Gough – who was eighteen and a half, weighed eleven stone and had dark red hair and a dark red temper – opened the door of his study and shouted “Fa-a-a-g” in a voice which would have done credit to a sergeant-major in the Brigade of Guards.
The sound floated along the corridor, descended the stairs and penetrated the day-room in the far corner of which a thin boy of indeterminate age, with a serious, coffee-coloured face and wiry black hair, was sitting on the hot-water pipes reading, for the third time, an airmail letter with a foreign stamp on it.
He was so intent on what he was reading that the sound took a few fatal seconds to register. Then he stuffed the letter into his pocket and hurled himself out of the room.
“Last again, Thorn,” said Gough. “You’re a dozy kid. I want these boots buffed up for parade this afternoon. I want to be able to see my face in the toe caps. And you’ve only got half an hour to do it, so look slippy.”
The boy addressed as Thorn took the boots without comment and scuttled off. ‘Thorn’ was a serviceable approximation of his name. No one had been able to get his tongue round the double “a” and diphthong when he first arrived.
He didn’t mind cleaning boots. It was a job; a job of definite proportions. You could start it and finish it and contemplate the results with satisfaction. There were jobs which were not like that. His long, sensitive fingers touched the letter in his pocket. Instead of the usual three, it had taken five days to arrive. He wondered if the delay was entirely accidental.
He had started on the second boot when Hepplewhite put his sleek head round the door and said, “Hello, Nuri. I’ve been looking for you, Flathers wants you.”
“Flathers must wait,” said Nuri. “I have only got ten minutes to finish these for Gough.”
“He said he wanted you at once.”
“Gough will not like it if I do not finish these. I am in disfavour already.”
It was a delicate problem. The Reverend Dudley Fletcher (or “Flathers”) was a housemaster, and capable of being unpleasant if flouted. On the other hand, Gough was head of the house, and a beating from Gough was a thing to be avoided at all costs.
“Look here,” said Hepplewhite. “Suppose I finish that other boot. You go and see what Flathers wants.”
“Do it well,” said Nuri. “Gough desires to see his reflection in the toe cap.”
“If I had a face like Gough’s,” said Hepplewhite, “I wouldn’t be so keen to look at it, would you?”
His housemaster was not alone. A second man was seated on the other side of the fireplace. Nuri, who was a quick judge of character, put him down as a senior civil servant or a retired schoolmaster. Both men got up as Nuri came in. His housemaster said, “This is Mr. Behrens. He’s connected with the British Foreign Office. He has some news for you.”
There was no need for them to say any more. Nuri could read the news in their faces. He had read it unmistakably in the laboured cheerfulness of his father’s letter.
Twenty minutes later he faced a wrathful Gough.
“This boot’s all right – but this one’s a mess. And anyway, who the hell said you could hand the job over to Hepplewhite? I told you to do it yourself.”
“I am sorry, Gough,” said Nuri, seriously. “Had the interruption not been of a vital nature, I should certainly have concluded the task you gave me.”
“What interruption?’
“I have had news from home. My father died yesterday. I have to return at once.”
“I’m sorry,” said Gough. He added, being a perfect gentleman, “May I wish your Highness the best of luck.”
“That I may need,” said Nuri.
Mr. Behrens said the same thing to him in the car on the way to London Airport.
“You realise” he said, “that it’s not going to be plain sailing. It’s unfortunate that you were out of the country when your father died. Everyone thought he was getting over his stroke, and then he had this second one.”
“Was it a stroke?”
“Oh, I think so,” said Mr. Behrens. He looked at the young man beside him and wondered what was going on behind that solemn face. “Your father was well-liked, and well-guarded.”
“He had enemies, too.”
“Powerful enemies, bitter enemies,” agreed Mr. Behrens.
Two years before, when the King was on a state visit to London, Mr. Behrens and his old friend and colleague Mr. Calder had both been involved in the Security arrangements; arrangements which had culminated in a suitcase bomb exploding prematurely while the intended assassin was still carrying it, blowing him to bloodstained rags.
“They would give a good deal,” he said, “to delay or spoil your coronation.”
The fog rolled up to meet them as they crossed the new bridge at Staines. Mr. Behrens cursed, switched on his fog-lamp and joined the bumping, crawling line of traffic. It took them two hours to reach the airport.
