Roger turned and ran.
He stumbled down the steps of the School to the pavement, and set off as hard as he could go in the direction that would take him away from the lurking figure on the other side of the square.
He ran.
He ran without care, without taking advantage of turnings off the straight path which would give him a chance to get right away from his pursuer before the distance between them had narrowed.
Not until he began to struggle for breath did he even turn round to see if he was being followed. But when he did so he realized in an instant that the figure with the narrow wedge-shaped head between the immensely broad shoulders was no figment of the imagination. The man was pounding after him down the street. The suddenness of his flight had put concealment out of the question. The docker was blatantly running after him. And he was running much the faster.
Already a sharp jabbing pain had started up in Roger’s right side. He was breathing in shallow gasps. His face was streaked with sweat. The tall green iron lamp-posts looked like refuges of coolness. To stand leaning against one of them with the cold iron against the hotness of his cheek with his hands locked round it in final mute refusal.
One more. The next one.
Suddenly he saw out of the corner of his eye that there was a gap in the stream of traffic flowing in the road beside him.
He nipped across smartly. Without weariness.
The cars behind raced exuberantly forward into the free space. The gap disappeared. The docker was on the far side of the road. A respite.
Roger looked round to see if he could spot a taxi. At the far end of the street he thought he saw a car which looked like one going slowly enough to be cruising. He set off towards it, but it swung crazily into the stream of traffic on the other side of the road and vanished.
The disturbance caused by this common enough example of anarchic individualism halted the traffic flow for a moment and Roger saw the broad-shouldered form of the docker diving into the temporary pool of stillness in the hurrying stream.
He turned and began moving away in the opposite direction at a loping run adopted to prevent a recurrence of the jabbing pain in his side. The docker was too near him now to make a turn off the more frequented street worthwhile. He increased his pace a little.
The tall houses looked blankly on.
And suddenly a way of escape presented itself. A way of startling simplicity.
Roger’s course had brought him to Kildare Street. On his right lay the wide quadrangle of Leinster House with the symmetrical buildings of the National Library and the National Museum flanking it. Roger saw in an instant that in the torpid quietness of the museum the dirty figure of the docker would attract the immediate attention of every attendant in sight. While he himself with all the signs of scholarliness about him – the frayed suit, the pale complexion, the thickening waist – would be on Tom Tiddler’s ground.
He turned to go through the open iron gates. As he did so out of the corner of his eye he saw a taxi idling down the street behind him. He halted, undecided which method of evasion was better.
The conventional taxi. The unconventional refuge of the museum. The possibility that the docker might be able to get hold of another taxi and follow him as relentlessly as before. The sudden doubt that the tedious calm of the museum would be really effective against the threat of brute force implicit in the docker’s enormously broad shoulders.
Then Roger saw that in point of fact the taxi was not idling. It had an occupant, someone sitting far back, and for some reason the driver had abandoned the usual bestman-win style of Dublin driving in favour of a chugging crawl. Engine trouble probably.
Roger turned again and made for the wide steps and massive pillars of the museum entrance.
But his hesitation had given the running figure of the docker a new chance. He who hesitates a fraction is almost lost.
In the bustling sedateness of Kildare Street the docker launched himself towards Roger. Silent, purposeful.
And Roger put on a burst of speed which he would not have believed himself capable of. The pounding heart, the wide open mouth, the tired muscles working.
Past a motley collection of ancient carved stones, through the heavy colonnade, and inside.
The faint warmth after the coldness of the fresh air. The sacred silence. The emptiness.
Roger dropped into a quick walk. The aching muscles still in the rhythm of running. Past a huge white marble Pietà – pray for us – and on into the main hall. An attendant, almost asleep under his peaked cap, looked up at him.
The noise of the docker’s pounding feet on the stone floor. Suddenly coming to a flummoxed halt. Without looking back, Roger hurried on. Ogham stones, flint implements, bone ornaments, tubs of bog-butter.
‘Still in a remarkable state of preservation.’ The traditional words of the guide book.
Querns and domestic articles from the early Middle Ages, a gaming board of yew, bronze swords.
Roger halted beside this display.
A vision of a puffing, fattening student of linguistics wielding a sword dating from the Bronze Age to fight off the attacks of an immensely broad-shouldered slum dweller.
He turned and hurried on. The pursuing steps of the docker were no longer to be heard, but the need to get as far as possible away from them was instinctive and urgent. At last he heard with relief the muffled sound of an altercation. Three twanging Dublin voices. The docker, no doubt, and two attendants.
Axe-heads with silver appliqué ornamentation, bronze trumpets, sepulchral urns. A long dug-out canoe.
