The next French trip went off so quietly, and Collings was so relaxed, that it confirmed David’s guess. The heroin traffic was confined to Italy. This was logical. He knew that base opium was manufactured in Turkey and Afghanistan and was converted in small factories in Greece and Albania, first into morphine hydrochloride and then into the infinitely more valuable diacetyl morphine, popularly known as heroin. It would cross the Adriatic in fishing boats and be sold to distributing agents in Italy. This part of the organisation was a Mafia monopoly. The end market was Great Britain, where the sale of heroin was doubling every year.
“And here am I,” said David, “a humble link in this profitable chain, and wondering whether I can keep a wee piece of the profit for myself. Does not the Bible tell us that it is lawful to spoil the Egyptians? Yes, indeed.”
He was under no illusions about the risk he was running, and he made his preparations with corresponding care. He was staying at the time in a small hotel in a street on the Pimlico side of Victoria Station. Half the people there were more or less permanent residents; the other half were one-night stop-overs, travelling to or from the Continent. The proprietor was a genial Barbadian with one leg.
David’s first job on the Tuesday morning following the French trip was to get rid of the man in jeans and a mock-leather windcheater who seemed to be interested in his movements. He accomplished this by waiting in Theobald’s Road until there was only one taxi in sight, hailing it and driving off.
He dismissed the taxi at Bond Street Underground Station, took a bus to Piccadilly and walked down St. James’s Street. At the chemist’s shop halfway down on the left he presented the formula which he had scribbled on the back of an envelope. The assistant said, “Going in for home photography, sir?”
“Indeed, yes,” said David. “An old-fashioned camera and an old-fashioned darkroom. None of your instant snapshots.”
At a second chemist’s shop in Pall Mall he bought a large box of antihistamine tablets (“a sovereign remedy for all catarrhal afflictions”).
“You want to be a bit careful with those jiggers,” said the young man who sold them to him. “Lay off alcohol when you take them, and lay off driving too, if you can. They make you very sleepy.”
“Fortunately,” said David, “I am a rigid teetotaller and I possess no car.”
At the next shop, which dealt in fishing accessories, he bought half a dozen plastic bags of the type used for live bait. A tube of clear adhesive from a stationer’s in Lower Regent Street completed his shopping, all of which went into his capacious briefcase. This, in turn, was deposited in the Left Luggage Office at Leicester Square Underground Station. After which he had a drink, a sandwich and several more drinks at the Chandos and spent the afternoon in a cinema which advertised French Fantasy Films—the “Ultimate in Erotic Titillation.” He fell asleep halfway through the first film and woke up at six o’clock, stared blearily at the screen, then at his watch, and remembered that he had a date with Paula and was already late for it.
Paula had to be placated with drink and food. Towards the end of the meal, in one of the smaller Soho restaurants, he said, “You remember Moule?”
“Dennis Moule. Yes. He got the push soon after I came.”
“Do you know why?”
“Well, he was getting ever so queer. People said it was drugs.”
“Poor Moule. He had a brilliant mind.”
“Did you know him?”
“We were at school together.”
“He wasn’t Welsh.”
“I didn’t go to school in Wales. My father wouldn’t hear of it. He said, ‘Before we know where we are, they’ll be teaching you to speak Welsh.’ So I was packed off to an English public school. That was where I met Dennis. He was my first and best friend. We spent hours in the school workshop turning pieces of metal.”
“Whatever for?”
“We made them just the right size and weight to fit a slot machine in the town that sold packets of cigarettes. We used to smoke them in a lonely barn. We had to stop when the farmer turned up unexpectedly and Dennis dropped his lighted cigarette into the straw. What a bonfire that was!”
“And you were both expelled?”
“Nothing of the sort. We slipped out at the back without being caught. Even at that age I had a talent for avoiding trouble. Since then I’ve developed it into a fine art.”
“You’re a terrible liar. I don’t believe you knew Dennis at all.”
“Certainly I did. And when I met him the other day, we recognised each other immediately.”
