Fellow Passenger (27 page)

That my father had been a burglar was a mere accident of life which might happen to anyone. Neither he nor I had ever had an exaggerated respect for property, and no doubt that casual attitude facilitated my youthful conversion to communism. But I have never been so proud of him. It was enough to warm any son’s heart to know that all the way from Ecuador, when it would have been so easy to forget or ignore, he had kept an eye on his less fortunate partner and financed him out of his resources; they were, I knew, nothing much more than bluff before he married in 1915, and even in 1921, when he sent Cole the money for
The Tracehorse
, his father-in-law was still distrustful and kept him pretty short. It was not till I was ten or eleven years old that he had been able to exploit his gifts as a financier, and to live and dress in that flamboyant style which had remained his ideal.

‘Did yer find it?’ Harry asked.

I told him that I had not: that I had been in too much of a hurry.

‘That’s the mistake they all makes at first,’ he said. ‘Just take yer time, like as if you were in your own ‘ome. Nobody’s goin’to ‘urtyer.’

Now that I knew what there was in Moreton Intrinseca Manor, and how it had got there, I was sure that my father had gone up to the attic floor by a staircase which had been perfectly obvious before the Ministry cut off the nunnery wing, and which I, of course, never discovered. The room which he described as the third on the right would, in fact, have been one of those on my left.

‘I’ve a mind to have another shot at it,’ I said.

Harry Cole was dismayed. He pictured the Manor as swarming with mysterious operatives. I felt pretty sure that entry would be no harder than before. After all, that detestable security officer, Peter, had caught his man - which was quite enough for the Treasury to refuse to establish extra staff.

‘You take my advice and don’t go near the place for another twenty year,’ Harry exclaimed, ‘when all they scientists ‘ave run off to the Russians or been ‘ung by the rest of us! Then you’ll ‘ave a nice little bit for yer old age. It’s ‘ard. I’m not sayin it isn’t. But you know what them ministries are. Keep anyone out of ‘is rights, they will, so long as they can blow the ‘ole lot of us up.’

‘Suppose it was a private house,’ I asked him, ‘and you were after valuables which you knew would never be missed, how would you set about it?’

‘Well, in Jim’s time, I reckon e’d ‘ave made love to the cook or the ouse-parlourmaid. ‘E wouldn’t a done, mark yer, if it would get the poor girl a bad name, for e was always a sport. But if no one was ever goin to know what was took, where’s the ‘arm?’

I must admit, while apologizing to her and to myself, that this remark at once suggested Dr Cornelia.

I recounted to Harry Cole the main incidents of my escape and subsequent adventures. Although he had always known why I broke into Moreton Manor, he was bothered by my reappearance on a Russian ship - or rather a buoy in the Thames Estuary - and undoubtedly more at ease when I had convinced him that any other ship would have served my purpose a deal better.

‘Not that I believes what I sees in the paper,’ he added, ‘ever since I read about me own trial. All wrong they ‘ad it. Said as ‘ow I ‘ad got away in the German colonel’s uniform. And there e was in court for all of ‘em to see! Twice my size, e was!’

I told him that was my trouble, too. I had provided too much good reading, and, whether or not the men at the top believed a quarter of it, they would have to bring me to trial.

‘Ah, and with juries there’s no tellin’,’ he said gloomily. ‘But if the bogeys get yer, send yer lawyer straight down to
The Trace’orse
and an inspector with ‘im what e knows ‘as a bit of sense. But I don’t mind sayin, I ‘opes I shan’t be wanted. I don’t like talk that ‘Arry Cole done seven years - not that it would make no difference to nobody now the missus ain’t with us.’

Harry Cole and I arranged that I should stay at
The Tracehorse
for a couple of weeks, by which time my own beard would be square, black and magnificent enough for the sensitive face of Howard-Wolferstan to be indetectable, even unimaginable, beneath it. The staying, however, was to be at night only, for he could not contrive an explanation of my presence if I were seen during the day when it was known that he did not let rooms.

