Brangwyn and Murchison ate their breakfast next morning to a running accompaniment of loud grumbllngs at the cold, guaranteed to be clearly audible through whatever spy-hole the faithless Monks had established; and when Murchison departed for his constitutional he left Brangwyn safely guarded by the presence of two active young Italians who were wrestling with the heater without much success; for a heater that has been cut off from its source presents insuperable difficulties.
Murchison felt eyes following him from behind the serried ranks of volumes in the book-shop windows, and was pretty sure that the telephone was being dialled before he turned the corner.
He took a ‘bus to Regent's Park and started to circumambulate the Outer Circle at a good round pace, as bidden. He had gone, perhaps, a quarter way round, when he heard himself accosted, and, fuming sharply, found himself face to face with Astley, who was smiling affably and apparently bore no ill-will for his recent rough handling. So it was he himself who was the quarry, not Brangwyn in an empty flat?
‘I hope you will allow me to explain and apologize, Mr. Murchison?’
(‘How the devil do you know my name?’ thought Murchison to himself. ‘I bet that's Monks's handiwork. But I suppose I shall learn more if I am civil than if you get what you deserve.’)
‘I think the apologies are due from me,’ he said aloud, despising more than ever a man who could apologize for being kicked downstairs. ‘I had my instructions, however, and I had to abide by ‘em. And I think you'll admit I gave you fair warning.’
‘Couldn't have been fairer,’ said Astley. ‘Shall we have a drink on it and call it all square?’
‘Right you are,’ said Murchison. ‘Where shall we go?’ He wondered whether he was being decoyed away somewhere as a preliminary to kidnapping, and was thankful he had got his favourite stick in his hand, a mighty ash-plant, like a young alpenstock, and shod with an iron spike, an ugly weapon in such hands as his.
‘There's a little pub just outside the next gate. I dare say we might not appreciate its clientele when business is in full swing, but it will be quiet enough at this time of the morning. Shall we drop in there?’
‘Right you are,’ said Murchison. ‘My motto is the same as Tommie's, “There's no bad beer, though some beer's better than others.”’
Murchison set a brisk pace, for he wanted to find out in what sort of physical condition his companion was, in case it came to a scrap, and had the satisfaction of hearing him begin to wheeze by the second lamp-post. The magnificent physique was probably a hollow shell, rotted out by whisky, or even less desirable dope.
The pub was soon reached, and proved to be a humble little place frequented mainly by taxi-drivers and carmen. The tiny saloon-bar was empty, but there were sounds, of a disgruntled coster coming from the public bar. The upholstered divinity behind the beer-engines demanded their pleasure with a more than professional smile, for they were not her usual type of customer. Murchison chose a light lager, for he wished to have his wits about him, but Astley had a double whisky.
They took their drinks to a little marble-topped table set in the corner angle of a red plush settee that ran round two sides of the room, and settled down for what Astley evidently intended to be a careful bit of diplomacy. He opened the ball by comparing English pubs with Parisian cafes. Murchison grunted. He went on to compare them with Spanish ventas. Murchison grunted again. From Spain it was only a step to South America and voodoo, and from thence to Tibet and the Lamas. Murchison suddenly woke up to the fact that he was being impressed, and tried to make his grunts sound awestruck.
‘Queer old bird, your revered employer,’ said Astley reminiscently. ‘Did he ever tell you how he met me in the middle of a glacier on the road to Lhasa?’
Murchison's grunt indicated a negative, and he lent a bored ear to a long account of the encounter. He was beginning to wonder whether he had been mistaken in thinking that he was the object of interest, and whether it might not be that he was merely being kept out of the way while something was being done at the flat, and was contemplating the advisability of bidding Astley goodbye and leaping into a taxi, when Astley suddenly came to business.
‘Are you at all interested in Brangwyn's researches?’ he inquired with disarming casualness.
‘Don't know anything about ‘em,’ said Murchison, burying his nose in the tankard of light lager, which had lasted out three double whiskies consumed by his companion.
‘Oh, don't you?’ Astley was obviously surprised by this information. ‘We quite understood that you were there to help with his experiments.’ The double whiskies were getting in their work, Murchison noted, and Astley was losing his normal caution. He judged the time had come to give him a lead.
‘If you want to know what I'm there for,’ he said, ‘I'm there as chucker-out.’
Astley chuckled. He evidently did not lack a sense of humour, even at his own expense. ‘So I gathered,’ he said. ‘How did you get to know Brangwyn?’
‘I was under him during the War, and ran into him again accidentally a few days ago, and he offered me a job, and I took it.’
‘Are you fixed up with him permanently?’
‘No, only till he goes abroad, whenever that may be. He doesn't know himself yet.’
‘And then you will be out of a job?’
‘Looks like it, doesn't it?’
‘Want a job?’
‘Well, naturally.’
‘Like a job with me?’
‘What do you want doing?’
‘Same as with Brangwyn.’
‘Chucker-out?’
‘Yes, and make yourself generally useful.’
‘What's the pay?’
‘What are you getting now?’
‘Five quid a week.’
Astley opened his eyes.
