The small patrol-boat took a thorough pasting rounding Land’s End. Jamieson had asked the Lieutenant-Commander to put him ashore at Penzance; but with the savage weather it was after 10 p.m. when he was landed, on a dripping quay, in that harbour with the inconveniently narrow entrance. His naval host had given him supper, but as he carried his effects through the rainy streets he wished fervently that he had thought to tell Julia to ring up the garage where he had left the car—what on earth was he to do if it was shut? He wasn’t sure of the way, and on that wet night there was no one about to ask; but when at last he found the place the lights were on. Thank Goodness!
As he walked in a man came out from the little cubby-hole of an office where he had been cowering over a small electric fire.
‘Colonel Jamieson? Ah, the lady rang through from St. Mary’s to say you’d be wanting the car tonight. She’s all ready—petrol, oil, air, batteries’—he went over and patted the Bentley admiringly. ‘Lovely car.’
Lovely girl, Jamieson was thinking, to have organised this without being told. He paid the man, tipping him handsomely, threw his small pieces of luggage into the back, and drove off into the night.
Penzance is over two hundred and eighty miles from London, but Bentleys are fast cars, and lorries apart English roads are not crowded after midnight, especially in winter and late autumn. He stopped twice for a cup of synthetic coffee at roadside lorry-halts, to keep himself awake, but all the same he was pushing the groundfloor bell of his rooms in Gray’s Inn at a quarter to six, having parked his car under the high wall. Buchan’s head promptly appeared at a window.
‘That you, Sir? Right—I’ll be down.’ And before Philip was half-way upstairs his manservant appeared, fully dressed, and took his luggage from him. ‘Miss Probyn rang up and said you’d be here for breakfast; but I worked out the mileage and I guessed you’d be early, so I didn’t undress.’
Blessing his ex-batman almost as much as his future wife, Philip hastily took a bath, drank his coffee in bed, and said that he was to be called at 8.30, with breakfast at nine. Then he had two hours good sleep. By ten he was in Captain Brown’s office.
‘Good work, getting off on that patrol-boat,’ that worthy said. ‘Did you make the night train?’
‘No. I drove up.’
‘Good God! Well, here’s the form. The party that’s handling the Erinish Islands have got an electric expert along.’
‘Good. Are they doing the Callernish site too?’
‘I think so.’ He opened a folder and looked at some papers. ‘Yes. And we’ve flown a boffin to Dublin—the Irish aren’t quite so up in these things yet as Farnborough or Harwell, naturally.’
Philip was glad of this. He would have hated to think of old Charlie Ruddy being blown to glory up on The Bank, when he led the Irish party to the spot. He took out his report, hurriedly typed on the lurching patrol-boat on his way to Penzance. ‘Sorry it’s a bit untidy.’
Brown studied it carefully.
‘That tiny plunger thing under the plastic lid is curious,’ he said. He pressed a bell on his desk, and made some pencil lines down the margin of Philip’s report. When a small middle-aged man came in—‘Have these marked passages encoded, and radioed immediately to J. M. L., now in the Hebrides. Telephone them in cypher to Dublin—Mr. Richardson will give you the number. It’s urgent. Then bring me the papers back.’
‘Very good, Sir.’
Brown sat back in his chair and looked across at Jamieson.
‘What on earth made you suspect a booby-trap in the Scillies, when, as I gather, you’d lifted all these other plastic lids, and nothing happened?’
‘It was rather odd,’ Philip said slowly. He told Brown how the two words ‘disconnect everything’ had suddenly rung a bell in his head, and his subsequent precautions.
‘Second sight, I suppose,’ Brown said.
‘No, I’ve no Highland blood. A hunch, they would call it today—the Bible phrase for hunches was, apparently, “being warned of God in a dream”.’
‘But you weren’t in a dream.’
‘No. But I think the rest of the sentence applies.’
‘Well it was damned lucky, anyhow,’ Captain Brown said, brushing God aside with the slight embarrassment which is common form in the twentieth century; he passed on to the next item on his programme.