“You met Dennis? I thought he’d be dead by now.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He was on drugs. People on drugs don’t last long.”
“You surprise me. He looked quite fit, I thought. A bit thin. Maybe he’d taken a cure.”
“He didn’t seem to me the sort of man who’d have the guts to do that,” said Paula. “But you never can tell. What’s he doing these days?”
“He’s got a job selling encyclopedias. And he asked me to do something for him. He said that letters or parcels might be coming to the Rayhome office addressed to him. I didn’t absolutely follow it. Something about not having been able to give his own address to some people. I said, if anything did turn up I was sure you’d forward it. Send it care of Poste Restante, Burnt Oak.”
“Poste Restante, Burnt Oak,” said Paula agreeably. “Okay. There doesn’t seem to be a lot left in that bottle.”
“The deficiency shall be remedied at once.”
On Wednesday morning, David saw the same young man propping up a lamp post outside the hotel. He looked dispirited. David put him down as a junior and not very experienced employee from a private enquiry agency and wondered who was interesting themselves in his movements. The most likely solution was that his Rayhome bosses were checking up on how he spent the intervals between trips. It would have been a sensible precaution.
David used the back door of the hotel. It seemed to be unguarded, but he was taking no chances. There was a large supermarket in Wilton Road. He went in at the front, through and out at the back, boarded the first bus that came along, left it at a traffic light and nipped quickly down a side road. No one else got off the bus and no one followed him.
He walked to the nearest Underground station, took the Central Line to Bethnal Green, changed on to the East London Section and got out at Surrey Docks Station.
It was a beautiful morning, and even the desolate little streets and weed-grown wasteland seemed to be warmed and cheered by the genial sun. David had an out-of-date street map, but by asking his way of a number of children, who answered him in the almost unintelligible dockland twang, he eventually located Pipe Street.
Unlike most South London streets, where houses seem to have been poured into a mould and turned out to cool, the houses in Pipe Street had been designed with flair. One had turrets, another had battlements, a third had a chimney shaped like the funnel of a ship. Number seven had a front garden the size of a billiard table, which was so crammed with models that the front path had some difficulty in finding its way between them. There were dwarfs, gnomes, windmills, castles, lighthouses, and helter-skelters; in a place of honour, a full-scale representation of the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
David picked his way up to the door and rang the bell. The door was opened by an elderly man with a brown face and white hair. Leonard Mullion had started life in the Docks Police, had retired early and was now the park keeper in charge of the smallest of the three Rotherhithe parks. He seemed to be expecting David and waved him into the front room. On the table was a peacock, cast in iron. Mr Mullion was decorating its tail, using a dozen little pots of paint of the type used for touching up the bodywork of motorcars.
He said, “I got the room ready when I heard you might be coming in. At the back, nice and quiet.”
“That’s just the ticket, Len. I don’t quite know when I’ll be needing it, but I guess it might be any day now. So what I’m going to do is pay you four weeks in advance and collect a key. When I do come, I might come in a bit of a hurry.”
“Suit yourself,” said Mr Mullion. “But if you turn up after dark, mind where you put your feet. The last man who had that room—he was a crane driver—he came home pissed one night and trod on the Mad Hatter.”
“I’m a sober citizen,” said David. “I can only remember being drunk once in my whole life.”
“That’s half the trouble. People don’t remember it.”
“I was fourteen at the time. My da took me on a choir outing, and I was sick over the leading tenor’s boots. That’s not a thing you forget in a hurry, I can tell you.”
When he got back to the hotel he went in again by the back door. The watcher was still standing about in the street in front. “He’ll get picked up for loitering if he doesn’t watch it,” said David. He did a good deal of talking to himself when there was no one else to talk to.
“He did what?” said the head of Gowers Enquiry Agency.
“Stayed in his room all day. Never came out once.”
“How do you know he didn’t come out the back way?”
“Not being able to be in two places at once,” said the young man aggressively, “how would I know if he came out the back way or not?”
