Books › Blue Book v073-n03 [1941-07], 1941 › scan 57
Scan 57
Blue Book v073-n03 [1941-07], 1941
54 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Road and walk back, straight to it. I remember perfectly."
3He sat down then and there with pencil and paper, and in five minutes had sketched the thing. Haldon took the paper, studied it, asked a question or two, folded and pocketed it, and then gave Moore a look.
5"About the violin: Now that I've found her—"
7"Keep it. Really, it'll give me great pleasure," Moore said earnestly. "I'm so frightfully rusty that it hurts me to try the Betts; I'd like to know that you're using it. And Elsa will be glad, too."
9"I was thinking of that," said Haldon soberly. "Yes, she will be glad."
11He played again. Later they got to sleep, despite rocketing bursts of archie fire, and the distant bomb-explosions.
13WITH morning, Moore got breakfast for them both. Haldon was impatient now, wildly impatient to get away; Moore had no reason to detain him, for it was the opening hour, and the greengrocer's place would be unshuttered. Beaming, radiant, excited, Haldon got off, the Betts in its case under his arm. Moore shook hands with him at the door, saw him start down the stairs, and came back into the empty apartment.
15Caroline's letter still lay on the table. At sight of it, his heart contracted.
17The devil! Why go to the office at all? Shave, write a last note, and get the whole thing over; should have done it last night, of course, but Haldon was here. No such thing as chance, eh?
19With his harsh, bitter laugh, Moore went into the bedroom and set about his shaving and dressing.
21When he had dressed, he sat down and wrote a short holograph will and enclosed it in a brief note to his solicitors. He was at tension—a taut, hard relief that the moment had come. Go down and post the letter, then come back here….
23The doorbell buzzed angrily. He went to the door and opened it. A policeman stood there, and a woman in the blue uniform of the Auxiliary Ambulance Service, holding something.
25"Mr. Moore? Do you recognize this? Your name was inside the case."
27He stared at the violin-case—his own, and the Betts was in it.
29"What's all this?" he demanded. "A friend of mine left here with it only a few minutes ago, a Mr. Haldon—"
31"Very sorry, sir. The gentleman carrying it was most incautious…. There's a bit of a fire down [address hidden] way, a place that got hit last night, and he would have to pass along the wall as it was falling." The policeman seemed aggrieved. Perhaps he was.
33Moore stared blankly. "You don't mean—you can't mean—he wasn't—"
35They told him the truth, and left.
37Moore was struck to the heart. He dropped into a chair and looked at nothing; the tragedy of it was supreme. Poor Haldon—killed in the very moment of success! Struck down amid his blind happy excitement.
39"Well, it might have been worse," muttered Moore, recovering. "No such thing as chance, eh? Poor chap! At least he went out at the right time, if one looks at it that way…. H'm! His wife waiting in that shop! Looks like a job I'll have to see to at once. She's probably unable to tell anything about herself, and that greengrocer chap took her in—yes, I'll have to see it. That's the least I can do for the poor woman—and for him as well. Hm! I'd better find out their address."
41Haldon had been bombed out, he remembered; still, there were the formalities. He took the cheap wooden violin-case that Haldon had left here, placed it on the table, and opened it. There would be a name and address inside, no doubt.
43THERE was nothing, beyond the horrible yellow fiddle; nothing save a twist of paper under the neck. It was a bill-of-sale from a music-shop in Bayswater. Two pound ten—yes, that was what Haldon said he had paid….
45"Good God!" exclaimed Moore thickly, staring down at the paper, at the writing on it. He reached for the letter from Caroline—yes, yes! It was fact; it was reality! Then he was jumping across the room, reaching for the telephone. The receipt for the fiddle carried the number of the Bayswater shop….
47"Hello!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "Hello! Is Mrs. Caroline Moore there?… Yes, if you please…. Hello! Caroline, is this you? For God's sake, Caroline—"
49"Jimmy, darling!" came her voice. "How on earth did you find me? I was just on the point of coming over…. I've just had your two last letters. They came together. And dear, I'm so terribly sorry about that note I wrote you—"
51No such thing as chance, said Haldon.
53Another story by Michael Gallister will appear in an early issue.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.