The little golden men

THOMAS BURKE

Wailing across Hyde Park came the October wind, and as it reached Bayswater it broke upon the gaunt cliff of houses in fifty little screams. The houses replied to it with no more than a flick of loose windows, and the wind came back with a monstrous rejoinder that again broke and scattered into a mad career across Notting Dale to the end of London. It was a wet wind, and it arose at that hour of late afternoon when London bursts into its evening ecstasy of gold. It made hats fly and frocks dance. It set the lamplight fluttering as a bird flutters when an alien hand approaches its cage. The pavements were glistening with recent rain, and it made them shiver. The roadways were lakes of ebony, and it set broken pieces of the lamplight skating upon them. It whipped a thousand columns of chimney-smoke into one maelstrom. Only the houses stood rigid; they acknowledged it as a man acknowledges a buzzing fly.

But to man himself it was no mere fly; it was unloosed power; and to one man, the white-faced man in the blue mackintosh, it was destiny. Dead bricks it could not move, but the figure in the blue mackintosh, symbol of the mortal and the immortal, was its toy; and it was now driving him, half against his will, to commit the sin that the other half wanted to commit. It first pestered his face, and his eyes, and chilled his hands, and his heart with its own rage; then it him out of his path into Bayswater.

In the lavender dusk the interlocked squares and terraces of Bayswater made a map of the land of nightmare. The lines of tall dark houses looming upward and stretching forward to infinity, the lines of lamps that waited like a regiment for a procession that never came, the deep hush, the sudden enclosed spaces of whispering trees, and the insane repetition of terrace upon terrace made this bourgeois quarter the apt setting for a tale of horror. Horror seldom grows amidst horror; almost always it springs up in the incongruous air of pastoral beauty or urban decorum; and if ever horror should outstrip itself in London, Bayswater should be its setting. It is hardly the place for the abrupt and definite shock of murder. Rather its atmosphere is of that chill grey in which move things more fearful than murder—the crawling unnameable things that man can work upon man's body and man's soul—and that night, as the wind flooded its hollows, it held so keen a sense of repressed demonism that it seemed almost to need the healthy corrective of murder.

It got it from the white-faced man in the blue mackintosh.

Once in Leinster Gardens he began to walk up and down, and for half an hour he went up and down, pad-pad-pad, eye and mind directed to one house. By the disposition of the street lights he was sometimes energy and sometimes reverie. Now, as he crossed the amber radius of the lamplight, he lived as a man; now, as he passed into the interspaces of purple, he was an impalpable organism. That flickering march was a miniature of his and every man's life. Pad-pad-pad he went, fixed like a shuttle in a groove of two hundred yards, while all around him beat the life of the city of glittering distances.

But death, not life, was his concern, and the only distance that allured his eye was the distance between himself and his victim. In every few minutes this was shortened. Silent step by silent step, sometimes approaching, sometimes retreating, he yet drew nearer, while behind drawn curtains the victim went quietly about his evening occasions, held, by the casual mercy of the gods, from the knowledge that every tick of the clock marked the pulse of his murderer's step and the last beats of his own heart.

At six o'clock he was in the house, standing behind a velvet hanging that draped the connecting door of the smoking-room and the study. He was on the study side of the door, and was peering through the opening of the hangings into its dusky depths. He saw a large room strewn with rugs of Daghestan and Kerman and Coulas, and set with appointments that confirmed the rugs. Clearly the study of a rich man of somewhat opulent tastes. There were deep divan chairs in glowing yellow hide. The dark yellow walls were dressed with Oriental banners and curved weapons, and on brackets and tables stood Buddhas and Sivas large and small. On the mantel-shelf and on other shelves were idols with moveable heads, and on the passing of heavy traffic the vibration of the walls set a dozen dumb crowns nodding in various rhythms, as at some secret thought. These, figures nodding out of the shadows fascinated the man: he had the feeling of being spied upon. Elsewhere were great vases of the Sung and Ming periods, and carvings in coral and rock-crystal; and on the great desk in the centre of the room, scattered among ink-stand and cigar-box and lamp-standard, were a number of small figures and netsukes in old ivory. The dominant note of the room, struck by the rugs and taken up by the wallpaper, the vases, the idols, the chairs, and the ivory, was gold; and this note expressed its owner.

At the moment when the man behind the curtain, no longer beaten by the wind, was becoming relaxed from his purpose by the hush and warmth of the room, it received three bursts of light from its electric lamps, and his victim stood within his reach. Gold, or hues verging upon gold, -was about his person as well as about his room. There was the hard, bronze face, the amber-coloured waistcoat, the amber cigar-holder, the watch-chain, and the russet tie; and as he stood for a second or two amid the rugs he had the appearance of a golden god in a setting of gold, receiving the homage of his nodding priests. That was his last appearance in magnificence, and it was an appearance of four seconds only; for at the fifth second he was on his back across the desk, and the floor was littered with cigars and the little ivory figures.