His feet were hurting him.
“Something in that,” agreed Mr Gowers. It had been presented to him as a routine job, of no particular urgency. All the same, Randall Blackett was a man who preferred results to excuses.
“If he really stays in his room all day,” he said, “he must do most of his business on the telephone.”
“There’s no telephone in his room. He’d have to use one in the cabinet in the front hall.”
“All right. We’ll see if we can lean on the nig who runs the place to get us a tap on it. There’ll be an extension in his office.”
“Then I’d better spend the day sitting in his office,” said the young man hopefully.
“No point in that. Tomorrow’s Thursday. He’ll be off on one of his Continental coach trips. We’ll get it set up for when he comes back.”
The routine was by now so well established that David began to feel that he had been doing it all his life. He even recognised two members of his first contingent, a silent married couple called Longmore, who had come back for a second helping.
On this occasion, their progress was even more leisurely. A night at Amboise, two days’ sight-seeing round the castles of the Loire, a night south of Poitiers and a third stop near Grasse. As August turned to September, the weather became wet and cold, but when David suggested that they ought to lose no time getting south of the Alps, Collings disagreed.
It was plain that he was working to a carefully timed programme
It was not until the evening of the seventh day that they reached Florence. They were booked into a large, modern hotel overlooking the Filippo Strozzi Park. The bedrooms had in-house television sets, drink cabinets (“Rings a bell downstairs every time you open it,” said Collings sourly) and a secure-looking built-in wall cupboard. It did not look the sort of thing which could be opened by any old key. Collings observed it with pleasure. He took charge of the black bag, locked it in and pocketed the key.
“I guess you’ll be glad to forget about it for a bit,” he said.
David agreed. He was finding that he could read Collings like a barometer. On the first two days in Florence the pressure was low and the weather was set fair. On the afternoon of the third day the needle began to creep up. He was not a bit surprised when, that evening, Collings suggested a night out together.
David affected to think about it. He said, “All right. As long as you behave yourself this time.”
Considered as a social event, it was not a wild success. Collings had clearly got orders to keep them both away from the hotel until after midnight. On two occasions, when David yawned and suggested that they might go home, Collings called for more drinks.
“If this was his technique with my predecessors,” thought David, “no wonder they smelled a rat. Perhaps he simply explained the whole plot to them and cut them in for a share of the loot. Watterson might have agreed. Maybe Moule, too. Come to think of it, that was probably what started him on the downward path.”
By the time they finally got back to the hotel, it was one o’clock, and Collings, in spite of his surprising capacity for absorbing alcohol, was as nearly drunk as David had seen him.
He sat down on the end of his bed and started to take his shoes off. David said, “What about a nightcap?”
“If you touch that bloody drink cabinet, you’ll have to pay for every bloody bottle in it.”
“I wasn’t going to touch it,” said David.
He opened his own travelling bag and extracted a half-empty bottle of Highland Malt whisky. Collings eyed it with approval.
“That’s better,” he said. “We’ve had enough of that Italian muck. A glass of the old and bold. Just what the doctor ordered.” He took off his coat, removed his collar and tie, loosened his belt and belched.
David fetched two glasses from the bathroom annexe, poured a generous portion into one of them and gave it to Collings, and a rather more modest one into the other.
He said, “Water with it?”
“Never insult a good whisky with water,” said Collings. He took a gulp and smacked his lips. “There are times,” he said, “when I think you’re a Welsh bastard. There are other times when I love you.”
David grinned. He said, “I hope that’s not a proposal of marriage,” and went out to put some water into his own drink. He was a minute or two doing this. When he came back Collings’s empty glass was on the floor, and Collings was flat on his back on the bed. His face was bright red and his mouth was wide open.
David looked at him anxiously. He was making a noise like a man who was fighting for breath and trying to snore at the same time.
“I hope I haven’t overdone it,” said David.