‘We’ve got the crew of that Russian trawler up here—they’re in a police-station. Would you like to come and see them now, or leave it till tomorrow?’
‘I’d much sooner do it at once—I want to get back.’
‘All right—we’ve got an interpreter. You may be able to identify the man with the revolver.’
In the clean, rather drab surroundings of the police-station the crew of the Russian trawler were brought in by two police-constables, and marshalled in a row—Jamieson scanned their faces.
‘He’s not here,’ he said to Brown. He turned to the interpreter. ‘Ask them what they did to the man who fired the revolver,’ he said abruptly. As the interpreter put the question disturbed expressions appeared on one or two of the flat, snub-nosed Russian faces; then the leader spoke.
‘He says he was drowned,’ the interpreter said.
‘There you are—I felt pretty sure they would do him in,’ Jamieson said to Captain Brown.
‘Well, we’ll hold them all as accessories to attempted murder,’ Brown said. ‘Tell them that,’ he ordered the interpreter. But this time the faces remained impassive. They were marched out again, and the three officials returned to the office.
‘Well, I’ll report to the Home Office that you can’t recognise the actual murderer,’ Brown said. ‘Then they can cope with the Coroner in the Scillies about his adjourned inquest. Murky-looking set, weren’t they? Now, what are your movements?’
‘Get some sleep, and drive down to Penzance tonight to catch the Scilly boat, if she’s able to sail tomorrow.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘Professor Burbage’s funeral. If the boat’s going, or the plane’s flying again, I may be in time.’
‘Oh—ah—yes. I’d like to hear in more detail about that. D’you think he bumped himself?’
‘It’s impossible to be sure. He was certainly running away from us—me, probably.’ He described the pursuit on Bryher, and its miserable ending. ‘I should rather like to know how all that stands, now, from your latest information,’ Jamieson said.
‘Well he’d certainly been being blackmailed for a long time, and he was undoubtedly in touch with them; but from what we’ve been able to piece together, I think he was smart enough never to do them any real good.’
‘I shouldn’t ever have thought of him as smart,’ Jamieson replied. ‘But if you could tell me that he was really clear of any de facto treachery, it would be a comfort.’
‘Who to? You?’
‘Indirectly. Directly, to my fiancée, and still more to her old godmother, who’s been a friend of his for fifty years.’
‘Well I think you can say that, to them.’
‘Thank you.’
Philip Jamieson did get back in time for the Professor’s funeral. He felt rather disinclined for another long drive, and Julia, anyhow, would have to escort Mrs. Hathaway back to London. Finding that there was a night train from Padding ton that connected with the boat he decided to take it, sent Buchan to book a sleeper, and rang Julia up to that effect.
‘The boat will be too late—take the plane,’ the girl said.
‘How’s your gale?’
‘Oh, blown itself out—all calm now.’
‘Good.’
‘Are you frightfully tired?’ she asked.
‘Oh, nothing to mention.’ But he liked the question; since his mother died no one had ever cared to know whether he was tired or not—it was nice to think that now there would be someone who did. After a long sleep he ate Buchan’s excellent dinner, took a taxi to Paddington, and slept again, soundly, in the train; from Penzance he took another taxi out to the small airport, and caught an early plane to St. Mary’s.
The churchyard at Old Town is some distance frem Hugh Town, close to the sea. They had expected to be the only mourners, a pitiful little company of three—but no. As they walked after the white-robed Chaplain to the open grave they were joined by another small party—Mrs. Hicks of ‘Suntrap’, with her husband; young Hicks, the Bryher boatman, and his father, and the post mistress from Bryher—all had brought flowers. Once again Jamieson thought what nice people the Islanders were. The calm and reassuring words of the burial service were read over the poor old Professor in that quiet spot—‘Oh Death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?’—Jamieson threw a handful of soil onto the coffin, in the prescribed manner. Later, unobtrusively, he fee’d the Chaplain, and gave him money for the sexton and his assistants; he also introduced the Bryher party to Mrs. Hathaway and Julia, and invited them back to eat something at the Zennor Hotel. But before leaving he took Julia and Mrs. Hathaway, at Julia’s request, to see the stone to the unknown seaman with the words ‘Known to God’. As they walked back past the little chapel Jamieson saw a group of men carrying a stretcher covered with blankets into it. Once again a bell rang in his head.