In the VIP departure lounge, they found a reception committee assembled. Mr. Absalom, senior councillor from the embassy, stout and agreeable; Mr. Moustaq, his assistant, thin and silent; and a small, worried man called Forbes, who apparently represented the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
Mr. Absalom and Mr. Moustaq kissed Nuri formally, on both cheeks, and Forbes shook his hand and said, “I’m afraid, your Majesty, that there is no possibility of a flight before tomorrow morning. Gatwick is worse than we are, and conditions at Manchester are almost as bad. We have arranged accommodation at the airport hotel.”
As he said this, he looked at Mr. Absalom. Mr. Behrens guessed that there had been a difference of opinion about this.
Mr. Absalom said, showing his teeth in a smile as he did so, “It seemed to us that if there was an entire evening to be passed, it could be passed more pleasantly in London than in the lounge of an airport hotel.”
Everyone looked at Nuri.
He said, “We will go to London.” It was his first pronouncement as ruler, and deeply though he disapproved of the decision, Mr. Behrens could not help admiring the manner in which it had been promulgated.
He said to Forbes, “I shall have to advise our people about this change of plan. Can I use the telephone in your office?”
And to the others, “I strongly suggest that we leave our cars here, and use official transport. The drivers here will be much quicker and safer in the fog than we should be. I expect Mr. Forbes can arrange it for us.”
Mr. Forbes said he would be glad to do so. The thought of getting rid of the whole party had cheered him up considerably.
It was an evening to remember. One of the things about it had been the speed with which Nuri had grown up, a process which normally takes two or three years, compressed into hours.
They had gone first to the embassy, where clothes more suitable than the regulation school uniform had been found. The suit was dark, a little modern in its cut for Mr. Behrens’ taste, but inoffensive.
“You will need money,” said Mr. Absalom. He produced a wallet. “Some cigarettes—” this was a thin, but expensive-looking case of silver with black filigree work, “—and a lighter.”
Nuri seemed more pleased with the cigarettes than with the money. He offered them round and lit one himself. “It was the thing I missed most when I went to that school.”
“When did you start smoking?” asked Mr. Behrens.
“Not until I was ten,” said Nuri. “It is considered wrong in our country for young children to smoke.”
He exhaled luxuriantly, and slipped the cigarette case into the side pocket of his jacket, running his fingers over its smooth surface and machine-turned corners. “Where shall we eat?”
They ate at the Savoy Grill. Nuri’s sophistication did not, Mr. Behrens was glad to see, go as far as drinking alcohol in public, but he made a very good meal. When the last flakes of a second helping of a sticky confection had disappeared, he summoned the head waiter with a gesture which brought that dignitary scurrying across the room, and said, “Please congratulate the chef for me. It was an excellent meal,” And to Mr. Absalom, “What shall we do next?”
“We have a long and tiring day tomorrow,” said Mr. Behrens.
“I had reserved a table at a night club,” said Mr. Absalom. “There is a first class cabaret.”
“Splendid,” said Nuri. He added, “If you feel tired, Mr. Behrens, there would be no need for you to accompany us.”
“I am not in the least tired,” said Mr. Behrens, tartly. “I was thinking of your Highness.”
He was scribbling a note on a piece of paper, and as they went out he handed it to the restaurant manager who accepted it without comment.
The Krokodil was not quite the sort of place that Mr. Behrens had anticipated. The large embassy car, complete with chauffeur and assistant chauffeur, after threading its way with difficulty through Old Compton Street and Frith Street, had finally forced itself into a crowded cul-de-sac, from the dark end of which a green crocodile winked a red eye at them and thrashed its neon tail.
“It is not pretentious,” agreed Mr. Absalom. “But they have a good band, and the girls are discreet.”
With this last statement Mr. Behrens had so far found no reason to disagree. Angie, Eed, and May had attached themselves to the party as soon as they reached the table. Angie had unbelievably blonde shoulder-length hair, and was now dancing with Nuri. There was not much scope for finesse on the tiny crowded floor, but both danced well, touching, parting, approaching and recoiling in the stylised modern fashion. May, who had red hair, was engaged in a thoughtful flirtation with Mr. Absalom. Eed had given up trying to fathom Mr. Behrens, and was drinking her fourth glass of champagne. She had black hair and a sulky but intelligent face. Mr. Behrens thought that in a more promising milieu, Eed might have demonstrated quite an attractive personality.