He slipped the braces off Collings’s shoulders and pulled off his trousers. Collings in underpants, shirt and socks was not an attractive sight. David covered him with a blanket and put a pillow under his head. He then extracted the keys he wanted from Collings’s trouser pocket, opened the cupboard, took out the black bag and set to work.
By the time he had finished, Collings had rolled on to one side, and his face was a more normal colour. Three o’clock was striking as David undressed, turned out the light and climbed into bed. Even Collings’s snores failed to keep him awake.
“Christ almighty!” said Collings. “What the hell did we drink?”
“A bottle of lousy grappa, half a bottle of lousier ouzo, and a glass each of my good malt whisky.”
“It can’t have been the whisky.”
“You’re dead right it wasn’t the whisky. I’ve been drinking it for years. It was the mixture.”
“I’ve got a head like a bloody dynamo.” Collings peered at him with bloodshot eyes which bulged from a face with a yellowish tinge. “You’re looking too bloody cheerful.”
“I have a very peculiar constitution,” said David. “My microcosm synthesises with alcohol. I’ll have to be getting along now. I promised to conduct a party of our clients round the Uffizi.”
Collings said, “Ugh,” and then, “I’m going back to bed.”
That was their last full day in Florence. David noted with interest the care which Collings now exercised over the safety of the black bag. When they finally departed, he took it out of the cupboard and carried it down himself to the coach and placed it beside the driver’s seat, where it would be under his eye. At Calais and again at Dover, when David had to open the bag to get out the tickets and the passports, he could feel Collings breathing down his neck. He almost said something about it, but refrained. The charade was now so open, and he was so much a part of it, that any comment would have been superfluous.
Their crossing had been a later one than usual, and it was dusk when they reached London and dark by the time they pulled up outside the Rayhome office. Collings carried the bag upstairs. The reception desk was empty, but David could see a line of light under the door of the Chevertons’ room and could hear the rumble of voices.
As Collings carried the bag in, David caught a glimpse of both the Chevertons and a third man, someone he had not seen before. He got an impression of a belted raincoat and a broad pair of shoulders before the door shut. He walked slowly along the passage and sat himself down in the small waiting room at the end.
Time passed. David looked at his watch. More than thirty minutes. He got up and moved across to the door. He had heard no sound, but it seemed to be locked.
David examined the window. It was unbarred and opened easily, but it gave on to a sheer drop of nearly twenty feet into a small, enclosed courtyard.
“If this was a bedroom,” he said, “I could knot three sheets together and be off. Even a pair of curtains might do the trick. But no curtains.”
He was regretting the lack of soft furnishings when the door opened and Bob Cheverton came in. He was smiling. He said, “Sorry to keep you waiting, David. We had a couple of telephone calls to attend to. Another successful trip, I gather.”
“Did you have to lock me in?”
“Lock you in? We didn’t lock you in. Why should we? There isn’t a lock on the door. It jams sometimes.”
“My mistake,” said David. “I suffer terribly from claustrophobia. It started when my mother locked me in the airing cupboard at the age of six and forgot about me. I was there seventeen hours.”
Cheverton was still smiling. He said, “One thing all our clients tell me about you is that you have a wonderful imagination. Here’s your bonus. Same as last time. Now you’re getting into your stride, we should be able to make it a regular one.” He handed David an envelope. “No need to bother the tax man about it, eh?”
“One of the prime objects in my life is to save the tax man bother,” agreed David. They were out in the passage by now. A quick backward glance showed him that there was a bolt right at the top of the door.
As he passed the Chevertons’ room he could see Ronald Cheverton sitting at his desk. Belted raincoat had gone. David shouted out, “Good night.” Ronald raised his head for a moment and looked at him with dead, dispassionate eyes.
David went out into the street.
He was thinking hard.
It was possible that the door had, in fact, been jammed and not bolted; but he did not believe it. It was possible that the Chevertons and the stranger had examined the bag and not detected the substitution he had made. He did not believe this either. In which case, the needle had swung round to Storm Warning. Force Twelve on the Beaufort Scale.
