Ben on the Job
Ben the tramp, with his usual genius for trouble, runs into danger when he finds a dead body and decides to help out.Ben knew that whenever his thumbs were itching, something ‘orrible’ was about to happen. Sure enough, on one foggy afternoon of itchy thumbs, the hapless Ben is implicated in criminal activity by the police – the kind of mistake it isn’t easy to explain. Doing a runner, Ben hides in the basement of a deserted house, where he discovers the body of a well-dressed man, shot through the head . . . and much more trouble than he bargained for.The subsequent hair-raising events are charged with all the mounting excitement that made J. Jefferson Farjeon a peerless storyteller and Ben one of the most popular but unorthodox amateur detectives of his day.
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J. JEFFERSON FARJEON
Ben on the Job
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain for Crime Club by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1952
Copyright © Estate of J. Jefferson Farjeon 1952
Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover background images © shutterstock.com
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008156039
Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008156046
Version: 2016-06-14
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Misbehaviour of Two Thumbs
Chapter 2: Strange Partnership
Chapter 4: The Lady of the Picture
Chapter 6: The Kentons at Home
Chapter 7: Conversation on a Doorstep
Chapter 10: Concerning Two Others
Chapter 11: Start of a Bad Day
Chapter 12: Waiting for Maudie
Chapter 14: Back in Drewet Road
Chapter 17: What Happened at Euston
Chapter 19: Conference Over Coffee
Chapter 21: Ben Listens to the Impossible
When Ben had got up that morning—getting up with Ben was mainly the process of changing from a prone to an erect position and peering into a mirror, if there happened to be one, to work out whether he’d washed last week or the week before—he had been quite sure that something would happen to him before the time came to lie down again. He knew it by the infallible sign of itching thumbs.
Whenever his thumbs itched, something ’orrible always happened. His thumbs had itched on that never-to-be-forgotten foggy afternoon when he had stumbled into a house numbered ‘Seventeen’, to die a hundred deaths before he stumbled out again. They had itched before he had advised a bloke leaning over a low stone parapet not to jump into the Thames—‘I wouldn’t, mate, if I was you,’ he’d said, ‘it looks narsty!’—to discover that the bloke was already dead. They had itched before a peculiarly unpleasant meeting with an Indian. Ben ’ated Injuns. They had itched before a shipwreck that had hurled him into a situation so completely and fantastically impossible that he still didn’t believe it.
And now, here they were, itching again! Lummy, what was it going to be this time?
Well, there was nothing to do but to wait and see. What was was, what is is, and what will be will be, for once. Fate puts the spotlight on you there’s no slipping out of it. And so, resigned but alert, Ben paused at a morning coffee stall to fortify himself for whatever lay ahead.
‘Mornin’, guv’nor,’ he said, ‘wot’s the noos terday? ’Ave they started the Fif’ World War yet?’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ grinned the stall-keeper.
‘Nor me neither,’ answered Ben, ‘but let’s ’ope they stop at ’arf a dozen. Cup o’ corfee.’
‘Did you pay for the last?’ inquired the stall-keeper good-naturedly.
‘On’y by mistike.’
The stall-keeper laughed as he pushed a thick cup across. Ben took a cautious sip.
‘What’s the matter? Think it’s poisoned?’
‘Well, there’s no ’arm in bein’ careful,’ returned Ben. ‘See, this ain’t goin’ ter be my lucky day. Coo, call this corfee? Am I s’posed ter fork aht threepence fer this?’
‘Not if you can give me a tip for the two-thirty?’
‘Saucy Sossidge.’
‘That’s a new one on me.’
‘Go on, wot higgerence! I’m ridin’ it meself!’
Warmed by the coffee—warmed but not ruined, for the stall-keeper said he had had three penn’orth of fun and allowed his comic customer to depart with his last shilling intact—Ben shuffled off to face the day, and the morning passed, most surprisingly, without any shocks. It was indeed a remarkably successful morning, for it produced seven fag-ends, one almost half its original length, and twopence for helping a nervous old lady across the road.
At one o’clock he partially filled a neglected void with two substantial sandwiches. They were so substantial that you couldn’t taste what was inside them. Thinking it might be a good idea to find out, Ben opened one to see, but as he found nothing he supposed he had opened it in the wrong place. Nevertheless, they did their job, and half an hour on an Embankment seat put him right again.
