Tom didn’t like old Jenkins much, but knew the importance of not annoying the bloke with the key. He had built up quite a nice little sideline in private catering and if you had to argue the toss with the doorman when setting up and clearing afterwards, it became more of a pain than a pleasure. So he passed a few pleasantries with the man, made appropriate noises relating to the neatness of Angela’s face and figure and then, as soon as was politic, made his way out and stood on the step, listening to the bolts being shot behind him.
He worried a little about the Prof. She didn’t often get blindsided and although he thought that probably it was good for her sometimes, her little face in the lamplight when he had looked in to say goodnight was quite heartrending. She needed a good man in her life, not those dusty professors, many of whom had less than academic thoughts about her, he knew. She needed someone to take her out of herself. He smiled to himself; he knew he was the very man, but that it would only happen should hell choose to freeze over. He only had to cross the road and head down a bit, but even so, the night was chilly, so he turned up his collar and wrapped his scarf a bit closer and stepped down to the kerb. There was little traffic at this time of night but he looked both ways, even so. Of Angela and Crawford there was no sign. Off to his right, he could see the stocky figure of Edmund Reid, pacing smartly along Gower Street, just about to turn right into Gower Place. He watched him, almost fondly. Some coppers he wouldn’t piss on if they were afire, but Reid was one of the good ones. Too many of that sort had gone now, leaving the Blunts to rule the roost. Tom shook his head; times were changing with the century and not necessarily for the better, either.
Then, just as Reid turned into the side road, Tom saw something that made him look twice. A dark shadow had detached itself from a portico opposite the turn and was crossing the road, keeping to the shadows where it could. It was hard to tell, in the fog and the dark, who it might be but Tom knew that posture. The slight bend to the back, the hat pulled down, the collar up. The shoulders hunched and the face turned away from any light. Tom stepped down on to the pavement and started up Gower Street at a half run. Reid was being followed, and by no well-wisher either, if he was any judge. Tom felt for the knife roll in his inside pocket; all present and correct. He chuckled, but quietly. Being a cook made ‘going equipped’ a whole new thing; who would have guessed, years ago, that he would be carrying a ten-inch blade as part of his work tools and be on the right side of the law?
He turned the corner and, for a moment, couldn’t see anyone. Then he got his eye in and saw Reid, still stomping along at a goodish pace, considering his little legs. His follower was nowhere in sight and Tom began to wonder if he had imagined the whole thing and it was just some innocent householder heading home with his coat collar turned up against the damp. He skidded to a halt, glad that he hadn’t hailed Reid as he caught up with him. He would have felt a proper Charlie. He turned to go, just as a man leapt out of an area and ran at Reid, knocking him to the ground.
Tom broke into a run, not a trot as before and as he got nearer could hear the thud as the man’s fists landed on Reid’s jaw. Reid was doing his best, but he had been taken by surprise and was winded. He was fighting for breath with whooping sounds and clawed at his assailant as best he could, between blows. What Tom couldn’t hear, though, to his surprise, was any words. He had made up his mind as he had followed the men that the attacker was a disgruntled old lag who had discovered that Reid was back in the manor and wanted to get his own back. In Tom’s experience, attacks of this kind usually came with streams of invective; it was no good beating a man to a pulp if he didn’t know why you were doing it. And if it got you your collar felt the next day; well, that was the price you paid for putting a copper in the hospital. But the man was just punching in silence. That just wasn’t right.
Tom felt as though he were running through treacle, but it was only seconds before he got there, fumbling for his knife roll as he ran. He grabbed the man on top by the back of the collar and hauled him off the fallen detective, leaving the older man rolling on the ground, catching his breath. Tom swung a mistimed haymaker at the other, who he could tell was younger and fitter than either him or Reid, but clearly inexperienced.
Despite the punches, Reid was now on his hands and knees; that many landed by anyone with half an idea of fighting would have half killed a man of Reid’s age and condition. Even so, that youth and fitness was not for nothing. The man twisted out of Tom’s grasp and aimed a sneaky knee which missed Tom’s essentials by a whisker. It was at that point that Tom felt his patience give out altogether. For a bludger to knock a copper about was one thing. For some random rampsman to whale into an elderly gent with the probable intent to rob, that was entirely another. When that same rampsman then tried to knee him in his tackle, it was no holds barred. To add insult to injury, he was wearing a scarf tied tightly round the lower half of his face. Tom didn’t hold with disguise. If you couldn’t go out thieving wearing the face the good God gave you, then you shouldn’t go out at all, in his opinion.