‘Take Mrs. H. to the car; I want to check on something. Wait, if she’s not too tired; I shan’t be a moment.’
While Julia obediently took Mrs. Hathaway to the taxi, Philip went over to the chapel—the men who had carried the stretcher in were just coming out.
‘Who have you been putting in there?’ Jamieson asked.
‘A man washed ashore this morning.’
‘Could I have a look?’
‘Think you could identify him?’ the man in charge of the stretcher-party asked. ‘We like to identify our bodies, but we very seldom can.’ As he spoke he opened the door into the small, cold, bare chapel, where the stretcher, muffled in blankets, lay on the stone floor.
‘Oh, I don’t suppose so. Just interested—I’ve never seen a person washed up by the sea before.’
‘This one’s pretty fresh,’ another of the men said, with a macabre grin—‘not been in long enough for the dog-fish or the crabs to get at him!’
‘Shut up, Legg,’ the older man said, as he drew down the blanket. The pallid greenish face Jamieson recognised at once; it was that of the little man who had run across the Neck on Bryher and shot at the Professor. He drew the blanket further down, and examined the clothing: yes, two holes in the oilskin jacket, over the heart—just what he had expected.
‘Know who he is?’ the leader of the party asked.
‘No.’ Jamieson drew the blanket up again, covering the poor face. ‘But thank you very much,’ he said. The stretcher-party didn’t seem to have noticed the holes.
In the taxi on the way back to Hugh Town Philip took the opportunity to tell Mrs. Hathaway and Julia what Brown had told him—that, officially, the Professor was cleared of any substantial treachery; going out to the graveyard he had felt too hurried and concerned with practical details to do this. Mrs. Hathaway, who had held up nobly during the funeral, burst into tears.
‘Oh Philip, why didn’t you tell me before? I could have prayed quite differently,’ the old lady said.
‘You can pray differently now,’ he answered. ‘I am very sorry, Mrs. H.’
‘You might have telephoned about this,’ Julia said, rather sternly. ‘No I see you couldn’t do that,’ she added, after a moment. ‘Mrs. H., darling, he’s quite right. After all, one doesn’t only pray for the dead at the graveside.’
‘No. I shall pray for him for the rest of my life,’ the old lady said, with sudden firmness. She wiped her eyes. ‘Thank you, dear Philip; it was good of you to tell me. It is such a relief, after all these years.’
Back at the hotel Julia and Philip suggested that Mrs. Hathaway should have lunch sent up to her room; she would not hear of it.
‘No, I want to be with these nice people while they eat the funeral baked meats’ she said stoutly. So they all partook of an early luncheon with the party from Bryher, preceded and accompanied by liberal drinks; Mrs. Hathaway expended herself on getting onto terms with the Islanders—telling them about the Professor’s great achievements, and hearing their accounts of him.
‘That’s a marvellous old lady,’ young Hicks said to Philip, as he saw them out through the garden. ‘Goodbye. Shall we be seeing you again?’
‘Not just now—we’re going back to London. Next spring, perhaps.’
‘Oh, good. Let us know when you come back.’
After seeing Julia, and learning that Mrs. Hathaway was safely on her bed, Philip first telephoned to book sleepers back to London the following night, and then rang up the Coroner.
‘Could I see you? I’m off tomorrow.’
‘Yes, by all means. Come along at once.’
In Mr. Robinson’s pleasant room Philip gladly accepted a cup of coffee and a cigarette.
‘Well, London tell me you couldn’t identify the would-be murderer when that trawler’s crew were paraded in front of you yesterday,’ the Coroner said.
‘No. But I did so this morning.’
‘Where, and how, for goodness sake?’
‘He’s lying in the little chapel at Old Town—I saw a body being carried in after we had buried the Professor, so I went to have a look. He certainly fired the two revolver-shots, but his dear chums bumped him, as I expected,’ Jamieson said. He described the holes in the jacket.
