He vividly remembered the scene. The fat, red-faced police sergeant who was doing his best to break the news as gently as his clumsy tongue could manage, his foster mother’s white, frightened face and his own feeling of pending calamity.
“Dead,” the police sergeant had said. “Very painful business, Ma’am. Perhaps you’d come to the ’ospital…”
George was fourteen at the time He knew what death meant. He knew that the man who had acted as his father would never again come into the little dark hall, hang up his hat and coat and call, as he always called, “Anyone in?” He would never again say, looking round the door, a frown on his fat, heavy face, “Put that damn pistol down. How many more times do I have to tell you not to touch it?” It meant that the pistol was now without an owner. His foster mother had never taken any interest in it. She probably would never think of it, never ask for it. So, while the police sergeant was still muttering and mumbling, George had slipped from the room and gone directly to the place where the pistol was concealed. He would never forget the ecstatic surge of emotion that had flowed through him as he carried the cardboard box from his foster father’s room to his own. For thirteen years the pistol had remained George’s most cherished possession.
Every day he found time to take the pistol from its box. He cleaned it, polished its black metal and removed and replaced its magazine. It gave George an immense feeling of superiority to hold this heavy weapon in his hand. He would imagine with satisfaction how those who had been rude to him during his evening’s work would react if they were suddenly confronted with this pistol. He pictured Mr Eccles’ reaction if he had produced the Luger, and the horror and fear that would have come to the big, flat face with its ridiculous blond moustache.
George’s finger curled round the trigger, and his face became grim.
…“Get a fistful o f cloud,” George Fraser snarled, ramming his rod into Eccles’ back. “We want those names and we’re going to have ’em.”
Sydney Brant, white-faced, his eyes wide with alarm, crouched against the wall.
“Don’t shoot him, George,” he gasped. “For God’s sake, be careful with that gun.”
“Take it easy, Syd,” George Fraser returned with a confident smile. “I’ve stood enough from this rat.” He jabbed Eccles again with the gun. “Come on, are you giving me the names or do I have to ventilate your hide?”
“I’ll do anything,” Eccles quavered. “Don’t shoot—do anything you say.”