He said, “Where have all the pictures gone?”
Eed stared at him over the rim of her glass, and then giggled. “You’ve been here before, I can see that. They took ‘em down this afternoon for cleaning.”
“I noticed the faded patches on the walls. What are they?”
“Photographs. The usual sort of thing. They’re a bit rude, actually.”
“They must have heard that I was coming,” said Mr. Behrens.
Eed looked at him curiously. She thought that he was an odd ’un. She had put him down at first as a sugar daddy, but now she was not sure. There was a curious hardness about his eyes and mouth, which contradicted his appearance of grumpy middle-aged benevolence.
“A doctor once told me,” said Mr. Behrens, “that too much champagne is bad for the lining of the stomach. Let’s have a change.”
He picked up the wine list, signalled to the waiter and said, “I should like a glass of this brandy.” He indicated the most expensive drink on the list. “And I’m sure this young lady will join me.”
“You can only die once,” said Eed.
The waiter said, “I’m sorry, sir, we are out of stock of that brandy.”
Mr. Behrens moved his finger up the wine list. “Armagnac, then,” he said.
“I think,” said the waiter, “that we are out of that too. I could find out.”
“Don’t bother,” said Mr. Behrens. He seemed to have lost interest in the topic.
“A little more champagne, sir?”
“Not at the moment.” He turned to Mr. Absalom, and said, “I hope that lovely car we came in isn’t going to be stolen.”
“How should it be?”
“Soho is a dishonest quarter. Or so I have always understood. I don’t come here much, in the ordinary way.”
“The men will look after it.”
“They will find it difficult to do so,” said Mr. Behrens. “Unless they have periscopic eyes. Both of them are drinking at that table in the corner.”
Mr. Absolom uttered an angry exclamation, jumped up and went over to the table. Mr. Behrens saw him expostulating with the men, one of whom got up and walked out. Mr. Absalom rejoined them.
“It was right of you to point it out to me,” he said. “I shall report the men to the head of Chancery. They had no right to come in together. One should certainly have stayed with the car.”
“There is very little discipline among young men today,” said Mr. Behrens sadly. “If you will excuse me for a moment—”
He got up and made his way into the foyer. A thickset man in a dinner jacket was standing there. He wasn’t exactly guarding the exit, but he was within easy reach of it.
“I would like to use your telephone,” said Mr. Behrens. “An urgent call.”
The man considered the matter, running his hand down a chin which looked as if it had already been shaved twice that day and was about ready for a third scrape. He said, “There’s a telephone up there.”
He pointed to stairs at the end of the passage.
Mr. Behrens thanked him, and walked along the passage, conscious of the man’s eyes focused like twin gun barrels on the small of his back. The stairs were carpeted, and led up to a hallway which was on ground-floor level at the back of the building. There were three doors on either side of the passage, but no sign of a telephone.
As Mr. Behrens was hesitating, the middle door on the left-hand side of the passage opened and a man came out. He was a big man, bulky but not fat, with skin the colour of crême caramel and black hair set in tight varnished waves.
Mr. Behrens said, “The man downstairs—um—told me I would find a telephone up here. I—um—see no telephone. A most important call—”
“You could use the telephone in my office if you wished, sir.”
“That’s very good of you,” said Mr. Behrens. He followed him in. “You would be the manager, I take it? I hardly like to trouble you in the middle of such a busy evening.”
“All evenings are busy here. That telephone is through to Exchange.”
“But it’s not every night that you have to anticipate a police raid, I imagine,” said Mr. Behrens.
“What makes you think we’re anticipating a raid, sir?”
“I noticed that you had removed all the—um—exciting pictures from the walls downstairs. And most of the exciting drinks, too. I suppose those are the sort of things that get damaged, or perhaps lost, when you have a lot of heavy-handed policemen about the place.”
Mr. Behrens was holding the receiver in one hand as he spoke, and was watching the manager’s face. He saw the calculating expression in his eyes, and that was all he did see before the ceiling fell on him and the room rolled slowly over, twice, and dissolved.