The next knee found its mark and Tom collapsed in a world of pain, his knife roll clattering to the pavement, scattering its contents as it did so. Tom grabbed for the younger man’s leg and brought him down. He held on to a sleeve and reached for a knife. His hand closed round a familiar handle. Damn! It was only the parer, but it was better than nothing. Still seeing the world through dancing lights, he lashed out wildly. He knew he had found his mark, because he heard a hissed intake of breath, followed by running feet.
He rolled over on the pavement and came eye to eye with Edmund Reid, leaning back against the railings of the nearest house, fetching his breath in shuddering gasps.
‘Well, Tom,’ he said at last. ‘Almost like the old days, eh?’
Tom nodded, about all he could manage. Then, ‘I hope your hotel ain’t far, Mr Reid,’ he said. ‘Because I don’t think I’ll be able to carry you if it is.’
‘Carry me, Tom? I’ll carry you if you like.’
Giggling like schoolgirls, from the shock and pain, using each other and the railings to clamber upright, the ex-burglar and the ex-policeman stood there, clutching each other in relief.
‘Hello, hello, hello,’ a voice said, almost in their ears. A bull’s-eye lantern flashed its shafts of light. ‘This is a respectable street, gents. Now, run along before I run you in.’
And the two men, brothers under the skin, limped off, to give the night clerk at the Tambour House Hotel the surprise of his life.
The History department and the department of Archaeology had circled each other for years, like duellists back in the good old days, before there were any rules. Each looked on the other as inferior, an interloper making a mockery of the highest intellectual discipline known to man.
But sometimes, in the search for the truth, the devil drove, and Margaret Murray knocked on the study door of Professor Hilary Mayhew, a man as regius as they came.
‘Hilary,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to bother you.’
Mayhew stood up, a tall and still imposing figure despite the fact that he looked as though he should have cobwebs trailing from his obsolete Dundrearies. ‘It’s Mildred, isn’t it?’ He was putting his pen away.
‘Margaret,’ she corrected him. ‘Margaret Murray.’
‘Yes, of course. Have a seat, would you?’
She would. And did.
‘How can I help?’ he asked. ‘Some nugget of historical perspicacity which will lighten your darkness?’
‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘I know ancient Rome is a speciality of yours.’
‘Ancient Rome,’ he said, ‘ancient Greece. Byzantium. Oh, and the early Church, of course. We must never forget the early Church.’
‘No, indeed,’ Margaret smiled. ‘I’ve come across a reference in one of my students’ researches, to a first-century troublemaker called Joseph. Can you shed any light?’
‘Troublemaker?’ Mayhew repeated.
‘Turbator.’ Margaret gave him the Latin original.
‘What’s the context?’
‘Something found in an outpost of a Roman fort near Herne Bay in Kent. Specifically, the line was “Josephus turbator ex Judea hic est”.’
‘The troublemaker from Judea …’ Mayhew was translating.
‘Is here.’ She ended the sentence for him.
‘You’re sure the Latin is correct?’ he checked. In his experience, the purest language in the world, and students’ evaluation of it rarely lived up to expectations.
‘Absolutely,’ she said.
‘Well, what do you want to know?’
‘Who this Josephus was,’ she told him.
‘And you’re sure about the date?’ he asked. ‘First century? Later?’
‘First, I am reliably informed,’ she said.
‘Well, Mildred, it’s not likely to be Titus Flavius Josephus. He has no links with Britannia at all.’
‘What about Joseph of Arimathea?’ she asked him.
Mayhew laughed, his cheeks widening and his side-whiskers floating in the draught from his slightly open window. ‘My good woman, this is the department of History, not the Music Hall. Joseph of Arimathea is the product of the deranged mind of William Blake, poet, artist and visionary. There’s a tree in Glastonbury he’s supposed to have planted – Joseph, that is, not Blake. But it’s all legend, Mildred, a fairy story. Surely even an archaeologist knows that?’
Margaret stood up, clearly getting nowhere with this man.
