Pattern of Murder. John Russell Fearn
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remain good friends.”
Terry did not say any more. He turned and left the office, mooching up the cul-de-sac to the main road once more....
* * * * * * *
When Terry arrived at the Cosy Cinema at quarter to nine the following morning he was in a black mood. Nor was it lightened any by the greeting of the doorman, busy in the wide foyer with the long, snaking tube of the vacuum cleaner.
“By heck, Terry, Sid hasn’t ’arf got it in for you! Some time since I’ve seen him so riled.”
Terry came to a stop and frowned. “Sid has? What the blazes is the matter with him, anyway?”
“I’m not quite sure, but he’s in a rare tear. Seems to think the time’s come to smear you on the walls!”
“Oh, he does, does he?” Terry smiled bitterly. “For a second to set about his chief is nearly as bad as striking a superior officer.... Where is he at the moment?”
The doorman looked about him and then seemed to remember. He snapped his fingers.
“Last I saw of him he was in the stalls, larking about with the girls. Not that I blame ’im for that. I like a bit of fun myself sometimes. Helps to cheer up this lousy ’ole we ’ave to work in.”
Larking with the girls was not a pastime of which Terry approved—not from any personal distaste but because his position as chief projectionist made it essential for him to keep his own particular staff in order, or explain to the manager. He murmured something inaudible to the doorman and then finished his walk across the wide foyer and pushed aside the glass doors to enter the cinema’s lower floor. It was wide and barren and smelled of stale tobacco smoke. There was only one naked 750-watt lamp high in the ceiling, casting its pallid light on chair backs and the scarf-wrapped heads of the usherettes as they moved about and dusted.
Terry paused by the back row, gazing over the expanse. His eye caught Vera Holdsworth’s as she rose from cleaning a seat. She gave him an icy stare.
“Where’s Sid?” Terry demanded suddenly.
Low down on the right hand side of the proscenium a figure appeared in a doorway. He had a mop and empty bucket in his hands. Not that there was anything unusual about this. All the cleaning tackle was kept in the storeroom back stage, where once an orchestra pit had been.
“I’m coming,” Sid Elbridge called, in a surly voice. “Give me a chance, can’t you?”
He moved up the right-hand gangway deliberately. He was big, ungainly, with sandy hair and turned-up nose. His main virtue was that he was a clever electrician and could be relied on to run a show by himself in a crisis. The only thing he did not like was having to work in the evenings. He was twenty-five, five years younger than Terry.
“What’s all this rot about wanting to smear the wall with me?” Terry snapped, as Sid came up. “Harry’s full of it. I’ve just been talking to him.”
“And Harry’s right.” With a clatter Sid tossed down the bucket and flung the mop into it. “I want a word with you, Terry—and right here is as good a place as any.”
Terry glanced about him. Heads had popped up behind seat backs in various directions, each head with a coloured duster or scarf wound round it.
“This is going to be good,” commented Kathleen Gatty, who liked nothing better than a quarrel, providing she was not mixed up in it.
“What’s the matter, Sid?” called Helen Prescott. “What are you getting so tough about?”
“That’s what I’m wondering,” Terry said, and to Sid he added, “If you’ve something on your mind let’s go up to the box and talk it over—”
“To blazes with the box! We’ll do it right here, Terry. I want to know what you mean by slapping Vera across the face as you did.”
Terry did not answer immediately. He could smell danger. Sid Elbridge was a slow mover as a rule, but when he did get excited he did it properly. Just at this moment he was obviously having a hard struggle to remain calm.
“I shouldn’t try and deny it, Terry, if I were you.” Vera came up the gangway, tossing a duster from one hand to the other. “You didn’t think I was going to take a wallop like that without telling everybody what a rotten beast you are, did you?”
“How much else did you tell ’em?” Terry demanded.
“How much would you like me to tell ’em? I’ve simply made it clear that you’re a low down heel—”
“Vera means a lot to me, Terry,” Sid cut in, curtly. “I want an apology for what you did to her yesterday, and if I don’t get it I’ll beat you up. You know I can do it, too.”
Terry did know it. Sid was nearly six feet tall and massively built.
“Do that, and you’ll get yourself fired,” Terry replied, his voice brittle. “Or have you forgotten that I’m the deputy manager while the boss is away? Lay a finger on me and out you’ll go—on your ear! I’ll see to that!”
“I’ll risk it.” Sid clenched his big fists. “And what’s more, I think it was a dirty rotten trick to go behind my back on your day off and take Vera to the races. What right had you to go out with her? She’s my girl, and I’m the only one she’ll walk out with—when we get the chance.”
“I didn’t know she was smitten with you until she told me,” Terry responded coldly.
“You ought to be damned well ashamed of yourself!” Sid went on. “Betting two hundred pounds on a horse and then losing it! Why, most of us here—in fact probably all of us—hasn’t even smelled that much money. I know I haven’t. It makes me sore. Here am I, scrimping and scraping to get enough money to put down a deposit on a house, for Vera and me to live in when we get married, and then you chuck it about all roads!”
“What I do with my own money is no concern of yours! And I might add that you’ve kept your attachment to Vera mighty dark, haven’t you?”
“Why not? You don’t think either of us is going to broadcast our private affairs, do you? I wouldn’t be raising this rumpus now except for the way you’ve been carrying on, Terry.”
Terry’s eyes strayed to Helen Prescott. She was watching intently from side-stalls. Naturally she had heard every word and by this time must be thinking many things. Knowing only one side of the argument it could only look to her as if Vera had been slapped in the face for no good reason.
“I’m sorry I hit you, Vera,” Terry said at last, but he did not look at her as he spoke. “I said so at the time. I lost my temper.”
“I’ll say you did!” Vera retorted. “And two hundred quid as well! You ought to be—”
“I’ve said I’m sorry, haven’t I? Let it go at that!”
Terry swung away, his set face reflecting the bitterness of his emotions.
CHAPTER TWO
ROBBERY
Leaving the stalls, Terry went up the broad, white-rubbered staircase where the cleaning women were busy with buckets, rags, and disinfectants. To their greetings he made no response as they glanced significantly at one another. In a moment or two he had reached the half-turn on the staircase. Here was a polished doorway marked Strictly Private. He opened it, went beyond, and closed it.
He had passed now from the superficial comfort of the cinema into his own little world. Brick walls, defaced with NO SMOKING signs. White, concrete steps rising upwards to twenty feet. Cold air from wide ventilation slats, and a gradually deepening smell of amyl-acetate and half dissipated carbon fumes. At the top of the stone steps he turned sharp left and entered the low-ceilinged winding room. He stood thinking.
“Morning, Terry,” greeted the youth at the winding bench, looking up from inspecting the splice in