Mr. Calder was sitting on a hard chair in an almost unfurnished room next to the superintendent’s office in Carver Street police station.
When Mr. Behrens had telephoned him from the airport, he had suggested West End Central police station as a rendezvous. They both knew Chief Superintendent Park, head of the CID there, and had worked with him on many occasions.
When Mr. Calder reached West End Central, after crawling for three hours through the fog, abandoning his car in a garage at New Cross and finishing the journey by train, he found a message from the Savoy waiting for him. It said that the party was apparently going on to a night club in Soho, and it suggested that Mr. Calder go to Carver Street, which is the sub-station directly concerned with this area.
When Mr. Carver arrived at Carver Street, he realised that the move had been a mistake. The superintendent in charge had behaved with perfect correctness. He had accepted Mr. Calder’s credentials, backed as they were by a message from his own chief, but he had made it quite plain that he regarded the position with disfavour. He did not like any civilians, even official civilians, interfering in police matters. And he did not like his superiors passing such civilians on to him, particularly on a night when he had his hands full. He probably had gastritis and troubles about his allowances as well, thought Mr. Calder. But it didn’t make the situation any easier.
The superintendent explained, as if he grudged every word dispensed, “We’ve got a big job on tonight. Large-scale traffic in hashish. Involves two or three clubs and a lot of boarding-houses. Well – they’re brothels, really.”
“It sounds exciting,” said Mr. Calder. “Which particular clubs and brothels have you got your eye on?”
The superintendent hesitated and then rapped out a list of names, adding, so quickly that there wasn’t even a full stop at the end of the sentence, “I’m afraid I can’t ask you to accompany us.”
“Of course not,” said Mr. Calder.
He continued to sit patiently on his chair. The minute hand of the clock crept down toward the half hour after midnight.
“I fear,” said Mr. Absalom, “that Mr. Behrens has been called away. We should, I think, be leaving.”
“Why slide off now?” said May. “The night’s hardly started.”
Mr. Absalom looked past her at the thickset, black-jowled man standing in the doorway. He came forward, smiling. The girls fell silent.
“I think,” said Mr. Absalom, “that it is agreed we go. Yes?”
“Oh, sure,” said May. “Sure. I’m not objecting.”
She swallowed half a glass of champagne quickly, as though it had been a prop that the stage manager was going to remove. “Come on, Angie. The party’s over.”
“Angela will be coming with us,” said Mr. Absalom.
The blonde girl had one arm linked through Nuri’s. She was smiling nervously. They were all looking at the boy. There was the briefest pause, a tiny hitch, a half-beat in the music, a trip in the heart’s rhythm.
Then Nuri said, with a smile, “Time for bed, eh?”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Absalom. “Time we were all in bed.”
The party moved, as a body, to the door, then out into the foyer. The thickset man said, “Pleasant dreams, your Highness.”
Mr. Absalom gave him a sharp, unfriendly glance. Then they were in the car. One of the chauffeurs was driving. The other held the door and climbed into the car with them, occupying the seat previously occupied by Mr. Behrens.
“Where are we going?” said Nuri.
“Actually,” said Angie, “you’re coming back with me for the night.”
Nuri opened his brown eyes a little wider. Then he said, “That’s very kind of you. We hardly know each other.”
The girl chuckled.
“You’re a good boy,” she said. “I can see that. You behave yourself, and we’ll have no trouble. Right?”
“Naturally there will be no trouble,” said Mr. Absalom. “Our first care must be for his Highness’ comfort.”
Mr. Behrens rolled over, grunted and sat up. His fingers scrabbled on the carpet. He opened his eyes fractionally, and closed them again, as an unfriendly hand thrust a white-hot skewer through the top of his head. Keeping his eyes shut, he fumbled in his top waistcoat pocket and brought out a transparent capsule about the size of a cigarette stub. He snapped it between finger and thumb and held this under his nose.
Five deep breaths later he sat up cautiously, and opened his eyes. The pain had retreated into a dull, throbbing doughnut at the top of his head. His neck felt as though it had been broken and inexpertly set. Otherwise he seemed to be functioning normally. He was in a cell-like room, with two round windows set high up in the wall, and two doors. It looked like the sort of place a man might squeeze a secretary into if the secretary wasn’t too fussy about her working conditions. It was furnished with a cheap typing table and one of those curious chairs with spindly chromium legs and no proper back to it.