‘Yes, Hilary,’ she said. ‘I knew that. And my name is still Margaret, by the way.’
George Carey Foster was pacing his enormous study, arms locked behind his back as if in irons, his brow wrinkled and his jaw grim. In all his years in academe, he had never known anything like this. He’d known difficult colleagues, obstreperous students, the odd rogue chaplain, but never anything like this. One of his senior department heads, no less, had been … what was that ludicrous police phrase? Interviewed under caution. The next step, which was clear to everybody, was an arrest for murder.
There was a timid knock on the door and a cowed secretary ushered an even more cowed senior department head into the principal’s office. Walter Inkester had lost the dash and fire he usually had; a day and a half in the cells of Scotland Yard had cured him of that. He looked old and haggard, his skin pale and crusty, rather more like a man whose head was barely bobbing above water at Execution Dock.
Foster waited until the lowly woman had gone and Inkester had slunk into a chair before he delivered his broadside. ‘The youngest graduate out of Oxford in years,’ he said, circling the man as he laid out his greatness and his former glory. ‘The Philomena Kardashian Prize for Zoology; the discoverer of the role of ascariasis roundworm in the yak; accolades and plaudits from …’ – and he shuddered as he said it – ‘Harvard and Yale. An emeritus chair when you leave us at the very least. God, man, there was even talk of a knighthood.’
‘I—’ was as far as Inkester was likely to get today.
‘All of it flushed down one of Mr Twyford’s toilets. It can only be a matter of time, Walter, before the Yard comes knocking on your door again. And I have to say …’ – he closed to his man, eyes burning into his – ‘it doesn’t look good.’
‘I—’
‘Yes, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? Let me play devil’s advocate for the moment.’
Walter Inkester didn’t know that Carey Foster could play anything else.
‘Your wife is having an affair with one of your colleagues …’
‘I—’
‘Don’t give me that tripe, Walter. Of course you knew. The whole wretched business is so sordid. They’re having an affair and you get wind of it. Instead of sorting it out behind closed doors, via a solicitor of repute and discretion, you knock the man’s brains out.’
‘I—’
‘And you didn’t even have the chutzpah to do it in some dark alley. No – you did it here, in Norman’s own room at University College. However this ends, Walter, I expect your resignation by the end of the day.’
‘I—’
‘Oh, it’s too late for all that now.’
There was a sharp rap at the door and Carey Foster broke off his attack. ‘Come in,’ he growled.
A little woman stepped into the room, followed by a much larger man.
‘Principal.’ Flinders Petrie nodded in the man’s direction. ‘You sent for us.’
‘Walter.’ Margaret Murray laid a colleaguely hand on the man’s shoulder. It was the first gentle touch that he had felt in years. He wanted to cry.
‘That’s enough of that, Margaret,’ Carey Foster snapped. ‘I was just in the process of telling Inkester here the appalling opprobrium he has brought to the college.’
‘Why, pray?’ Margaret raised an eyebrow.
For a moment, words failed the principal of University College and one sleeve of his gown slipped off his shoulder. ‘Why, madam?’ he shouted. ‘Why?’ He was turning all colours of the rainbow.
‘George,’ Petrie said quietly. ‘Think of your blood pressure.’
‘I am thinking of the Press headlines!’ Foster bellowed. ‘Have you seen this?’ He held up the first of several papers on his desk. ‘“Lecturer in archaeology found dead”. That’s headline news, above the piece about Kruger doing a runner out of South Africa.’
‘That’s just The Times …’ Petrie dismissed it.
‘What about this? The Mail. “Archaeologist becomes a body”. Another attempt on the Tsar’s life is buried on page three.’
‘Alfred Harmsworth.’ Petrie stood his ground. ‘What can you expect?’
‘The Star.’ Foster waved it in the air. ‘Front page news – “Godless goings on at the Godless Institution”. And on their page three, they’ve got …’ – and he shuddered anew – ‘an advertisement for knickerbockers.’
‘The Rational Dress League believes—’ Margaret felt the need to defend the new fashion.
‘Damn the Rational Dress League to hell!’ Foster thundered. ‘My college – our college’ – his demon eyes raked them all – ‘on the front page of every newspaper in the country, I shouldn’t wonder. God knows what’ll happen when the Illustrated Police News gets hold of it.’
