Rogue Male (8 page)

I understood why I had not telephoned my club. This was the first occasion on which I recognized that I had a second enemy dogging my movements—my own unjust and impossible conscience. Utterly unfair it was that I should judge myself as a potential murderer. I insist that I was always sure I could resist the temptation to press the trigger when my sights were actually on the target.

I have good reason now for a certain malaise. I have killed a man, though in self-defence. But then I had no reason at all. I may be wrong in talking of conscience; my trouble was, perhaps, merely a vision of the social effects of what I had done. This stalk of mine made it impossible for me to enter my club. How could I, for example, talk to Holy George after all the trouble I had caused him? And how could I expose my fellow members to the unpleasantness of being watched and perhaps questioned? No, I was an outlaw not because of my conscience (which, I maintain, has no right to torment me) but on the plain facts.

There was no lack of mirrors in the bathroom, and I made a thorough examination of my body. My legs and backside were an ugly mess—I shall carry some extraordinary scars for life—but the wounds had healed, and there was nothing any doctor could do to help. My fingers still appeared to have been squashed in a railway carriage door and then sharpened with a pen-knife, but they were in fact serviceable for all but very rough or very sensitive work. The eye was the only part of me that needed attention. I didn’t propose to have anyone monkeying with it—I dared not give up any freedom of movement for the sake of regular treatment or an operation—but I wanted a medical opinion and whatever lotions would do it the most good.

In the morning I changed all the foreign money in my possession, and bought myself a passable suit off the peg. Then I got a list of eye specialists and taxied round and about Harley Street until I found a man who would see me at once. He was annoyingly inquisitive. I told him that I had hurt the eye at the beginning of a long voyage and had been out of reach of medical care ever since. When he had fully opened the lid, he fumed over my neglect, folly, and idiocy and declared that the eye had been burned as well as bruised. I agreed politely that it had and shut up; whereupon he became a doctor instead of a moralist and got down to business. He was honest enough to say that he could do nothing, that I’d be lucky if I ever perceived more than light and darkness, and that, on the whole, he recommended changing the real for a glass eye for the sake of appearance. He was wrong. My eye isn’t pretty, but it functions better every day.

He wouldn’t hear of my going about in dark glasses with no bandage, so I had him extend the bandages over the whole of my head. He humoured me in this, evidently thinking that I might get violent if opposed; my object was to give the impression of a man who had smashed his head rather than a man with a damaged eye. He was convinced that my face was familiar to him, and I allowed him to decide that we had once met in Vienna.

The next job was to see my solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The partner who has the entire handling of my estate is a man of about my own age and an intimate friend. He disapproves of me on only two grounds: that I refuse to sit on the board of any blasted company, and that I insist upon my right to waste money in agriculture. He doesn’t mind my spending it on anything else, finding a vicarious pleasure in my travels and outlandish hobbies. He himself has a longing for a less ordered life, shown chiefly in his attitude to clothes. During the day he is sombrely and richly attired, and has even taken in recent years to wearing a black silk stock. At night he puts on tweeds, a sweater, and a tie that would frighten a newspaperman. One can’t make him change for dinner. He would rather refuse an invitation.

Saul greeted me with concern rather than surprise; it was as if he had expected me to turn up in a hurry and the worse for wear. He locked the door and told his office manager we were not to be disturbed.

I assured him that I was all right and that the bandage was four times as long as was necessary. I asked what he knew and who had enquired for me.

He said that there had been a pointedly casual enquiry from Holy George, and that a few days later a fellow had come in to consult him about some inconceivable tangle under the Married Women’s Property Act.

‘He was so perfectly the retired military man from the West of England,’ said Saul, ‘that I felt he couldn’t be real. He claimed to be a friend and neighbour of yours and was continually referring to you. When I cross-examined him a bit, it looked as if he had mugged up his case out of a law book and was really after information. Major Quive-Smith, he called himself. Ever heard of him?’

‘Never,’ I replied. ‘He certainly isn’t a neighbour of mine. Was he English?’