Mr. Behrens picked it up. It was a better weapon than an ordinary chair. Unfortunately there was no one to hit with it. He put it down again, and tried the doors. Both, as he had expected, were locked.
Mr. Behrens took out his key fold. Hanging among his car keys and door keys were two steel implements. One looked like a toothpick with a spatulate tip, the other like a thinner version of the implement with which boy scouts are supposed to extract stones from horses’ hooves. Mr. Behrens moved the chair across to the inner door and sat down. It took him three patient minutes to locate the spring in the lock, and another minute to lift and slide the gate. Then he opened the door, and found himself, as he had already guessed he might, back in the office in which he had been knocked out. It was now empty.
Mr. Behrens sat down behind the desk and tried the drawers. None of them were locked. In one he found, under some papers, a Walther automatic pistol with a full magazine. He put this in his jacket pocket, walked across to the passage door and opened it.
There was no one in sight, but there seemed to be quite a lot of people about. There was a hum and clatter from the floor below, and he heard a door open and shut. Mr. Behrens was a man who liked to do things in the simplest and least troublesome way. He went back to the office, lifted the receiver from the telephone and started to dial.
At one o’clock Mr. Calder had strolled out into the charge room. Here he found the station sergeant, a friendly soul, who produced a cup of tea and a tin of biscuits which Mr. Calder attacked gratefully, having eaten nothing since lunch time.
“How’s the big clean-up going?” he asked.
“It’s Operation Washout so far,” said the Sergeant. “We get these tip-offs. Sometimes they’re hot. Sometimes just the opposite.”
“Nothing at the clubs?”
“We gave the Krokodil the once-over. Clean as a Baptist chapel. We’re moving in on the Quart Pot and the Tableau next. We’ll do the boarding-houses later. You know what we’ll find there? A lot of business men, down from Manchester and Liverpool. Virile, these Midlands business men.”
The telephone rang. The sergeant picked it up, listened and said, “It’s for you.”
“Take your coat off,” said Angie. “Make yourself comfortable. We got a bit of time to put in before anything happens.”
“What is going to happen?” enquired Nuri.
“Actually we’re waiting here till the police come.”
“The police? That will be embarrassing for you, I imagine.”
“I’m used to ‘em,” said Angie. “Besides, confidentially, I’m prepared to put up with a bit of embarrassment, if the money’s good enough. It’s you who’s supposed to be embarrassed.”
“Suppose I walk out before they come.”
“Well, first, you can’t, because I’ve locked the door and put the key where you wouldn’t find it, and even if you did find it and unlocked the door, there’s someone watching outside, and he’d put you back in again, twice as quick as you went out. So let’s relax. We’ll have a cup of tea, shall we?”
Nuri looked round the bedroom with interest. It was so neat, and so compact, like a cabin on a ship – the long cupboards with shelves above and below, the bed which folded up into the wall, the tiny curtained annex into which Angie had disappeared, and which seemed from the glimpse he had had of it, to be bathroom, kitchen and scullery combined. It was not unlike his own cubicle at school. Frillier, of course.
“You wouldn’t happen,” said Angie, “to have such a thing as a cigarette on you? I’m right out of them.”
“But of course.”
Nuri put his hand in his pocket, and then stood for a moment, unmoving. There was certainly a case there. He ran his fingers over it, then drew it out, holding it up under the light. There had been ten cigarettes left in the case Mr. Absalom had given him. There were ten in this one. He picked one out and sniffed it delicately.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “These are Egyptian.”
“I’m not fussy,’ said Angie, reappearing with a tray on which she had set cups, saucers, a milk jug and a sugar basin. “Light it for me, there’s a dear.”
Mr. Behrens had finished telephoning and, being a man who did not believe in wasting opportunities, was examining the contents of the desk drawers, when he heard footsteps in the passage. The door opened, and Mr. Absalom came in. When he saw Mr. Behrens, he started to retreat. When he saw the gun in Mr. Behrens’ hand he abandoned the effort, and stood very still.