It was a fortnight of appalling boredom. Cole’s kitchen garden, at the back of the inn, was surrounded by trees. I had no trouble in passing out, unseen, at daybreak and in returning after the pub was shut; but during the day I had nothing to do except meditate in an oak tree, like King Charles II, or walk aimlessly through the Forest in the character of a harmless Indian tourist. I spent a couple of days exploring Southampton. Down by the docks Indians were common enough - I had, as at Oxford, some difficulty in avoiding conversation - and I proved to my satisfaction that it would be reasonably simple to stow myself away in a ship. But what was I to do when discovered at sea? Any stowaway of my build and complexion, however bearded, would be presumed to be Howard-Wolferstan till he could prove he was not.

No, the game was to follow my father’s instructions, and to buy a false passport or somehow bribe my way out of the country when Lady Lockinge’s diamonds had put me in funds. For that, I needed Dr Cornelia.

The letter which I wrote to her, drafting and redrafting it during three nights in the solitude of my
Tracehorse
bedroom, was a masterpiece. And it was in all essentials true, for my imagination had constructed a creature whom I could adore with sincerity. She had an astonishing fascination for me. I even sympathized with her liberal spirit. How was the poor girl, shut up in her scientific nunnery, to keep her spirit buoyant and her hand in practice if she did not create havoc among the only available males?

Was there a chance that she would hand my letter and me over to the police? I debated it back and forth under the trees of the New Forest and decided to gamble on my experience of women. Quite certainly both she and Sir Alexander Romilly had doubts of my guilt. Cornelia, sure of herself and flattered, would give me the benefit of that doubt and listen to what I had to say.

‘To see you once again before I leave England for ever,’ I wrote anonymously - though the rest of the letter made it clear who the writer was, ‘I am ready to risk my liberty. I need your faith so badly, and I beg you to let me explain. At midnight of October 15th I shall be under the tall chestnut which overhangs the wall on the north side of the garden.’

I recognized that Cornelia was far too intelligent to be swept off her feet by the most pathetic and passionate letter that even I could write; but I knew enough of her tastes to be sure that she would go half-way to meet an adventure which promised to be more exciting than the clumsy and dog-like affections of her colleagues, Horace and Peter. If I asked her to meet me at a cafe or street corner in any neighbouring town, she might refuse. I was prepared to bet, however, that so deliciously feminine a woman could not - as long as it wasn’t raining - remain in her room when she was desperately curious to know whether her admirer had really come to so dangerous an assignation or not. She might spend a restless hour - say, from half-past eleven to half-past twelve - fiddling at her dressing-table, trying to read and swearing she wouldn’t go, but go she would.

On the night of the 14th I said good-bye to Harry Cole, and slipped away before dawn on the 15th. He would not take a penny from me and hotly refused to have anything to do with the proceeds, if any, of the Lockinge valuables. All he asked of me was to let him know, if ever I had a chance to do so discreetly, whether in fact they were still up the chimney. I left him Faiz Ullah’s beard and turban as a keepsake.

I spent the morning in Southampton and very reluctantly sold my guitar for fifteen pounds, which was half what the beauty was worth. With the money I bought new shoes, a suitcase and a duffle-coat. In a pawnbroker’s window I saw a second-hand gun-case, very worn and battered, but of expensive leather. That, too, I bought. It was a badge of respectability to draw attention away from myself, taking the place of Bassoon’s paint-box and easel.

So equipped, and dropping my baggage importantly on the floor, I ventured to enter a barber’s. He cut my hair, gave the ends of my moustache a gallant twist upwards and was with difficulty restrained from trimming my square beard to a point. Quite what I was I had not decided. It was up to the public, and I was prepared to fall in with any suggestion. A naval officer on leave, or a farmer of the type of Robert Donolow, or perhaps a yachtsman who didn’t much care what he looked like on land so long as he was well groomed. At any rate I was a man of character travelling to or from a weekend’s shooting with a friend, and so I could not be Howard-Wolferstan.

I was determined not to hang about Moreton Intrinseca. Careful reconnaissance was more dangerous than none, for I might arouse the interest of one of those friendly fellows who offered drinks to strangers and sent the bill to the Government. So I took a train to Saxminster, left my bags at the station and went straight for my objective by lanes and footpaths. I should have liked to revisit the Chapter House and the Court. So much had happened in the four and a half months since my escape that I felt as if the town were one I had known in youth. However, I resisted the temptation - in case the police believed in the old saying that criminals could not keep away from the scene of crime - and set out, with dusk falling, upon the twelve miles’ walk to the Manor.