‘What creatures!’ Mr. Robinson said. ‘A curious coincidence, your seeing him being carried in, though.’
‘Shall you have to hold an inquest on him, too? Just a corpse washed up by the sea?’
‘Oh indeed yes—we do on all of them, but usually they can’t be identified.’
‘Known to God,’ Philip murmured.
‘Oh, you know that stone? Nice, isn’t it?’
‘Very nice.’ But Jamieson was rather put about at the idea of this second inquest. He explained to the Coroner that he had been hoping to get off the following day—‘I imagined that you might not want me for the adjourned inquest on Professor Burbage.’
‘This rather alters it. I’m afraid I shall need to have you present now, for both. You at least know that the corpse at Old Town was a Russian national, which no one else does.’
‘Yes, I see.’ Philip reflected. ‘How soon must these inquests be? I did rather want to escort my party back to London tomorrow night. I suppose I couldn’t take them up and come down again?’
‘How long would that take?’
‘Thirty-six hours.’
‘Seems a lot of needless travelling,’ the Coroner said. ‘If I lay on both inquests for tomorrow’—he glanced at his desk calendar. ‘Oh, tomorrow’s Saturday. Never mind. If we got it all over tomorrow you could get off by the plane on Monday, or by the Scillonian on Tuesday. Mightn’t that be a better plan? Are you needed in London over the week-end?’
‘We are like women. “A woman’s work is never done”, so week-ends mean nothing to us,’ Philip said. ‘But I think perhaps this is a better plan. You’re very kind.’ He got up. ‘May I ring you back when I’ve talked to my ladies?’
In fact the moment he talked to his younger lady he saw that the Coroner’s plan was a good one. The Professor’s death had been a severe shock to Mrs. Hathaway; immediately after hearing of it she had made the considerable effort of a hurried start, a night journey, and a roughish sea trip; up till the funeral, and during the little luncheon after it, she had borne herself splendidly. But she was an old woman, and once the need for effort was over she had a sort of collapse. Philip, who had admired her courage through all this, was not in the least surprised when Julia said to him—‘You’ll have to cancel those sleepers. Mrs. H. is a bit overdone; she ought to have two or three days in bed. When does the Scillonian go next?’
‘Monday or Tuesday, I think.’
‘Oh good—that will give us a week-end here. I think she will be all right, but she must keep quiet for a bit. Anyhow she’ll be just as well looked after here as by those old creatures of hers in London.’ Julia took a dim view of Mrs. Hathaway’s two elderly and rather spoilt servants.
Philip telephoned to the Coroner at once.
‘Thank you, Sir—if you can fix up the inquests for tomorrow it would be excellent. The old lady is rather done up—she won’t be fit to travel tomorrow.’
‘Right—I’ll lay on both. 11.30 all right?’
‘Whatever suits you,’ Jamieson said.
He attended the two inquests the following morning; both were brief formal affairs. (The Press had lost interest in the case, and taken themselves off.) A verdict of ‘accidental death’ was returned on the Professor, and on the Russian sailor one of ‘murder by a person or persons unknown’. (The Home Office had expressed a strong preference for this solution on the telephone.)
But Julia was right about Mrs. Hathaway being well looked after at St. Mary’s. The maids in the Zennor Hotel rallied round the old lady, constantly offering her freshly-pressed orange-juice, or a re-filled hot-water bottle. It was of course the dead season, and no one in the hotel was particularly busy; but this kindly attention was very nice, all the same. After twenty-four hours of it Julia felt that she could safely leave her precious godmother for part of the day, at least, and she made a suggestion to Philip at breakfast.
‘Couldn’t we go and see those gardens at Tresco?’ I do want to. Last time you dragged me off to look at that beastly trawler instead.’
‘Darling, I didn’t know then that the trawler was there —I just wanted to see the lie of the land,’ he protested.
‘Yes—well now the trawler’s sunk, and we know the lie of the land only too well!’ the girl said sadly. ‘Do let’s have one peaceful day here, with no spying or searching.’
