The Tiger In the Smoke by Margery Allingham

Author:Margery Allingham
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448138081
Publisher: Random House

CHAPTER 9

In the Forests of the Night

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GEOFFREY LAY ON the cot farthest from the stove in acute physical misery. He had not surrendered and his overpowering had been a grim business. He was lying in a far corner of the room on a string netting mattressed with the inevitable sacks and covered with a dirty army blanket.

His mouth was no longer sealed. They had given that up when they thought he was suffocating, but they had taught him not to talk. His hands and feet were tied, each with the same cord, which was drawn up with agonizing tightness behind him, and most of his clothes had been removed so that he was cold as well as cramped. The others were keeping well away from him.

By now the cellar was almost quiet. Even the dwarf had ceased his twittering at last, but there was whispering going on all along the wall. It was Doll’s achievement. He had got them out of a quarrelling knot and into their beds, but even he could not make them sleep. It was in the small hours long before daylight. The market would not stir for some time yet and lay sodden and filthy just above them, while on all sides the city sprawled, breathing heavily and twitching beneath its grimy counterpane of fog.

In the cellar the man from Tiddington alone was on his feet. He was standing before the stove, peering into its red depths, and he was burning his boots. He went about the task methodically, hacking the solid leather into strips with a snobber’s knife and dropping them one by one into the mouth of the iron cylinder. So far it was the only sign of fear he had shown, the only concession to human weakness.

Chemists employed by the police can do remarkable things with blood. They can find it in shreds of cloth, in the interstices of floorboards, on the iron of a heel, and can measure it and swear to it and weave it into a rope to hang a man.

Tiddy Doll read his newspaper. It was an accomplishment of which he was proud, and he knew a great deal about chemists. He knew something about the treachery of ashes, too, so he was making very sure, taking his time. Geoffrey could see him in the glow, picking out the nails with a small pair of pliers and dropping each one carefully into his pocket like the cautious countryman he was.

But if Doll was afraid, his terror was prudence compared with the abject quaking which was going on all along the whitewashed wall. The cellar had become a pit of fear; it was mindless irresponsible alarm in men who would have been pitiable had they not possessed that streak of cruelty which is unforgivable in the weakest. Not one was trustworthy. Not one could be relied upon not to give both his friends and himself away at the slightest outside pressure.

In the earlier part of the night Geoffrey had had

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