“Come in,” said Mr. Behrens, “and shut the door. Sit down. I’m glad you’ve come along. It’s saved me the trouble of coming to look for you. What have you done with the boy?”
“When you deserted us,” said Mr. Absalom, “—I still do not understand why – we took him back to the embassy. He is there now. Asleep. I came back here to find out what had happened to you.”
“Ingenious,” said Mr. Behrens. “But not good enough. The police are planning to raid a number of brothels tonight. The boy has been planted in one of them. You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me which one it is.”
Mr. Absalom’s small black eyes shifted from Mr. Behrens’ face to the gun in his hand, and then back again.
“If you fire that,” he said, “a lot of people will hear it.”
“Were you aware,” said Mr. Behrens, “that there are twenty-six separate bones in the human foot. The astralagus, the calcaneum, the scaphoid, the cuboid, three different cunei-form bones, five metatarsals and no fewer than fourteen phalanges.”
As he spoke the last word he fired. Mr. Absalom gave a little squeal of surprise. The bullet had carried away the heel of his shoe.
“That was a sighting shot,” explained Mr. Behrens.
There were hurried footsteps in the passage. Mr. Behrens got up, picked up a heavy cylindrical ruler from the desk and stood behind the door. It was the coffee-coloured manager who came in. Mr. Behrens hit him very hard, on the base of the skull, dragged him into the room, locked the door and turned his attention again to Mr. Absalom, who seemed pinned to his chair.
“The last time I shot a man in the foot,” he said, “the bullet struck the entocuneiform bone – that’s the large one on the left – and broke three of the five metatarsals. He was three months in hospital, and the surgeons then cut off the foot. It was the only way of relieving the agony.”
He raised the pistol.
Mr. Absalom’s face was grey and his lips were quivering. He said, “I will tell you.”
“You’d better not tell any lies,” said Mr. Behrens. “I know the addresses, and if you happen to mention one which isn’t on my list—”
He fired again, and the bullet hit the leg of the chair Mr. Absalom was sitting on.
“Stop, stop,” said Mr. Absalom. “I am telling you now. It is a house in Spencer Street. At the corner. Number eighteen, I think.”
There was a rattling of the door handle, followed by a knocking. Mr. Behrens walked over and opened the door.
Mr. Calder was standing in the passage outside. From below came the sounds of shouting, crashing and the stamping of feet.
Mr. Behrens said, “I’m glad you managed to get here. What’s happening down there?”
As he spoke he was carefully wiping the gun on his handkerchief, and putting it away in the desk drawer.
“When I got your telephone call,” said Mr. Calder, “I persuaded our friends at Carver Street to organise a second raid here. I think it’s going to be more fruitful than the first. Have you found out where the boy is?”
“I have,” said Mr. Behrens. “The next thing is to get him out without a fuss.”
Mr. Absalom seemed to be trying to say something. His mouth was opening and shutting like an expiring frog’s.
“You will be too late,” he said. “Much too late,”
Nuri looked at the girl. She was lying back on the bed, her mouth half open, a smile of drowsy contentment on her lips. Her left hand, hanging down beside the bed, held a cigarette.
She must be entirely ignorant of the properties of bhang, he thought, or she would have realised at once, from the taste, what it was she was smoking. It was her third cigarette. The first had made her amorous. The second, fortunately, drowsy. The third was going to put her right out.
As Nuri watched her, her fingers parted and the half-smoked cigarette fell onto the carpet. Nuri picked it up and put it on the ash tray. Then he tiptoed across to the hanging curtains, and into the bathroom. Behind him, the girl stirred and said, “Where are you going?”
“Back in a moment,” said Nuri.
He was standing on the end of the bath, working at the catch of the window. It was a very small window, but Nuri was as thin as an eel, and nearly as slippery. He went through feet first and found himself on a sloping roof of slates, which led up to a ridgeway. This was a highway, threading among the chimney stacks, and stretching the whole length of the block. Halfway along it, Nuri paused.
Something was happening in the street below. He could see the lights of cars and hear the slamming of doors, followed by knocking and voices shouting. Nuri smiled. For the first time that night he felt happy, by himself, up among the sooty chimneys. The last of the fog had gone and from above his head the stars winked back at him in friendly conspiracy.