The gold man wrenched his neck aside, and through closed jaws sputtered one word. On that word down came the dagger into the neck, and down it came again into the side just below the arm. As it was drawn back for a third stroke, and the pressure on the throat a little loosened, the gold man made a furious death-heave, and twisted from under the other. They fell, and on the floor, among the litter of ivories, they struggled softly and madly, and the vibration set the solemn idols nodding to each other—Look, look, look! There were slow gasps and hot panting. They spluttered. The gold man could make no words, but the blue mackintosh was crisp. "That's shut your mouth. Give me up, will yeh? Get me a stretch? After I done your dirty work all these years. Put me away, will yeh? You bloody fence! You won't talk much more. How's that?"

A third time the dagger came down, this time full into the throat. There was a gurgle, a sigh, and then peace. The blue mackintosh got up. It was done. After months of approaching it and retreating from it, of nursing it and dismissing it, it was done. He had tried to frighten himself out of it by visualizing himself as a murderer in the dock and in the cell and on the scaffold. He had tried to laugh himself out of it by imagining himself doing it—a ludicrous picture. He had tried to kill the idea by observing his own hate from the outside, as the silly antics of another fool. And now he had done it.

Well, he must see about fixing things. He stood over the body and bent himself to a question-mark, listening. But the great house was silent and still. Nobody had seen him enter;. nobody, it appeared, had heard their struggle; and by familiarity with the man's habits he knew that nobody would come to the study until the dinner-gong was sounded. He looked down at the bloody body and the blood-stained carpet and ivories, and then at his own clothes. No marks or stains that he could see. The dagger was still in the body and could stay there; by his precaution of wearing gloves the haft could hold no clue. He gave a quick glance round the room, to see if he had missed any damaging signs, and in the moment of Continued on page 72 that glance his forehead froze. At every point of the room was something that grinned and nodded at him. Then he remembered the idols, and laughed. But the shock was useful— it showed that he hadn't yet come to himself. He must wake up and be wary, more wary than in his usual business of safebreaking. He found himself shaking a little, and his thoughts had a tendency to stray away from the immediate business. That would never do. His eye caught the glint of a series of decanters and glasses. Perhaps they would help. He never touched anything of that sort when on bis regular job, but this was different. It was a new thing for him and had rather jolted him. A little slowing-down of the nerves might be useful.

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He stepped through the litter of ivories and cigars, opened the first decanter, and filled a glass that held the equivalent of a "treble." It was brandy. He drank it in quick sips, neat, keeping his ears tightened for the tiniest sound. When it was done he found that he was still trembling, and still unable to concentrate on the best way of meeting the situation. He turned to the next decanter and took a liberal one from that—whisky. In a few seconds he felt more casual. One more peg; then he would be ready for a swift, clean exit. He took it, this time in one gulp; then went across to the switches and turned off the light.

The sudden plunge of darkness gave him such a shock as an unexpected plunge over a cliff. He could have screamed. Staring into it, seeking his way to the window, he could see the projection of the aureole of his own eyes just beyond the temples; and as he looked past that glow into the pit of darkness he saw it filled not with bloody faces or nodding idols, but with amorphous bodies of fear. The knowledge that he was afraid surprised him, and in making a gesture of bewilderment, putting hand to face, he found that the backs of his hands were damp with sweat, and that his heart was a dynamo. The hostile mixture of brandy and whisky was working, and as the realization of that went slowly into his brain and showed him his danger, instead of sobering him it made him laugh. He told himself that he was too old a hand to be flustered by accidents. He was drunk; that's what it was—drunk.

All the same he must get away, and at last he went, swaying across the rugs and turning his ankle on the scattered ivories. In the middle of the room he stopped and listened, wondering whether his drunken self had made some noise that his other self had not heard. But the whole house seemed as stark and dumb as the corpse on the floor. Only the ticking of the clock, for sound, and the nodding of the idols, for motion. Nothing else. He put his finger-tips to the window, raised it without noise, and looked out. Having scanned every yard of the street, he slid through to the sill. He reached forward from a kneeling position and with one hand grasped a gutter-pipe From there, with the lightness of a ballet-dancer, he swung himself clear of the kitchen windows and landed on his toes at the entrance-porch of the next house. He stood there for some half-minute, with the air of one waiting for the bell to be answered. This was his method of proving whether an exit had been "clean." It seemed that it was; he heard no stir anywhere; and after a brief stay he went casually down the steps and strolled away.

Once out and free, he was conscious of the wild air, and discovered that in the last half-hour he had not taken one full breath. Breathing was a momentary luxury, and he breathed deep. He filled his lungs with the rushing air, breathing in time with his quick steps. He was making for the canal where he had planned to sink his mackintosh and hat, and put on a grey cloth cap; and he was almost upon it, and feeling once again master of himself and the occasion, when suddenly earth and sky were twisted into one, and the moon came reeling and crashing through the wind into a chaos of nausea.