‘I thought so. Did you expect him not to be English?’

I said I wasn’t answering any of his innocent questions, that he was, after all, an Officer of the Court, and that I didn’t wish to involve him.

‘Tell me this much,’ he said. ‘Have you been abroad in the employ of our government?’

‘No, on my own business. But I have to disappear.’

‘You shouldn’t think of the police as tactless,’ he reminded me gently. ‘A man in your position is protected without question. You’ve been abroad so much that I don’t think you have ever realized the power of your name. You’re automatically trusted, you see.’

I told him that I knew as much of my own people as he did—perhaps more, since I had been an exile long enough to see them from the outside. But I had to vanish. There was a risk that I might be disgraced.

A nasty word, that. I am not disgraced, and I will not feel it.

‘Can I vanish? Financially, I mean?’ I asked him. ‘You have my power of attorney and you know more of my affairs than I do myself. Can you go on handling my estate if I am never heard of again?’

‘So long as I know you are alive.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘A postcard this time next year will do.’

‘X marks my window, and this is a palm tree?’

‘Quite sufficient if in your own handwriting. You needn’t even sign it.’

‘Mightn’t you be asked for proof?’ I enquired.

‘No. If I say you are alive, why the devil should it ever be questioned? But don’t leave me without a postcard from time to time. You mustn’t put me in the position of maintaining what might be a lie.’

I told him that if he ever got one postcard, he’d probably get a lot more; it was my ever living to write the first that was doubtful.

He blew up and told me I was absurd. He mingled abuse with affection in a way I hadn’t heard since my father died. I didn’t think he would take my disappearance so hard; I suppose he is as fond of me, after all, as I am of him, and that’s saying a lot. He begged me again to let him talk to the police. I had no idea, he insisted, of the number and the subtle beauty of the strings that could be pulled.

I could only say I was awfully sorry, and after a silence I told him I wanted five thousand pounds in cash.

He produced my deed box and accounts. I had a balance of three thousand at the bank; he wrote his own cheque for the other two. That was like him—no nonsense about waiting for sales of stock or arranging an overdraft.

‘Shall we go out and lunch while the boy is at the Bank?’ he suggested.

‘I think I’ll leave here only once,’ I said.

‘You might be watched? Well, we’ll soon settle that.’

He sent for Peale, a grey little man in a grey little suit whom I had only seen emptying the waste-paper baskets or fetching cups of tea.

‘Anybody taking an interest in us, Peale?’

‘There is a person in the gardens between Remnant Street and here feeding the birds. He is not very successful with them, sir’—Peale permitted himself a dry chuckle—‘in spite of the fact that he has been there for the past week during office hours. And I understand from Pruce & Fothergill that there are two other persons in Newman’s Row. One of them is waiting for a lady to come out of their offices—a matrimonial case, I believe. The other is not known to us, and was observed to be in communication with the pigeon-man, sir, as soon as this gentleman emerged from his taxi.’

Saul thanked him, and sent him out to fetch us some beer and a cold bird.

I asked where he watched from, having a vague picture of Peale hanging over the parapet of the roof when he had nothing better to do.

‘Good God, he doesn’t watch!’ exclaimed Saul, as if I had suggested a major impropriety. ‘He just knows all the private detectives who are likely to be hanging around Lincoln’s Inn Fields—on very good terms with them, I believe. They have to have a drink occasionally, and then they ask Peale or his counterpart in some other firm to keep his eyes open. When they see anyone who is not a member of the Trades Union, so to speak, they all know it.’

Peale came back with the lunch, and a packet of information straight from the counter of the saloon bar. The bird-man had been showing great interest in our windows and had twice telephoned. The chap in Newman’s Row had hailed my taxi as it drove away. He would be able to trace me back to Harley Street and to the clothes shop, where, by a little adroit questioning, he could make an excuse to see the suit I discarded; my identification would be complete. It didn’t much matter, since the watchers already had a strong suspicion that I was their man.