He looked at her distressfully. ‘Darling, I didn’t realise you disliked my job so much. Are you sure you want to marry me?’
‘Oh don’t be silly, Philip. The Prof’s dead; he was the only part of your job I minded—I’ve rather enjoyed my own other little efforts in that line. Stop fussing, and get us to Tresco.’
They went. On the Black Swan to Old Grimsby, on foot across the island, and then followed the drive up to the Abbey, with the lake on their left, encircled by pale reeds and full of curious birds; Philip, to Julia’s surprise, could name most of the exotic shrubs and conifers bordering the avenue.
‘Gracious! How much you know!’ she exclaimed.
‘Fond of plants,’ the man said deprecatingly. ‘An uncle of mine had rather a good arboretum, so I was more or less brought up with that sort of thing.’
The gardens at Tresco are really a miracle, given their northern latitude. The lie of the land, skilful shelter-planting, and above all the blessed warmth of the Gulf Stream pouring past, month in and month out, have made it possible to create a semi-tropical Paradise only some fifty miles from the cold, frost-ridden, foggy mainland of Britain. Julia fairly gasped at what she saw as they walked along the paths, here and there passing the ruins of the ancient Abbey buildings: huge bushes of camellias about to burst into flower, banks bright with pelargoniums, and self-sown freesias growing practically wild in every odd corner, scenting the air deliciously.
‘But this is like Tangier,’ she exclaimed.
‘What is?’
‘Well especially the freesias. They used them as borders to the paths at the Consulate-General. Oh Philip, what on earth is that?’ She indicated a strange-looking plant.
He told her its name, and the names of many other unusual specimens—collected, experimentally planted, and tended unceasingly since 1834, when the original ‘Lord Proprietor’ of the Islands, Augustus Smith, settled down on the wind-swept, sandy, utterly bare Tresco (there was not so much as a gorse-bush then on the whole island) built himself a house, and started the gardens. Julia had heard of them, but knew little of their history; perched on a seat she listened while Philip recounted to her how the Scillonian seamen, trading in the Southern Hemisphere, had brought back roots and seeds to augment the collection; of the gifts from Kew Gardens and, later, of plant-collecting expeditions sent out by subsequent owners of Tresco.
‘What a lovely thing to do,’ she said at length. ‘So much nicer and more worth while than endowing some revolting technical college to teach people how to make atom bombs.’
The man laughed.
‘Come and see Valhalla—though I wish they didn’t call it that.’ He led her down to a large open-fronted shed, filled with what is probably a unique collection of the carved and painted figure-heads from the prows of ships wrecked off the Scillies: Grecian goddesses, ancient heroes—even one gentleman in full Highland dress; many had been carefully re-painted, and restored to their original brilliance of colour. Julia examined them, and turned to her companion in delight.
‘There you are again,’ she said. ‘Something really worth doing —collecting them, and getting them all tidied up. What frightfully sensible people these Smith-Dorriens, or Dorrien-Smiths— which are they?—must be.’
‘Dorrien-Smith,’ he told her.
‘Well they have all the right ideas. Making this divine garden, and rescuing these charming things from the wreckers. I bet you a lot of the Islanders would have chopped them up for firewood as soon as look at you. Remember that sawing-horse on Bryher?’
‘Yes. But remember how nice the Bryher people were about old Burbage.’
‘I do—I shall never forget that.’ She gave a sort of sniffing sob. ‘Oh, I am so thankful that the poor old sweet never did anything really wrong. He was quite silly enough to, you see,’ she said candidly.
‘Yes. But I think the authorities, too, grasped that in the end; which was why they were able to clear him. I don’t suppose anyone will ever get to the bottom of all that—I mean what he did or didn’t do to help the wretched Russians. Personally, I don’t mind—all I really care about is that he should have been cleared, to set your and Mrs. H.’s minds at rest.’
He said this as they happened to be passing a seat set against a wall under some strange tree with bright red flowers; the girl caught his elbow, drew him down onto the seat, threw her arms round him, and kissed him warmly.