When, some minutes later, he came up from his collapse, he found himself clinging to the railings of Portchester Square. His legs were weak, and his ears were buzzing, and his eyes were blocked by a picture of the gold man's face as he last saw it when they lay close together on the floor. The words of a silly song capered through his head: "And we're drawing his club-money in the morning!" He tried to drive them away by thinking of the words of other songs and of conversational phrases, but with fiendish persistence they came back and pounded upon his brain. He began to be afraid that he would sing them out loud. Mustn't do that; it would attract attention. Mustn't attract attention. With a jerk he straightened himself, shook himself, and prepared to walk on.

It was at the moment of moving away that he first became clearly aware of a noise that had been troubling his inner ear ever since he left the house: a little clittering as of fairy castanets. He looked about him, and then down to the pavement, and as he saw how the noise was being made a cold streak shot down his spine. There they were; they had trotted after him and they were now trotting round him—the little golden bloodstained netsukes. His brain was still slumbering under the drink, but at this sight it came to a kind of cloudy awakening that deceived him into thinking it was a true awakening. There they were, clearly enough, running round his feet, jumping and playing in the frightful contortions of Arabian carpets. They were making arabesques all round him. He did not attempt to imagine how the thing had happened; it had happened; and he was sensible enough to see the danger of the situation. He looked hastily up and down the street. If people passed and saw him like this, they might come and ask awkward questions; certainly they would remember having seen him with these things all round him, and they would make a guess that he had stolen them and dropped them in running, and they might speak to the next policeman. He must pick them up and hide them. He bent towards them, toppled, and fell on his hands. In that position he groped for them, and snatched at them; but in his nervous haste he was clumsy, and they were too quick for him. They dodged and darted and doubled, and danced under and over his hand. Not one could he hold, and meantime they pestered him, these little blood-stained creatures of Japan, and leapt about him, and vexed his eyes with their dodging. He felt one of them wetly against his cheek.

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Well, if he couldn't pick them up, he must get away, and quickly. He •clambered up and turned his back on them and went with a quick lurch through the square. He kept as much •out of the light as he could, and made two or three crossings of the road to deceive them, until he came to Gloucester Terrace. Here he doubled and turned into Cleveland Square, and was congratulating himself on his stratagem when his ear told him that it was useless. Close behind him came again the sound of castanets, and in a panic glance he saw that they were following him. Soon they caught up with him and encircled him. He broke through them and they again encircled him. He sobbed and kicked at them, but still they made their undisciplined ballet between his feet, and leapt up at him in lilliput anger. Their little Oriental -faces held the features of the dead man on the floor. He tried to turn back towards the stir and glare of Harrow Hoad, where he might lose them, but they buzzed and twisted .about his knees and ankles with the infuriating pester of mosquitoes. He .noted that passers-by stared at him -and murmured to each other. He wondered if they saw those little golden things, and if so, what they thought. Decent people just glanced at .him, .and then looked away. Well-dressed brutes stared and turned and looked .after him.

But he was not now so concerned -with the figure he cut. He was mainly •concerned with dodging the little golden things. They filled him with a crawling fear of necromancy. He felt that they had satanic powers, powers drawn from all the objects of that room and from their owner.

But whichever way he turned they were there, sometimes driving him, sometimes impeding him. Some of them settled on his trousers, and with inward gasps he struck them off. Some of them jumped up in the air and pattered elfin clog-dances on the crown of his hat. They played about him with the intimate devilry of leprechauns. And as they pattered and danced it seemed to him that they called on other little golden things to join them, for, as he was driven into a half-lit square, a whole host of golden wraiths gathered about him and guarded and drove him. He turned right and left, but they only suspended their pestering when he went straight on. Even at those dark comers where he could not see them he could still hear and feel them. It was useless to attack them; all he could do was go on. Which way he was going he could not tell, but he went blindly on and on.

And then, as he came out of the square into a side street, they seemed to turn aside to his right, the whole host of them. He was fighting them with both arms, when he suddenly saw that there was a clear space on his left and that they had dropped well behind him. Before him he saw an open door and a lighted hall. If he could get in there. . . .

He darted in. In the hall a man met him, and he addressed the man in whimpering indignation. "I say— look here—all these things following me. Can't get along the street for them. Perfect pest. Drive 'em away, will yeh, drive 'em away."

The man looked him over. "What's following you?"

"Those things out there. Little golden men. After me all the way from Leinster Gardens. Worse'n mosquitoes. All round one's face."

He swayed, and supported himself with an arm on the wall. "Yes, all the way from Leinster Gardens."

"Sit down. You look a bit shaken up. Leinster Gardens, eh? Little golden men. Come through here. I'll get you some water."

He followed the man through to a farther room, and the man spoke to two men in the room. "Just look after this man. He's a bit faint." The two men got up, and as one of them brought a chair, and the other closed the door and stood against it, the October gale rushed down the street and filled the hall of the policestation with dancing companies of withered leaves.