The Painted Tent by Victor Canning

can’t get back yet to do anything about it. There’s a dock strike out here and we’re stuck till the lads decide to unload us – and could you see the company flying me home? Not B. likely.
    But that don’t worry me because I know my Samuel M. You just give him the letter what I’m enclosing and he’ll know what he’s got to do. But I don’t want you or Ethel to do or say anything about this to anyone, mind, until Samuel M. gets the letter.
    Ethel, who was sitting holding the sealed letter to Smiler while Albert read to her, made a sour face and said, ‘Just like him. Putting it all on to somebody else. Out of sight, out of mind.’
    Albert gave an inward sigh and said mildly, ‘Well, dear, it isn’t quite like that. What else could he do? And my bet is that he’s given Smiler some sound advice.’
    â€˜That Smiler – the trouble he’s caused.’
    â€˜Not to us, dear. To the police, maybe – but then they’re paid for it.’
    Ethel held up the letter gingerly by one corner as though it might contain poison and said, ‘Well – and what about this? We get letters from him – but no address and postmarked all over the place. How we gain’ to get this to him?’
    Albert sighed again, audibly this time, and said, ‘I don’t know. But I’ll find a way.’ He rose and took the letter from his wife. Looking round the prim front parlour where he was not allowed to smoke and always had to wear carpet slippers, he went on, ‘I’ll just go out to me workshop and think it over for an hour. Something’ll come to me.’
    After half an hour contentedly smoking in his workshop, nothing had come to Albert. But he was not downhearted because Albert was a philosopher and he knew that most problems had a way – if you waited long enough – of solving themselves. He only hoped that this one would not be so long in coming that it would be too late for Smiler to take whatever advice his father was giving. He locked the letter away in his little workshop desk for safety. Ethel, he knew, had the curiosity of a jackdaw. She was well capable of steaming the letter open and reading it.
    In Bristol, too, Johnny Pickering was becoming a little frightened and puzzled. He was getting letters recently from all over the place – Southampton, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Durham – and seldom a week passed without one dropping on to the front door-mat.
    They were all printed in ink in the same hand without address or signature and there was never more than one sentence in them. The first five had read:
confession is good for the soul you did it
and the innocent suffered
own up and avoid bad luck
nothing will go right until you are right
with yourself.
the black hand is over you and the green
eyes are watching
only three more warnings before fate strikes
    At first Johnny Pickering had tried to take no notice of the letters. But he could not keep it up. Things suddenly did seem to have started to go wrong with him. He slipped on the pavement and badly twisted his ankle. His girl friend told him she wanted no more to do with him and found herself another boy. He began to get in trouble at work breaking things in the china shop where he was employed as a counter assistant. He knew perfectly well what all the letters were about and he thought they came from Smiler. But he couldn’t work out how Smiler could be dodging about all over England posting them. He said nothing to his parents, but his slowly changing manner, making him irritable and rude, often brought him a smart backhander from his father. There were times when he heartily wished he had never stolen the old lady’s handbag and put the blame on Smiler.
    And while Albert pondered what to do about Smiler’s letter and Johnny Pickering swore, less and less convincingly, that he was never going to be daft enough to go and make a clean breast of things