It was neatly done.
A girl was coming towards him along the pavement. She seemed to be drunk and was tacking gently from side to side, talking to herself. As she reached David she veered towards the roadway. David naturally veered inwards. The man stationed in the doorway at that point hit him, once, with a silk stocking full of wet sand.
“Nothing,” said the man in the belted raincoat. His name was McVee, and his nickname, used only by privileged friends, was Monkey. He had a nose shaped like a little boot, which had been squashed down, in some fight or accident, on to his upper lip. This may have accounted for the nickname.
“You’re sure?” said Bob Cheverton. He was trying to keep his voice level and not succeeding very well.
“Sure? Of course I’m sure. If he’d had half an ounce of tobacco on him we’d have found it.”
“So what’s he done with it?”
Collings said, with a truculence which failed to conceal his own nervousness, “One thing’s bloody certain. He didn’t get bloody nothing out of that bag from the time we left Calais. I’m not saying he mightn’t have picked a lock and got it out one night on the trip. Like I’ve told you before, I can’t stay awake all night. It’s not reasonable. But if he got the stuff out of the bag, it’s still in Italy. That’s for sure.”
“What do you mean?” said Bob. “If he got it out. Who else could have got it out? Apart from you.”
Collings said, “I’m not taking that from you or anyone,” and lumbered to his feet.
There was a fifth man in the room, a plump character, without much hair on his head. His tanned face, neat dark suit, silk shirt and discreet gold cuff links suggested a businessman who spent his holidays in the Bahamas or the South of France. His voice, when he spoke, matched his appearance. There was authority in it. He said, “Don’t be stupid, Collings. Just relax. No one’s accused you of anything, yet.”
“He said—”
“It doesn’t matter what he said. All he was doing was examining certain possibilities. For myself, I can see two and two only. Either Morgan filched the stuff one night, in the way you’ve suggested, or it was never there at all.”
The four men considered the second possibility.
Bob Cheverton said, “I can’t see the sense in it, Trombo. We’ve played straight with them on twenty consignments or more. We’ve paid them their money. Why should they cheat on this one?”
“I didn’t say they were cheating. I said they might have been. Myself, I don’t believe it. They’re businessmen. How would it pay them to short-change us? Very well. So let us look at the alternative. Your new man, Morgan, removed the real stuff and put in this substitute. I do not blame Collings. One man couldn’t keep an eye on another man all the time, day and night. If he was clever with keys and had his wits about him, he could have lifted this consignment. Next point. We know that it did not come back to England with him. So what did he do with it?”
Bob Cheverton said, “He might have had an accomplice. Someone on the Continent he passed it to.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Ronald. “He’s a loner.”
“I don’t believe it for another reason,” said the man called Trombo. “The market for the stuff is here, in London. He has hidden it. Somewhere in or around Florence. When the heat is off, he’ll go back for it. He can afford to wait. We can’t. So we must find it. Or buy another package. And buy it quickly.”
There was silence in the room. Everyone there knew what he was talking about. Their consignments went to half a dozen doctors whose dubious medical ethics allowed them to sell it on, at exorbitant prices, to the addicts who craved it, begged for it, lived for it. If they could not satisfy their patients, they could be in trouble. A man or woman, screaming and raving, who thought the doctor was holding out for a higher price. A patient who was capable of killing the doctor and wrecking his surgery in a mad search for the white crystals that meant the difference between temporary happiness and intolerable misery.
Bob said, “Buying a package in London will be very expensive. Perhaps impossible, in the time available.”
“Right,” said Trombo. He awarded him the bright smile which a teacher gives to an intelligent member of the class. “In that case, the answer must be that we find the original package. Yes?”
“Somewhere round Florence,” said Ronald. “What a chance!”
“You forget something,” said Trombo. “What does the proverb say? He who hides can find—or can be made to find. Well?”
The four men looked at him. In an emergency there was no doubt who was leader.
