Walking has always seemed to me to combine all the disadvantages of being too tiring with those of being too slow. If the same amount of pedal energy could take you along at about fifteen m.p.h. I would have nothing against it. But even at four miles an hour it is a useful way of keeping the body ticking over while the mind is doing its thinking. And it was precisely because I wanted to think without interruption that I took myself out on the moor that afternoon.
The path that I had taken led towards the more distant of the tors. But I hadn’t the slightest intention of going as far. That would have meant walking about four or five miles across wet bog-land. And even if I’d been out there in search of exercise—which I wasn’t—it still didn’t look like the sort of afternoon for really serious walking. The mist wasn’t exactly thick. But there was enough of it about to take the sparkle out of everything. The whole moor was one subdued general dampness. And I didn’t trust the moor any longer.
It was when I stood still for a moment to light a cigarette that I discovered that I was being followed. I don’t mean that there was anyone on all fours darting about among the bushes. The man who was coming up the path behind me was as unconcealed as a policeman on patrol. But not half so impressive. He was a short fat man in a dark mackintosh. And he was wearing one of those black snap-brim trilbys that were put on the market specially for literary journalists. The snap-brim wasn’t being given its fair chance, however. That was because it had just started to rain, and the short fat man had pulled the brim down all round like a small black umbrella.
It wasn’t until we were practically on top of each other that he looked up. And then he shied away as if he hadn’t been wanting to meet anyone. Whatever the reason, he turned his face away again the instant he had looked up.
Not that there was anything very remarkable about the face. You see whole rows of faces just like that in every café between Dieppe and Naples. It is the continental common denominator countenance. It was simply here that it was remarkable. If I’d been a casting director going round the agents in search of a foreign spy second grade, I’d have agreed to any terms if I could have been sure of getting hold of the little dago in the black trilby.
It occurred to me later that it might have been cleverer to have done a bit of shadowing myself. But I’m not awfully bright all the time. Particularly when I’m thinking about something else. And it was mostly Una that I was thinking about. I was heavy enough with my own cares already. My country brogues were letting in the water like a pair of superior double-welted sponges. I’d had a slight headache all day because of a miscalculation at the bar on the previous evening when I had fooled around with the gin, and mixed two different brands. And I was wondering why nobody really seemed to like me. That question, I must admit, had passed through my mind several times before. But it was only now that I suspected that I knew the answer. It could have been that I didn’t like other people very much.
It was getting on for dusk by now. And the landscape might have been made to order to match my thoughts. During the last five minutes the moor had turned a deep lead colour that was about as bright and as cheerful as a coffin lining, and the path across it glistened slightly like the trail a snail lays. Even Maida Vale seemed preferable, and I wondered why I had ever come here.
Then as I breasted one of the little hills I saw two people standing on the path ahead of me. One of them was Hilda. She was wearing a light-coloured transparent sort of raincoat that I’d have recognised anywhere. I couldn’t see the other person. But they were obviously in conversation about something. And they were holding hands. It was a man that she was with all right. He was clasping her right hand in his, and he’d got his left hand cupped over them both. If he had been using adhesive tape he could not have made more sure of her.
It was round about this point that they both noticed me. And, as soon as they saw that I was watching them, they sprang apart. Then I saw who the man was. And I wished I hadn’t.
It was my little dago friend.