The ridiculousness of boyish adventuring.
Roger stopped and faced the way he had come. The whole museum was sleeping its long winter sleep. The brash invasion of the tourists only a nightmare dream. Chill peace.
Roger went very slowly down from the raised terrace into the central area of the hall. He began to examine the display cases with attention. Feigned at first, soon real.
He was lost in thought over a case labelled ‘Development of the Penannular Brooch or Fibula (Sixth to Tenth Centuries)’ when a quiet voice came from a couple of yards away behind his back.
‘You’re looking decidedly fatter.’
A high, piping, unmistakable voice.
Roger swung round.
The Bosun. Standing there, leaning insolently on a stout ornamental walking-stick, swathed in a tent-like overcoat in startling black and white check.
‘What – What are you doing here?’
‘My dear fellow, I’ve every right to be here, you know. This is a public museum, open between the hours of 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.’
‘Oh, don’t pretend you came here out of a passionate interest in the antiquities of Ireland.’
‘Well …’
The piping, drawling voice.
‘Well, I do know a certain amount about such matters, of course. Let me advise you, while we’re on the subject, to complete your present study by looking at the Tara Brooch, which is kept over there – unless they’ve moved anything since I was last here, which I don’t think in the least likely. The Tara is probably the richest examp –’
‘You followed me here.’
An accusation.
The Bosun’s little slit mouth curved in a smile.
‘Of course I did,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m afraid my emissary didn’t feel quite up to penetrating these rather depressing purlieus. But luckily I was close behind him in a taxi – and causing the most frightful jams by having to go so slowly, incidentally – and I was able to take over from him. He’s waiting outside. A decidedly useful person. But more at home in the docks than in a museum. I picked him up in a bar.’
‘Was it him who killed Eric for you then?’ Roger said.
The angry words echoing round the wide, cold spaces of the deserted museum.
One of the attendants put his head round the doorway. At the sight of two respectable figures in disagreement over the development of the penannular brooch he withdrew.
A disturbing morning.
‘Killed Eric?’ said the Bosun. ‘I don’t quite follow.’
His pained expression. Donned.
‘Oh, come off it,’ said Roger. ‘Don’t let’s pretend we don’t understand each other. You found out where Eric was. You didn’t trust him not to tell the world your nasty secret. You killed him. And if I can, I’ll see you don’t get away with it.’
He fumbled in his inside pocket and brought out his wallet. He flipped it sprawling open and with clumsy fingers jerked out of it a small white square of pasteboard.
‘Here’s your trademark,’ he said.
The white fire of anger.
The Bosun slowly shook his head from side to side. The great pink balloon swaying as if caught in a chance wind.
‘But will anybody else except you say he was killed?’ he asked.
‘Nobody but you would have gone to the trouble to have a card printed describing himself as J. Parkinson Crowle, the Southampton Rapist,’ Roger said.
The Bosun’s sausage fingers patted his startling check overcoat in delight.
‘I’m so glad you got that card,’ he said. ‘I had it left specially for your benefit. I knew you would know where it came from. Because I really think that no one else in the whole wide world would have hit on those two little words in the bottom right-hand corner. “By Appointment”. I think I really surpassed myself there.’
‘You surpassed yourself,’ Roger said. ‘Yes, you did. You went beyond yourself. You went too far. You killed Eric, killed him in cold blood. And now that I’ve found you, you’re bloody well going to pay for it.’
The pink sausages splayed out in a gesture of mock horror.
‘An alibi, an alibi,’ the Bosun piped. ‘My dear fellow, you don’t think I didn’t make sure I had a splendid alibi for the whole of the period Eric – you seem to have quite got into the way of calling him that – was likely to die. I was in London the whole time, mostly in the bosom of the Athenaeum. The Government pays my subscription, you know. I helped a bishop with his crossword, I discussed Church appointments with a terribly respectable radical don. I took every precaution.’
‘All right. You used your agents –’
‘Agents? My agents? You know we haven’t taken to melodrama at Leeds since you – er – left us. Our budget may be quite generous, as after all it should be considering the importance of our work. But it doesn’t rise to a secret service of dedicated murderers. No, I have to take whatever comes to hand.’
A conspiratorial smile from the little slit mouth.
‘That’s why I used our friend from the docks to keep an eye on you. He’s cheap. Cheap and really very nasty.’
‘Oh, stop this. Don’t tell me that if you wanted it you couldn’t have all the help you wanted from M.I. 5 or M.I. 6 or whoever it is.’
‘But I do tell you. You know what civil servants are. They wouldn’t stand for anything smacking of personal direction in such matters from me. Everything would have to go through the proper channels. That’s why I prefer to do things unofficially. It’s in the best traditions, I assure you. From what I hear England is riddled with unofficial counterespionage and intelligence groups. I just happen to have a tiny one of my very own.’
