all about him. Under him, beside him, on top of him. He could understand the coal that was under him and the coal that was beside him, but he couldn’t understand the coal that was on top of him. When you fall upon coal, it doesn’t usually get up and lay itself over you like a counterpane.

      But that wasn’t the only thing that puzzled him. There was something else. Something new. Something …

       Thud-thud! Thud-thud! Thud-thud!

      ‘Gawd—we’re movin’!’ thought Ben.

      Yes, undoubtedly, the boat was moving. The engines were thudding rhythmically, like great pulses, and although there was nothing visible by which to gauge movement, Ben’s body felt a sense of progress. How long had he been unconscious, then? More than the minute it seemed, obviously. Was it ten minutes, or an hour, or twelve hours, since he had seen the little waving hand and had pitched down here from the ladder? Or … even longer?

      He moved cautiously. Very cautiously. This surprising roof of coal must be treated with respect, or it would cave in. As he moved, his foot came into contact with something that, surely, was not coal. Something soft. Something warm. Then he remembered the last warm, soft thing he had touched, and he stiffened.

      The fellow he had tripped over in the dockyard! Was he here, beside him?

      No, of course not! Steady, Ben! There was that splash, don’t you remember? That fellow had been pitched into the water. And, anyhow, this soft thing was different, somehow. Quite different. Ah, a cat! That was it! The ship’s cat, come to see him, and to give him a friendly lick!

      Now Ben moved his hand, groping carefully through the cavern towards the cat’s body. ‘Puss, puss!’ he muttered. ‘’Ow’s yer mother?’ He opened his fingers, and prepared to stroke whatever they made contact with. His fingers met other fingers. The other fingers closed over his.

      ‘That’s funny!’ thought Ben. ‘Why ain’t I shriekin’?’

      It