A ghastly silence fell on the principal’s study. In the outer office, the three secretaries who had had their respective ears glued to the door broke away and got back to their typing. Foster did his best to compose himself and sat down for what seemed the first time that day.
‘I have called you here, William, and you, Margaret, because you were colleagues of Norman Minton. I have already accepted Walter’s resignation.’
‘I—’ Inkester began.
‘Don’t say another word, Walter.’ Petrie gripped the man’s shoulder. ‘I’m going to say this, George, because Walter is too much of a gentleman, and if Margaret says it, you won’t listen anyway. In this great country of ours, one of the guiding principles by which I hope we all live is that a man is innocent until proven guilty. Walter here has not even been charged.’
‘It’s only a matter of time,’ Foster snapped. ‘Scotland Yard is on to him.’
And it was only a matter of time before Margaret Murray snapped too. ‘And I have lost count of the times over the last few years when Scotland Yard has got things wrong,’ she said. ‘When they’ve failed to arrest anybody or have arrested the wrong man. Let’s not put too much faith in the long arm of the law, George, please.’
Another heavy silence. Carey Foster’s eyes swivelled to the top drawer of his filing cabinet, the one that bulged with Margaret Murray’s wrongdoings; he’d have to begin a second level after this.
‘Why did you send for us, George?’ Petrie asked.
‘I had hoped,’ the principal said, calmer now but in a barely restrained, homicidal way, ‘that I could rely on you two to say nothing whatever to the press. Walter here has assured me he won’t say a word.’
‘I—’
‘Precisely,’ Foster nodded. ‘But after Miss Murray’s recent outburst, I clearly can’t rely on that.’
‘You should be more concerned about my outburst, George,’ Petrie said. ‘And if you’d like all our resignations, pass the relevant bit of paper, will you? I have my own pen.’
Carey Foster was speechless.
‘You look as though you could do with a stiff cup of tea, Walter,’ Petrie said, helping the man to his feet.
‘Come on, Stinkster.’ Margaret linked her arm with his. ‘The Jeremy Bentham awaits.’
Twice in one week. Margaret Murray was making rather a habit of visiting King’s College and she hoped that none of her own colleagues would find out. She got off the bus at the Aldwych and threaded her way across lethal thoroughfares, past Wren’s grim little church of St Clement Danes, to the college’s main entrance.
The History department was, if anything, even more obscure than in her own dear college and she had to ask for directions three times before she found it. She didn’t know Professor Honorius Godbolt very well, but she knew enough about him to know that he was the very man to help her out of her current dilemma. She knocked on the frosted glass door and waited for the command to enter.
Honorius Godbolt was a ferret of a man, of Edmund Reid’s height but half his width, and he wore the thickest glasses Margaret had ever seen. Behind them, his eyes were pinpricks, not so much irises as speedwells.
‘Good of you to see me, Professor.’ She held out a hand. Godbolt stood up and nearly missed it first time but compensated for the error by gripping the woman with both hands.
‘The pleasure is mine, dear lady,’ he said. ‘To what do I owe it?’
‘Well, I must confess I was talking to Professor Mayhew the other day …’
‘Hilary?’ The voice hardened. ‘No avoiding it, I suppose, in that you work in the same establishment.’
‘Indeed. I went to see him on a matter of scholarship, but …’ – she timed the rest of the sentence to perfection – ‘I’m afraid he let me down.’
‘Tcha!’ Godbolt scoffed. ‘Nothing new there. What was your matter of scholarship?’
‘Joseph of Arimathea,’ she said.
‘Ah. Can I interest you in a Peek Frean?’ The professor held out a plate of ginger biscuits.
‘How kind,’ she said, and helped herself.
‘It’s funny, that.’ Godbolt said as the ginger hit his nostrils and he momentarily fought for air. ‘You are the third person to ask about him in as many months.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Who were the others?’