The Bosun stuck his ornamental walking-stick under one arm and began unbuttoning the garish black and white overcoat. Chipolata fingers fumbling with the stiff buttons.
‘And you just happened to commit a tiny murder of your very own,’ said Roger.
He took an impulsive step towards the bloated figure.
The Bosun looked at him quizzically from beneath his pale gold eyebrows.
‘You must just accustom yourself to the fact that the fellow had to die,’ he said.
‘Had to die.’
The final insult.
Roger leapt forward, hands reaching out for the fat flesh of the Bosun’s neck.
And at his own neck a gleaming sword point.
Six inches beneath his eyes, checking him absolutely in the wild flurry of his rush, the steadily held swordstick.
Its ornamental sheath dropped with a hollow clatter on to the stone floor.
‘I’m not a fool,’ the Bosun said.
Roger backed a step.
A curling grin spread on the Bosun’s slit of a mouth. He advanced an equal step. The shining length of the sword held without the least tremor. The point an inch from Roger’s windpipe.
‘You won’t get away with it,’ Roger said.
The hoarse whisper.
The sword point advanced three-eighths of an inch.
‘As a matter of fact I shall.’
‘This time you haven’t got an alibi. You aren’t in the Athenaeum now. You may kill me –’
‘Kill you? My dear fellow.’
A slow look of dawning understanding, beautifuly managed.
‘You thought I had decided to deal with you in the same way as – what am I to call him? – Ah yes, as Eric Smith. You know, you couldn’t possibly be more mistaken.’
Roger’s look of blank surprise.
‘How awful of me, my dear fellow. You must forgive me. I had no idea, or I would have explained straight away.’
‘Explained what?’
Roger was no longer making any attempt to keep on even terms.
‘Explained the difference between Eric Smith and Roger Farrar. That is right, isn’t it, Roger Farrar? The names seem to ring a faint bell, I can’t think why.’
‘Yes,’ said Roger, ‘I choose to call myself Roger Farrar.’
‘But, of course. I quite understand. You couldn’t afford your real name appearing on some academic list or other if you wanted to stay concealed so near my eagle eye. I can forgive that.’
The sword point retreated three-eighths of an inch.
‘Well, what do you want?’ Roger said.
‘You. I want you. I want you back.’
‘Well, you can go on wanting.’
A slight return of aggressive instinct.
The hard eyes in the puffy pink flesh narrowed.
‘I mean you to come back,’ the Bosun said.
‘All right, I can see that you’re very determined. But I’m equally determined. I am not coming back. The whole Leeds project is evil. Evil. I mean to have no part in it.’
The Bosun lowered his sword.
‘You know,’ he said in a conversational tone, ‘I think you don’t quite appreciate the difference between us. You tell me you are as much determined to stay here as I am that you shall come back to Leeds. But you lack the necessary ruthlessness, my dear chap. Don’t forget, I know all about you. You didn’t work under me all those years for nothing.’
‘Perhaps I’m different now.’
‘The tiny curving smile in the balloon face.
‘We shall see. I want you back. I’m prepared to go to quite considerable lengths to get you. I’m prepared if necessary to accept damaged goods, to damage them myself even, provided that they can be repaired when we all get back to Leeds.’
‘I warn you: threats won’t do you any good.’
‘Oh, I never supposed they would. But I wasn’t threatening: I was promising.’
The sword blade flicked up again. Pointing higher this time. On a level with Roger’s eyes but held to the side of his face.
‘Let me teach you a little lesson,’ the Bosun said.
The even tone of the piping voice.
The sword moving evenly forward.
The sharp pain at the edge of Roger’s ear.
He jerked his head aside.
‘Oh, come,’ said the Bosun, ‘keep still. Less melodrama. It was only the merest nick. You’ve done worse shaving.’
The sword darting back and darting forward again. Held now level with the other ear.
‘Now, you’d better exercise a little more self-control this time, or you might find yourself without an ear.’
Roger staring at a point just above the Bosun’s head, fixed on the curl of a medieval crozier fastened to the distant wall. The rigid face. White, gleaming pallidly with sweat.
The sword slowly moving forward. The expected burning touch of pain at the ear edge.
The sword lowered. A dark stain marring the straight shining blade.
‘You see, my dear chap,’ the Bosun said, ‘it’s this way: your friend Eric knew too much to be allowed to live, but you know too much to be allowed to die.’
‘I don’t want to bandy riddles,’ Roger said.
Sullenly.
The Bosun pouted. A spoilt child, blown-up.