I always had luck with my weather at Moreton Intrinseca. It was a soft, damp evening not wholly fitted to whirlwind romance, but inviting enough for those who enjoy the English autumn. I walked past the gate of the Manor, hoping that I could slip through, as my father had done, and disappear among the trees; but the porter was still on duty. He had even been fixed up with a uniform and a sort of sentry box. He looked extremely wide awake. I expect Peter used to stalk him through the bushes to keep him up to the mark.

The brick wall had been topped with an extra two feet of barbed wire, making about four in all - a singularly futile and office-minded precaution, for if a man could reach the top of the wall at all, he could easily climb the wire, at the expense of a tear in his trousers, by one of the angle-irons cemented into the coping. He might also have the sense, as I had not, to provide himself with a pair of wire-cutters. But you can’t wean the uniformed world from putting its trust in barbed wire, in spite of the fact that hours of military training are spent instructing the young how to get over or under it.

If it had not been for the extra wiring I doubt if I could ever have got into the Manor at all. I followed the wall very cautiously through the fields, and not a foothold or a loose brick could I find. A former garden gate had been solidly bricked up. The old ladies who once owned the house and let it to the real Howard-Wolferstan - long defunct, I imagine - must have had a terror of burglars. That wall was a masterpiece of determined building.

At last I came up against a cylindrical bulk in the darkness and found it to be a solid roll of wire thrown down and forgotten at the point where the new wiring had been completed. I stood this against the wall, covered it with a double thickness of my duffle-coat and climbed up. Even then I could only just get my fingers over the edge of the bricks. An angle-iron helped me to pull myself up. It was really absurd for the Ministry to think they knew more about security than two wealthy old ladies determined to keep out the public.

Climbing over the wire, I dropped with a resounding thud into the grounds of the Manor, and waited for the night to react. Nothing happened - not even a disturbed wood-pigeon. I sucked and bandaged with my handkerchief a wrist upon which the Ministry of Supply had scored its only triumph, and tiptoed over the dead leaves.

It was now a little after eleven. There were lights in the upper stories, and a few on the ground floor. The cloistered scientists, among them my Cornelia, were going to bed. I was on the west side of the house, and I had to come out into the open, where a wide kitchen garden ran right up to the wall, in order to reach the north lawns and the chestnut. My footsteps crunched on cinder paths. I tried to get off them and was tangled up in a maze of soft-fruit bushes. When I found that I was being led nearer and nearer to the house, my nerve began to weaken. I accused myself of utter, rash folly in ever going near Moreton Intrinseca again. I forgot all that I had so carefully debated with myself and the conclusion to which I had come: that without money and with winter coming on my recapture was only a matter of time.

It was my beloved father who allayed this panic. I remembered how, forty-five years before, just a few strides ahead of the police, the house aroused and blazing with light, he had still managed to enter it unseen. Up a drainpipe? Through a window? Down the coal shute? Only his imperturbable courage connected Jim Tutty with the deeply respected Don Jaime Howard-Wolferstan who had watched over me from the cradle to his casual and affectionate death, and was still inspiring me by his example.

With the most exaggerated precautions I slipped silently through a stable courtyard and then over the lawns on the north side of the house. It was very dark and until I came up against a complicated rose pergola which I recognized, I was by no means sure where I was. After that it was fairly easy to find the chestnut from which I had first descended upon these servants of Apollyon.

The string which I had tied to a twig was still there. I was astonished. A static string still there after so many months of agitated movement. But why shouldn’t it be, when I had taken care to make it inconspicuous? I pulled it, and down came my rope. In a moment I was safe above ground, with the rope coiled up in its fork, feeling the confidence of an impudent monkey. If Cornelia brought Horace, Peter or a dozen policemen with her, I could crawl out along the branch which overhung the wall, drop into the field and be away before any of them could get a ladder or run round by the gate.