‘Well, the first – and this was quite a while ago now – was one of our archaeology students, appropriately enough. A … let me see, now …’ He ferreted among the papers strewn over his desk. ‘Here we are … no.’ He peered closely at it. ‘No, that’s my college mess bill – I really must pay that. Now, where … ah.’ He picked up another scrap of paper. ‘Oh, no, no, that’s my laundry list. Ah!’ He reached across for a book. ‘The diary. Of course. Just give me … yes, here it is. Wednesday. Miss …’ The professor suddenly turned puce and his glasses steamed up. ‘No, no, that’s something else entirely. Here.’ He tapped another page. ‘This is the one. Emmeline Barker. She was doing research, as I remember it, on a … what do you people call it, a dig?’
Margaret nodded, smiling.
‘A dig in … um …’ He squinted at the page. ‘Hampton-on-Sea. She said she’d found something extraordinary but couldn’t tell me what.’
‘Because she didn’t know or because it was a secret?’ Margaret felt obliged to ask.
‘Er … oh. To tell you the truth, I don’t exactly know. But she said it was first century Anno Domini, specifically the forties. Whatever it was referred to a Joseph who was from Judea. Well, of course, that could be anybody.’
‘Not Titus Flavius Josephus?’ Margaret needed confirmation.
‘Oh, no, no.’ Godbolt shook his head. ‘No, there’s no evidence for that at all.’
‘And Joseph of Arimathea?’ she asked.
‘Well … what did Hilary Mayhew say?’
‘He laughed at me, Professor,’ she said, eyes all large and little-girl. ‘Called it a fairy story.’
‘Laughed?’ Crawford was appalled and passed her another ginger biscuit passing itself off as a Peek Frean. ‘Oh, that’s shocking, dear lady, shocking. But Mayhew … well, what can I say?’
‘And Joseph of Arimathea?’
‘Oh, he’s real enough. He was a wealthy Jerusalem merchant, possibly a Pharisee, but he was an early Christian convert. Some accounts say he was Jesus’ uncle, but that’s stretching things a bit far. The story goes that he paid for Christ’s funeral and arranged the tomb, and so on.’
‘The story?’ Margaret repeated.
Godbolt laughed. ‘You know as well as I do,’ he said, ‘that there are stories and stories. Some are based on evidence, rooted in fact. Others … well, of course, there are those and have been since the days of that bounder Huxley, who say that every word of the Bible is a story; none of it’s true.’
‘Do you believe it, Professor?’ she asked.
‘Dr Murray,’ he chuckled. ‘I teach at King’s College. We were founded, as you very well know, in rebuttal of your own Godless Institution. I could turn the tables and ask if you believe.’
Margaret smiled. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ she said. She could have told this pleasant man of the times on digs when she could all but see the souls gathered thick above their mortal remains, but it was important to keep things on an earthly level.
‘Indeed, dear lady.’
‘You said there were three people,’ she reminded him.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Three people, including me, asking about Joseph of Arimathea.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Emmeline Barker was one. Who was the other?’
‘Ooh, now you’ve asked me.’ He rummaged among his papers again. ‘No, there’s no point. I know I didn’t write it down. He was not from King’s, though. I’m certain of that.’
‘But a man? And a student?’
‘Man, definitely. Student – I couldn’t be sure.’
‘And he wanted to know about Joseph of Arimathea?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Did he know Emmeline Barker?’ Margaret asked.
‘I didn’t ask,’ Godbolt said. ‘It didn’t occur to me.’
‘This man.’ Margaret tried a long shot. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Oh, average, you know.’
‘Hair?’
‘Yes, I’m pretty sure he had hair.’
‘No, I mean, what colour was it?’
‘Ooh, now, then …’
‘Tall? Short? Thin? Fat?’
Godbolt shook his head and sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘As you know, historically, my reputation is second to none, particularly that oaf Mayhew, but I’m absolutely useless with faces.’ He passed her the biscuits again. ‘Mint imperial?’
‘Piers?’ Anthea Crossley had been voted ‘the girl most likely to’ when it came to getting a favour out of Piers Gibbs.
‘Anthea.’ Gibbs was on the alert. Although he had twinkled and smiled at Anthea for some time now, he had never had much effect. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Goodness, Piers,’ she bridled, tapping his arm with her perfectly manicured fingers. ‘Surely I can speak to you without wanting a favour?’
‘Well, that’s always possible, of course.’ Piers Gibbs came from the sort of family that didn’t bother with beating around the bush. ‘But as I appear to have been invisible to you until about …’ – he fished a gold half-hunter out of his pocket and consulted it ostentatiously – ‘two minutes ago, I assume that a favour is on the cards. So, how can I help you?’