He made his way as far as the end house, and found a promising looking window. It was fastened, but he broke one of the panes of glass with the heel of his shoe, put his hand in and slipped the catch. It was an attic, and empty. He went out into the passage, made his way down three flights of stairs, first bare boards, then linoleum, then carpet, and out into a front hall. He got the front door unlocked and unbolted, and opened it a few inches.
There was a good deal of activity in the street, but most of it seemed to be happening at the far end. He slipped out, pulled the door shut behind him and ran.
As he turned the first corner, he saw a car parked, its lights out, and two men standing beside it. One he did not recognise. The other was Mr. Behrens.
On the way to the airport and the early morning flight which was being held for them, Nuri told Mr. Behrens and the stranger, who turned out to be a Mr. Calder, something of his adventures.
“I can feel things with my fingers,” he said, holding out a thin brown hand, “things which I could not see with my eyes. All our family have that facility. I knew, as soon as I touched it, that it was not the cigarette case which that fat pig Absalom gave me earlier. He had changed it for another. Probably in the car, when we were sitting squeezed together. Then it was clear that there would be something wrong with the cigarettes. Bhang, I guessed. What do you call it?”
“Hashish.”
“It is against the law to smoke it.”
“It’s against the law even to possess it,” said Mr. Calder. “If you had been found in that girl’s room with a case of reefers in your pocket, you really would have been for it.”
“It would not have been sufficient simply that I was in her room? She is a prostitute.”
“It wouldn’t have been good for your reputation, but it’s not illegal.”
“Curious,” said Nuri, “that the law should punish the lesser sin.”
“A lot of our laws are like that,” said Mr. Behrens. “Here’s the hotel. You’ve just time for a bath and breakfast.”
Three days later, several thousand miles away from the soot of Soho and the fogs of London Airport, Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens were standing on the first-floor balcony of the Hotel Continentale. The town had been en fête since dawn. The streets were packed with the outlandish crowds that had poured in overnight from the country districts. Houses and shop-fronts still blazed with electric lights, now paled by the morning sun. Every roof and window showed a flag, or a portrait, or bunch of flowers or paper streamers.
In the distance a band struck up.
“They’ll be here soon,” said Mr. Calder. And added, “I hope so. I want my breakfast.”
“By the way,” said Mr. Behrens. “Did they catch that fellow Absalom?”
“No. He and Moustaq both got out by plane that morning. Fortescue thinks they’re in Cairo.”
“If they know what’s good for them,” said Mr. Behrens, looking down at the crowd below, “they’ll stay in Cairo. I hope they’ve made trouble for that club.” His head was still sore.
“The second raid was a great success. They found a lot of undutied liquor and a very interesting collection of blue films. Here they come.”
A burst of cheering heralded the head of the procession. First came a company of boy scouts, older than their English counterparts, some of them sporting quite impressive black moustaches, but all bare-kneed and serious. Behind them, the Red Cross and the St. John’s Ambulance. Then the massed bands. The municipalities. The fire brigade. The heroes of the Revolution, and the foreign diplomats. Mr. Behrens was glad to see that the procession had been organised to play down the military side. It was essentially a civilian jamboree. After the diplomats came several more bands, all playing vigorously, and all playing different tunes, followed by senior members of the government, and every male relative of the Royal House, each in a more gorgeous motorcar than the last.
Then came the mounted troops of the police, ceremonial lances at the carry, useful-looking carbines slung from their shoulders.
Then came the mounted troops of the police, ceremonial checks for a moment, and crashes down onto the shingle, came the roar of the crowd as the open, pale blue and silver Rolls-Royce turned the comer.
In the back, upright, serious and straight as a blade, sat Nuri.
“‘Upon the King,’” Mr. Behrens quoted softly, to himself. “‘Let us our lives, our souls, our debts, our careful wives, our children and our sins lay on the King.’”
In the last four days Mr. Behrens had grown very fond of Nuri. The boy had shown himself brave and resourceful. He knew what he wanted to do and would, if given time, learn how to do it. If he could escape the sudden bullet, and the planted bomb. If he could answer propaganda with deeds. He had captured their hearts. Now he would have to capture their minds as well.
Mr. Behrens thought there was a chance, an outside chance, that he might do it.