‘Oh you precious Philip! I do so love you for being so loving, and charitable.’
This little scene was prolonged for some time, greatly to the satisfaction of both parties—when they left the seat Julia pulled off one of the red flowers from the overhanging tree and tucked it away in her handbag—‘Just to remind,’ she said, smiling.
Philip Jamieson was happy too. Ever since he became engaged to Julia he had had some of the sensations of a man who has managed to snare a Bird of Paradise, but wonders if he will succeed in getting it safely home? After that talk in the gardens at Tresco he felt much more certain of settling his particular Bird of Paradise in his house in Gray’s Inn.
They crossed the low ridge of the island; they were to lunch at the hotel before returning to St. Mary’s. As they walked up the sandy drive Philip, remembering Julia’s request for one day ‘with no spying or searching’, rather nervously put a question to her.
‘Should you mind frightfully if I made an enquiry here? It has only this moment occurred to me that I ought to.’
‘What on earth about?’
‘That extraordinary little chef man.’
‘But he’s gone, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes. All the same I ought to ask, if you didn’t mind.’
‘Oh, ask away! All I want is a drink, and a good lunch.’
They ordered their drinks in the comfortable little bar; then Jamieson went up to the Manager, whom he already knew by sight, and asked if he could have a word with him?
‘Most gladly. Here?’
‘No, not here,’ the Colonel said. ‘By ourselves.’
The Manager went and looked into the Television room—it was empty. ‘Come in here,’ he said, ‘where we can sit. I’m no good at standing.’ Philip, who had been standing for the better part of two hours in the Tresco gardens, was himself quite glad to sit.
‘Now, how can I help you?’ the Manager asked. ‘You’re in Intelligence, aren’t you? You went out on that Naval boat to Shipman Head, and found something funny, I gather.’
On this occasion Jamieson rather blessed the Islands’ hyper-efficient grapevine—it made his own task easier.
‘Yes. But some days before that—the last time we lunched here, in fact—we walked out to King Charles’s Castle and saw a Russian trawler come in and anchor under Shipman Head; and presently we saw that odd little Middle-Eastern-looking chef of yours signalling to her.’
‘What makes you think this man you saw was our chef?’ the Manager asked, in a rather chilly tone.
‘Oh, we picked that up on the Scillonian; he came over on her with us. And then we saw him coming up here, and going in by the staff entrance. But look,’ Jamieson said, ‘since you know that I’m in Intelligence, why do you want to hold out on me? Are you for, or against, my job?’
The Manager gave a rather rueful laugh.
‘I’m sorry. I was a little taken aback by how much you knew; silly of me. Ask anything you like—I’ll tell you all I can.’
‘Thank you. Well, first, how did you recruit him?’
‘By an advertisement in the Daily Telegram —our head chef fell ill just a few weeks before we were due to close. This man answered; a Swiss name, and when he turned up, a Swiss passport. I did my early training in Switzerland, like most of us— after all, they are the world’s hoteliers—so I took him on, though when he arrived I didn’t think he looked at all Swiss, I must admit.’
‘References?’
‘He sent those with his application; from perfectly reputable places in Lucerne and Lausanne—I didn’t bother to take them up, as it was for such a short time.’
‘No, I understand. Could he in fact cook?’ Jamieson asked, with genuine curiosity.
‘Yes—superbly. Much better than our poor old fellow who’ll be coming back to us in the spring, though he’s quite good. Why do you want to know that?’ The Manager was curious in his turn.
‘It’s always interesting, and often useful, to know how thorough the—well, the opposition—are about the people they plant on us for these jobs,’ the Colonel replied. ‘This time they obviously were very thorough.’
The Manager stared at him.
‘But do you mean that this man was sent here, deliberately, to signal to that trawler?’
‘Certainly to find out all he could, on the spot, and be in a position to contact the trawler, or any other vessel they chose to send.’
‘But how could they know that our chef would fall ill just then?’ the Manager demanded.