“We could ask Mr Morgan to tell us what he has done with our property. If we asked him in the appropriate way, I think he would tell us. The disadvantage of that method is that it would be slow. He might give us information which subsequently proved to be misleading. This would not, ultimately, do him any good, but it would cause undesirable delay. Or we can send him to look for it. You will ask him to conduct the additional tour to Italy. The one Watterson was going to take.”
“Won’t that make him suspicious?”
“Not if Watterson is unable to take it himself. You can arrange that, surely?”
Ronald had already started dialling. Bob said, “It’s no good. You won’t find him at home. Not at this time of night. He’ll be out on the booze.”
But the telephone was answered. They could hear that it was a woman’s voice. Ronald was saying, “Oh, I am sorry. When?” And after a long explanation, “I see. It must have been a great shock. You’ve got our number. If there’s anything we can do to help, just give us a buzz.”
He rang off and said, “That was his sister. Watterson had a stroke. Luckily she was on the spot and got him into hospital.”
“Lucky in lots of ways,” said Bob. “Now we don’t need any excuses.”
Trombo said, “When does your next trip leave?”
“In two days’ time.”
“Very well. When he gets to Italy he will be under professional observation. Either he will lead the observers to the hiding place. He will be given every possible chance to do so. Or if, by the end of the trip, he has not done so, then our Italian colleagues will remove him to a quiet place and will persuade him to divulge the necessary information.”
“Suppose he won’t tell them?”
“Why suppose anything so stupid? Do you want me to explain to you the methods by which they will cripple him?”
“No,” said Bob thickly. “I expect you’re right.”
Ronald Cheverton said, in his gravelly voice, “And suppose he refuses the trip. He’s done his six trips. He’s due a fortnight off.”
“Invite him round tomorrow. He should by that time have got over the effects of the unfortunate experience he suffered when leaving your office. Indeed, it will have left him short of cash. You will be sympathetic. Offer him a substantial bonus if he will take this extra trip.”
“And if he still refuses?”
“When you make the offer, McVee and two of his friends will be on the premises. If he refuses, you can immediately adopt the alternative solution. Our friends may not have the finesse of the Italians, but they are not inexpert in extracting information.”
McVee’s small mouth opened, and he uttered a sound like a gentle kiss.
David was not unconscious for more than a minute. As the lightning flashes in front of his eyes slowed down and the mist cleared a little, he realised that he was being handled by at least two men. They had taken his coat right off and were now pulling down his trousers. He wondered vaguely about this and decided to let it ride. There was very little he could do about it.
Hands slid inside his open shirt and felt his body. He grunted and tried to roll over. Other hands pinned his shoulders to the ground. The floor was cold against bare skin. Hands were sliding down now, inside his legs. His shoes and socks had already been pulled off. He wanted to be sick, but realised that if he showed any signs of coming back to life he would be hit again.
He decided not to be sick. He contented himself with groaning.
There was a muttering of voices which went on for a long time. Then his coat and trousers were dumped on top of him, and there was the tip-tap of footsteps going away.
Three men, he thought.
He sat up cautiously. His head was opening and shutting like a frenzied oyster, but the lightning flashes had died away. He had been concussed often enough on the rugby field to recognise the familiar symptoms.
Either you were going to be sick or you weren’t. You weren’t. All right. What about trying to get dressed before you die of cold? The trouble was that his coat and trousers seemed to have been turned inside out. It took him several minutes to overcome this minor difficulty. Socks and shoes next, but don’t bend forward too far or too suddenly.
Now try standing up. Hold on to that door handle whilst the floor stops rocking.
He had been dragged into the open entrance hall which served a block of offices. A notice, inches from his eyes, said, “Happy-Go-Lucky Food Products.” A fine time to talk about food.
His wallet had gone, but there were coins still in one of his trouser pockets. Enough for a train fare, if he could walk as far as the station.
Stop being feeble, Morgan. Of course you can walk.
