Fateful decisions
“Hmmm. It’s a generous offer, Jimmy, and I’d take it if I weren’t headed for foreign parts, where people talk oddly and eat worse. See here, though—there is something you can do for me, and I’ll see you get the half of your fee that’s missing for it.”
“Izzat right, Mr. Addam, sir? Wot’s that, sir?”
Shirley turns his back on Jimmy and waves one hand at the loaded sock by his side. “Hit—er, ‘cosh’ me on the back of the head, please. Not too hard—just enough to say you did it. Then go back and collect the rest of your fee from Nicky. After all, we wouldn’t want Nicky thinking you hadn’t done your job, would we?”
Jimmy looks a bit confused. “If you’re sure, Mister Addam, sir.” He stands up, gets a fresh grip on his sock, and taps Shirley on the back of the head so lightly that he’s more disturbed by the smell of the sock than the faint impact on his skull. Jimmy smiles broadly. “Right sporting of you, Mr Addam, sir. Good luck with your Eclipse, and mind yer back in them foreign parts!”
Jimmy lets himself out, singing a bawdy tune. Shirley quickly finds and dons an all-enveloping black topcoat and an anonymous black hat. Quenching the lamp, he slips out the door and tails Jimmy. He’d like to find out more on this Nicky individual, if Jimmy is going in that direction…
Jimmy is utterly oblivious to Shirley’s presence as he ambles down the lane, all his troubles momentarily forgotten. Twenty minutes’ walk gets Jimmy (and Shirley, at a discreet distance) to a dark, odiferous alley in a distinctly unpleasant part of London. Shirley has no difficulty overhearing the conversation, nor remaining hidden in the wintery London fog. Nicky has a strong, lower-class Irish accent.
“You done it, then, boyo?”
“Knocked him on the head, Mister Finn—I mean
Nicky—just like you said.”“Did you tell him to bugger off from the Eclipse?”
A pause… “I fink so, Nicky. I was concentratin’ on the coshin’-the-bloke-on-the-’ead part.”
“You fink so? It’s no good without the tellin’ ’im to bugger off.”
“I told ’im Nicky, I’m sure of it!”
“You better have, is all I’m sayin’. Here’s your money, now bugger off yourself.”
Shirley knows Nicky cannot be ultimately responsible for Jimmy’s assignment; such a one as Nicky would have no reason even to be aware of the Grand Ellipse. Nicky is handling the matter for someone else, then, but for whom?
The overheard conversation lends support to the obvious hypothesis that the responsible party wants Shirley out of the race but quails at killing him. Why Shirley, though? Shirley cannot pretend even to himself that he is a strong contender, much less that he is too prominent to kill. Is the responsible party indiscriminately targeting all entrants? Is the responsible party even a contestant? Perhaps someone has reason to want the race itself stopped.
Shirley cannot know, with the little he has learned. Even so, the knowledge he currently has might be useful in future, to himself or to someone else. Perhaps—Shirley’s blood chills—perhaps the responsible party will not hold back from murder next time. Better accumulate sufficient evidence to cry foul now than wait for someone to die. Pausing a moment to retrace his route in his head and give Nicky a suitable start, Shirley resolves to tail the Irishman.
By staying well back from the Irishman, relying on fog and shadows for concealment, Shirley follows Nicky Finn to a telegraph office. Finn bangs on the door loudly, and shouts obscenities until the unfortunate clerk with overnight duty opens the door. Finn pushes past him, into the telegraph office, and the door closes.
Shirley curses under his breath, seeing no licit way to discern the contents of Finn’s telegram. Nor would he feel safe entering after Finn leaves; the clerk could not help but remember such a thing, two men entering his office in the dead of night, the second—Shirley only now realizes—clad in a topcoat over a dressing gown and pyjamas.
He makes his way back to his lodging, cold and not a little nervous, keeping a sharp eye out behind him. By the time he reaches his room, he knows what he will do.
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