‘Did he have ulcers? If so, I expect they knew it; if not, they may have poisoned him. Have any other chefs in the Islands been taken ill recently?’
The Manager fairly gaped at him.
‘Yes!—come to think of it the chef at the Horizon Hotel fell ill about the same time, and so did the cook at the Zennor. But are you implying’—he looked angry—‘that our people here are poisoners?’
‘No. I’m merely suggesting that Communist infiltration is extremely thorough. Are you sure that there are no Czech still-room maids at those two hotels you mentioned? They would serve the chef with his coffee, wouldn’t they?’
The Manager actually turned pale.
‘Good Lord! We’ve got one here!—and I fancy they had foreigners at the Zennor and the Horizon too. You know what it is with staff today; you take what you can get.’
‘Naturally. But don’t bother to discharge your Czech girl— having made your chef ill she’s done her job; I don’t suppose she’ll poison anyone else!’
‘And you mean, seriously, that these girls were sent to take jobs here to be on hand to poison chefs, so that a spy could be introduced?’
‘Precisely that. And this man answered your advertisement— much the most useful situation in relation to Shipman Head— and came, and did his stuff.’
‘Extraordinary that you should actually have seen him doing it,’ the Manager said. He went through into the bar and fetched a second round of drinks.
‘He cleared off the very next day,’ he told Jamieson on his return, setting down the two glasses. ‘Left us rather in the soup, of course; but our No. 2 chef isn’t too bad.’
‘Oh yes—I heard he’d gone. The St. Mary’s police were rather cross with me for not having told them about him sooner, when they heard he’d skipped it, but they were going to try to have him picked up at Paddington. I wonder if that came off?’ Philip had entirely forgotten to enquire about this when he was in London.
‘No, it didn’t,’ the Manager said. ‘The police were onto us about him more than once. He left on the Scillonian all right, but there was no certain record of his having boarded the London train.’
‘I daresay not. Probably a car met him in some side street at Penzance and took him away. Oh well, he’s out of it now, too. It’s all over,’ Philip said, suddenly rather sadly. Poor old Prof.— all was most definitely over for him, as it was for the Russian sailor. He thanked his host, and took Julia in to have lunch.
But the thought of the wretched little Russian, would-be murderer as he was, had given him an idea, and over their meal he put it to Julia.
‘I should like there to be a very tiny tombstone for that Russian seaman who was done in by his mates,’ he said. ‘Do you suppose they would put up a tombstone to unknowns, cast up by the sea?’
‘I shouldn’t think so, usually—tombstones are frightfully expensive nowadays.’ Julia had been going into the question of one for the Professor, and knew what she was talking about. ‘But the Padre would know. Anyhow, why do you want him to have one? He tried to kill the Prof.’
‘Agreed. But he had a soul; every Communist must have a soul—though their régime doesn’t give them much chance to develope them. I sometimes think we each ought to pray for the soul of one Communist.’
She looked at him, wide-eyed.
‘Do you pray, Philip? Funny that I’ve never asked you that before.’
‘Oh yes, night and morning—plain Presbyterian prayers, that I learned as a child. I don’t mean that I’m religious,’ he added rather hastily.
‘You’re good,’ the girl pronounced. ‘And you’re right about this—Father Antal would have agreed.’
‘Who’s he? Oh, that Hunk you got out of Portugal. Yes, he must have known quite a bit about Communists, after all that time under them in Hungary. Did he think they have souls?’
‘I never asked him, but I know Catholics believe that all human beings have souls. And I’m sure he would think we ought to pray for at least one Commie soul; it makes it more concrete to pray for an individual. Right—that’s settled,’ she said briskly. ‘I shall call mine Boris; one must pray for a name. What shall you call yours?’
‘Igor, you fantastic creature!’ he said. But there was no mockery in his laughter—under the table he took her hand.
‘Well if the Padre allows us to put up a stone—I suppose he has the say-so—what do you propose for an inscription?’ Julia asked, still holding Philip’s hand under the table.
Jamieson reflected for a moment or two. At last he spoke. ‘“A communist, known to God”.’