‘You used to enjoy a certain allusiveness in conversation in the old days,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Roger, ‘not sentimentality, please.’
‘But they were good old days. They still are good days. I cannot understand what possessed you to go running off like that.’
A shimmer of wrinkles on the broad balloon brow. Genuine incomprehension.
‘Look,’ the Bosun said, ‘I’m asking you to come back. That’s what I’m here for. I’m sorry about your Eric, but, as I said, he knew too much. Anyone from the spearhead team was just too important to take risks over. Even though he gave nothing away it was too dangerous to allow him to continue to exist.’
The podgy fingers waving in a gesture of deprecation.
‘But you’re different, old man. Naturally, I wouldn’t be too delighted to have details of what your branch was doing fall into the wrong hands. But you’ve evidently decided to say nothing of the grand design. That was sensible. And the fact is that we cannot do without your knowledge of linguistics. There’s no one at Leeds to touch you, dear boy. Please, won’t you come back. Please.’
‘You make me sick,’ Roger said. ‘Pleading for your vile institute as if it were a home for lost dogs. That’s why we had to leave the way we did, to go to ground, to disappear: you would never have been within miles of understanding our reasons.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the Bosun sharply. ‘I understand your reasons perfectly well. With the late – er – Eric Smith it was lack of promotion, but then he never rated it. And with you it was simply a craving for public recognition. Well, you know the diffic –’
‘Listen to me, just listen. Just try to take in what I’m saying.’
Roger shouting into the pink balloon face.
‘I disagree with your whole show, fundamentally and absolutely. The foul experiments that went on just round the corner and spending my every waking hour tinkering with words for what you were pleased to call warlike purposes. It was making me sick, sick to death.’
On the pink face the almost imperceptible pale gold eyebrows rose.
‘It was lack of leisure, was it?’ the Bosun said. ‘My dear fellow, I confess I’d got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick. But if you want extra time off I’m sure it could be arranged. Of course, as you know, we’ve a hell of a lot to do and time is always precious. We’ve got to get this thing perfected, you know. Then we can beat them all.’
‘Beat them all. That just about sums you up. That’s the only way you know how to think. The new way of warfare. Britain must have the edge on everybody.’
‘My dear fellow, are you saying that that shouldn’t be so? Ireland must have softened your brain. Just think back to the fundamentals. You wouldn’t want to see Russia winning a war, would you? Or America, for heaven’s sake. Come, you must know Britain, with all her faults, is the only power fit to be trusted.’
‘The only power. That’s the sort of blindness I sought refuge here from. Can’t you see: linguistics should never be part of a secret weapon? It’s criminal to think in that way.’
‘Linguistics for peace, eh? Ireland has done something to your mind. It must be the soft days, as they call them. The gradual seepage of fine mist into the cerebellum. The sooner you come back to Leeds and a little realism the better. That sort of slogan stuff is simply one of the elementary tools of your own trade: you can’t allow yourself to be deceived by it. It’s like a master carpenter hitting his finger with a hammer.’
‘I didn’t work for months on the uses of the word “peace” without knowing it was a weapon, thank you very much. That’s just why it took me so long to see it also meant something. It isn’t only a word, you know: it’s something that could exist. And the same goes for all the other words you so much love to see being monkeyed around with by stupid stooges like me. Well, I’m no longer a stooge. Ireland has done something for me, if you like. It’s given me a chance to look at you from a distance.’
‘A distance? My dear chap, we shall have to give you some sort of rehabilitation course. You can’t surely really think that Ireland is distant from Britain. Why, that’s the crudest sort of propaganda put out in the pre-scientific days. You of all people can’t have fallen for it.’
‘It happens to be true. Ireland actually is a different country from your set-up over there.’
The Bosun smiled.
‘My dear fellow, Ireland is simply the last English eccentricity. Just wake up.’
‘No, you don’t see it. Ireland is a place where things can be done slowly and carefully. Where little by little –’
‘Stop.’
The slit mouth curving into a slow smile.
‘Little by Little. It’s been puzzling me ever since I heard those ridiculous names you two gave yourselves. I suppose they were your idea. It’s the book by Dean Farrar, of course. The author provided your surname, and Smith’s Christian name came from the title, “Eric, or Little by Little”. My dear fellow, I do congratulate you, a really pretty conceit.’
The curved slit mouth straightened.
‘Only the philosophy behind it simply won’t do, of course. If we went about doing everything little by little we’d lose out in a couple of years. My dear chap, it’s all or nothing, you know. There’s not room in the world for anything else. And of course …’
The high, piping voice dropped to quietness.
‘… of course, it’s all or nothing for you too.’