Peale couldn’t tell us whether another watcher had been posted in Newman’s Row or whether the other exits from Lincoln’s Inn Fields were watched. I was certain that they were, and complained to Saul that all respectable firms of solicitors (who deal with far more scabrous affairs than the crooked) should have a back door. He replied that they weren’t such fools as they looked, and that Peale could take me into Lincoln’s Inn or the Law Courts and lose me completely.

Perhaps I should have trusted them; but I felt that, while their tricks might be good enough to lose a single private detective, I shouldn’t be allowed to escape so easily. I decided to throw off the hunt in my own way.

When I kept my gloves on to eat, Saul forgot his official discretion and became an anxious friend. I think he suspected what had happened to me, though not why it had happened. I had to beg him to leave the whole subject alone.

After lunch, I signed a number of documents to tidy up loose ends, and we blocked out a plan I had often discussed with him of forming a sort of Tenants’ Co-operative Society. Since I never make a penny out of the land, I thought they might as well pay rent to themselves, do their own repairs, and advance their own loans, with the right to purchase their own land by instalments at a price fixed by the committee. I hope it works. At any rate Saul and my land agent will keep them from quarrelling among themselves. I have no other dependants.

Then I told him something of the fisherman, and passed on the address that he had given me; we arranged for an income to be paid where it would do the most good—a discreet trust that couldn’t conceivably be traced to me. It appeared to come from the estate of a recently defunct old lady who had left the bulk of her money to an institution for inoculating parrots against psittacosis, and the rest to any charitable object that Saul, as sole trustee, might direct.

There was nothing further to be done but arrange my cash in a body belt, and say good-bye. I asked him, if at any time a coroner sat on my body and brought in a verdict of suicide, not to believe it, but to make no attempt to reopen the case.

Peale walked with me across the square and into Kings-way by Gate Street. I observed that we were followed by a tall, inoffensive fellow in a dirty mackintosh and shabby felt hat, who was the bird-man. He looked the part. We also caught sight of a cheerful military man in Remnant Street, wearing a coat cut for riding and trousers narrower than were fashionable, whom Peale at once recognized as Major Quive-Smith. So I knew two at least whom I must throw off my track.

We parted at Holborn underground station, and I took a shilling ticket with which I could travel to the remotest end of London. The bird-man had got ahead of me. I passed him on the level of the Central London, and went down the escalator to the west-bound Piccadilly Tube. Ten seconds after I reached the platform, Major Quive-Smith also appeared upon it. He was gazing at the advertisements and grinning at the comic ones, as if he hadn’t been in London for a year.

I pretended I had forgotten something, and shot out of the exit, up the stairs and down a corridor to the north-bound platform. No train was in. Even if there had been a train, the Major was too close behind for me to catch it and leave him standing.

I noticed that the shuttle train at the Aldwych left from the opposite side of the same platform. This offered a way of escape if ever there were two trains in at the same time.

The escalator took me back to the Central London level. The bird-man was talking to the chap in a glass-box at the junction of all the runways. I’d call him a ticket-collector but he never seems to collect any tickets; probably he is there to answer silly questions such as the bird-man was busily engaged in asking. I took the second escalator to the surface, and promptly dashed down again.

The bird-man followed me, but a bit late. We passed each other about midway, he going up and I going down and both running like hell. I thought I had him, that I could reach a Central London train before he could; but he was taking no risks. He vaulted over the division on to the stationary staircase. We reached the bottom separated only by the extra speed of my moving staircase—and that was a mere ten yards. The man in the glassbox came to life and said: ‘’Ere! You can’t do that, you know!’ But that didn’t worry the bird-man. He was content to remain and discuss his anti-social action with the ticket-non-collector. I had already turned to the right into the Piccadilly Line and on to Major Quive-Smith’s preserves.

At the bottom of the Piccadilly escalator you turn left for the north-bound trains, and continue straight on for the west-bound. To the right is the exit, along which an old lady with two side parcels was perversely trying to force her way against the stream of outcoming passengers. Major Quive-Smith was away to the left, at the mouth of the passage to the north-bound trains; so I plunged into the stream after the old lady, and was clear of it long before he was.