Anthea Crossley looked at him with new eyes. He wasn’t as handsome as Andrew Rose. But mercifully, he could hide behind Ben Crouch and not show around the edges. He clearly was no fool, as his place at University College attested. But he couldn’t hold a candle to her intellectually. On the other hand – she had run out of hands some time ago, but no one was counting – he didn’t exactly curdle milk and he obviously had more money than he knew what to do with. ‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ she said.
‘I wish you would.’ Like most men, Piers Gibbs found Anthea Crossley almost too attractive; her face and clothes were perfect, she clearly had a mind like a razor, but there was something about her which was a little off-putting. She certainly wasn’t a girl you could take home to mother.
‘You’ve heard about Angela and Constable Crawford, I suppose?’ Anthea said, smiling as brightly as any woman can when a friend has managed to snaffle a man who looked very like Michelangelo’s David, but more handsome.
‘It depends.’ Gibbs had sisters. He knew it was never wise to say he knew something when they could well be talking about something else entirely.
‘About their engagement.’ Anthea’s smile could etch glass. ‘I don’t know what her family will think, of course. He is, after all, only a policeman.’ Another smile, of sorts. ‘But she has enough money for them both, so he’ll probably stop all that nonsense and go into business in some way, I expect.’
‘Why?’ Gibbs was beginning to edge away. He had been right; this conversation wasn’t one a mere man could win.
‘Well … a policeman, after all. It isn’t quite … well, it isn’t, is it?’
‘We’d be pretty much in the soup without them, generally speaking,’ Gibbs said mildly.
‘They don’t seem to be doing too well on our little murders, do they?’ Anthea sneered. ‘Arresting Walter Inkester; what are they thinking? According to a friend of mine who is in his department, he is as mild as milk toast.’
‘Really? That’s what she said, was it? Mild as milk toast.’
‘He. And no, not exactly. That’s just my reading of it.’
Gibbs stood looking at her. Eventually, he had to know. ‘So, what’s this favour, Anthea? I have a tutorial with Flinders Petrie in …’ – again, he flourished his gold watch – ‘ten minutes, and his room is eight minutes from here. So, you either walk with me and get ten minutes, or we talk here and you get two.’
‘We’ll walk,’ Anthea said, tucking his arm in hers. ‘But if we see Angela, change the subject.’
‘Umm … all right. If I knew what the subject was, perhaps …’
‘Yes. Right. Of course. Well, the engagement. I gather they don’t intend it to be a long one …’
‘Oh.’ Despite protestations, Piers Gibbs liked gossip as much as the next man. ‘That’s how the wind blows, is it?’
Anthea thumped him lightly. ‘No, indeed. It’s just that poor dear Angela isn’t getting any younger, is she, and they don’t have their way to make or anything. Angela is one of the Friends, you know.’
‘One of the Friends?’ Gibbs had no idea what that meant.
‘Friend’s Scouring Paste. Surely you had some in the kitchen at home. Have some, perhaps, in your home in town.’
‘I am happy to report that I have no idea. But now you come to mention, I have seen the advertisements, I think. In The Times.’
‘That’s the one.’ Anthea waved an arm. ‘“If you want that rust to end, Buy Scouring Powder from your Friend”. Well, she’s one of those, so she is richer than God.’
‘And so this favour is?’ Gibbs could see Flinders Petrie’s door by now, and time was short.
‘In a nutshell, can we hold a little soirée for Angela and her young man at your house?’
Gibbs blinked. ‘That’s it?’
‘Yes. I suppose it is.’
‘Well, yes, of course. I’d be delighted. Just check with Crouch and Rose, pick your evening and I’ll tell Cook. Canapés all right? A little champagne?’
‘You have a cook?’
‘Of course. Don’t you?’
‘We have a woman who does.’ Anthea could tell she had underestimated Gibbs. She was losing her touch.
‘Well,’ he said with a smile, tapping on Petrie’s door. ‘Angela may have more money than God. But when God needs an extra bob or two to tide him over, he comes to the Gibbs family. Let me know when the party is – as long as I’m invited, of course.’ And in answer to a muffled ‘Come!’ he disappeared through the door.