‘Pretty good pay, that. What are your qualifications?’
‘Well, I don't mind making myself generally useful.’
Murchison was pretty certain that Astley was feeling for his complexes in order that he might work upon them as he had with Fouldes and Monks, and contrive some sort of treachery against Brangwyn, and he judged that if he appeared responsive, he might learn a good deal.
Astley smiled unpleasantly. ‘In other words, you aren't particular what you do?’
‘You wouldn't be particular if you'd been out of work as much as I have.’
Astley cast an appraising glance over his shabby outfit, and smiled again, and any scruples that might have lingered in Murchison's mind took their departure.
‘All right, you come to me when Brangwyn gives you notice, and I'll find you something. And meanwhile, would you like to make a bit for yourself?’
‘Shouldn't mind, so long as it wasn't too risky.’
‘Large profits and quick returns can't be got without risks, my dear fellow. Say, have a whisky?’
‘No thanks, never mix my drinks, but I'll have another lager if you like.’
The drink being duly supplied, Murchison having watched, not without apprehension, a fourth double whisky making its way down Astley's throat, they got down to business.
‘You know the safe in the corner of Brangwyn's bedroom?’
‘No, can't say I do. Never been in there.’
Astley looked rather taken aback. ‘Well, there is one, anyway, you can take my word for it. And the key to it is on Brangwyn's key-chain that he always has fastened to his braces’ button. There are some papers in that safe that belong to me, and I can't get them out of Brangwyn. I don't want to have to take him to court; beastly expensive job. If you like to retrieve those papers for me, I'll pay you handsomely. You'll cost me less than counsel and all the rest of it. Brangwyn can't say anything because they aren't his papers, see?’
‘I see prison bars in front of me if I slip up on a job like that. What do you call handsome payment?’
‘Fifty?’
‘Not on your life. I'd get penal servitude if I were caught out. Make it one hundred.’
‘Can't be done. Cheaper to take him to court.’
‘Not a bit of it, If it's a High Court case.’
‘Oh, well, will you do it for seventy-five?’
‘I'll have a shot at it for seventy-five, but, of course, I can't guarantee anything.’
‘No results, no payment.’
‘All right. Cash on delivery. Where am I to find you?’
Astley handed him a very superior card, but Murchison, who knew the street, noted that it did not bear a very superior address.
‘I had better be getting along.’ he said, stowing the card away carefully in a shabby and bursting old pocket-book. ‘I'm supposed to be taking a constitutional in the park for the good of my health. One of my boss's fads. He's a bit of a freak, but harmless.’
‘He's a freak, all right, but I'm not so sure that he's harmless.’ said Astley, with more asperity than the occasion appeared to call for.
Murchison, a wide grin on his face, flung down the superior bit of pasteboard in front of his employer.
‘I done a deal,’ he said.
‘Good Lord, Murchison, what's all this about? What sort of deal have you done?’
‘Undertaken to steal the papers out of your safe. Astley offered fifty for the job. I asked one hundred, and we closed at seventy-five, and when you give me the sack I can have a job with him. So if ever you want a little inside information concerning the old gent, you give me that sack, and I'll take him on and play a few of Monks's tricks on him.’
At that moment Murchison's bulging old pocket-book bulged still wider, and out of a gaping seam shed a couple of pawn-tickets. Murchison picked them up, examined them, and flung them in the fire. Brangwyn, watching him, looked him all over as Astley had done, but in a different spirit, and marvelled at the morale of a man in his position who treated an offer of seventy-five as a practical joke. He said no word, but took fountain-pen and cheque-book from his pocket, wrote out a cheque for seventy-five, and handed it to Murchison.
‘I want you to accept this, my lad, because I like your spirit. Now don't look at it like that. It won't bite. Don't be silly, Murchison. Take it in the spirit in which it is given.’
Murchison twiddled the cheque helplessly between finger and thumb; then he stowed it away in the old pocket-book without a word; cast a worried look at his employer, and finally managed to blurt out, ‘Thanks very much, sir, I'm very much obliged to you.’
That afternoon Murchison did a little shopping. He went to a certain tailor who had represented the height of ambition to young officers in days when promotion was brisk, and irresponsible youths were drawing pay and allowances meant for family men. There he ordered a smart, double-breasted blue serge suit. The tailor looked at the old grey flannel trousers, cheap ready-made sports jacket, and the trench-coat with the stains of Flanders mud still faintly discernible under the London grime, and wished that his new customer could be photographed as ‘Before’ and ‘After’ for his advertising brochure.
Having chosen the material for his suit, after much consideration and fingering, for a Yorkshireman considers that he has a vested interest in woollens, Murchison gazed thoughtfully round the shop at the studies of enormously elongated young men on the walls, and the experienced shopman knew that his customer was meditating a second suit, and waited patiently. He watched Murchison's eyes dwell on a design for a dinner-jacket, and to his surprise saw a sudden look of annoyance cross his face, and with an impatient shrug Murchison demanded curtly to be shown designs for plus fours. How was he to know that Murchison would be damned if he'd pamper the fastidiousness of Ursula Brangwyn?