The exercise seemed to do him good. By the time he reached Holborn Kingsway Underground Station he was able to buy his ticket and get past the barrier without causing any comment. The back of his neck was stiff and sore, and his head was still throbbing, but the rhythm was slowing down. Perhaps he hadn’t got concussion after all. Perhaps it was just a stiff neck. He repeated this to himself a number of times.
“An important point, David, bach. A vital point.”
He was still saying it as he opened the door of his hotel room. The point was that if he was concussed, he ought not to drink spirits. If he wasn’t, a stiff whisky was exactly what any reasonable doctor would have ordered.
He poured himself out a stiff whisky, sat down in the shabby armchair in front of the gas fire and drank it. It seemed to do him no harm. He poured out another, but did not drink it at once.
He wanted to think.
He knew, of course, why he had been slugged and searched. He knew that the taking of his wallet was the merest blind. He wondered what would happen next.
What he really needed was comfort. Someone to hold his hand.
Susan was on the point of going to bed when the telephone rang. She said, “Yes. Who is it?” in her senior-secretarial voice.
“It’s me.”
“Oh, God! Not again. What do you want now?”
“What I want, love, is someone intelligent. Someone to hold an intellectual conversation with.”
“Don’t you ever give up?”
“This is only the second time I’ve telephoned you this month.”
“Only the second? It seemed like a lot more often. What do you want?”
David appeared to be considering the question. Then he said, “I need help. Help and comfort, in great therapeutic doses.”
“Why don’t you get it from that dishy blonde you’ve been seen going round all the Holborn bars with. Who is she, anyway?”
“No names, no pack drill. As we used to say when I was in the army.”
“When were you in the army? And where?”
“Out East. The gorgeous East—palm trees, palanquins, Pepsi- Cola.”
“If you enjoyed it all that much, I can’t think why you troubled to come back.”
“The end of that chapter in my life is a sad one. It was the Colonel’s daughter. A beautiful girl of no more than eighteen years with a taste for romance.”
“Then a liar like you should have suited her down to the ground.” There was a long pause. “I say, are you all right? You sound a bit funny.”
“Three doctors have advised on my case, all men of experience. They all advised whisky.”
“My advice, which I give you for nothing, is that you should go to bed.”
“But who with?”
“Alone, for once in a way.”
“Big deal.”
“Look, David. You’re fun to talk to, sometimes, when you’re sober. When you’re tight, which I think you are now, you’re just a dead bore.”
“A hard woman. Harder than rock. Harder than chilled steel. A soothsayer at Portmadoc once warned me to beware of hard women.”
“Stuff and nonsense.”
“What’s stuff and nonsense?”
“What you’ve been talking for the last five minutes. I’m tired. I’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow.”
“In that case,” said David with dignity, “I shall terminate our conversation forthwith. If you wish to renew it, you can do so through the usual channels.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
David replaced the receiver. He still looked sad, but not as sad as he had been. In fact, he looked rather pleased with himself.
“My dear fellow,” said Bob Cheverton, “of course you must report it to the police.”
“A useless and troublesome exercise,” said David. “I know exactly what they’ll say. ‘Can you describe your assailants, sir?’ And when I confess that I never even saw them, they’ll say, ‘Of course, that makes it very difficult, sir. We’ll do what we can.’ And then they’ll do damn all.”
“But they got all your money.”
“They were kind enough to leave me enough to get home by Underground.”
“Naturally, we’ll help out. An advance against your next bonus or a loan. Just as you like.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“The least we can do. Particularly as you’re helping us out.”
David had agreed, with surprisingly little demur, to take the forthcoming Italian trip.
“Poor old Watterson,” he said. “I only met him on that one occasion, but I can’t say I’m greatly surprised. It wasn’t simply the amount of alcohol he consumed. It was the speed with which he put it down. Like a desert sucking up rainwater after a long drought.”
“Sad,” said Bob. “Very sad. Well, if you’re quite sure you’re up to it, we’ll look forward to seeing you here tomorrow morning. We’ve a full coach load for you.”
“It should be a most interesting trip,” said David.