"No. I haven't been called anything else for a large part of my life."
The door opened and Lana appeared to say that a young man had called to see Miss Ashby and she had put him in the library.
"Oh, what a nuisance," Bee said. "What does he want, do you know?"
"He says he's a reporter," Lana said, "but he doesn't look like a reporter to me. Quite tidy and clean and polite." Lana's experience of the Press, like Brat's knowledge of middle-class life, was derived solely from films.
"Oh, no!" Bee said. "Not the Press. Not already."
"The Westover Times he says he is."
"Did he say why he had come?"
"Come about Mr. Patrick, of course," Lana said, turning her thumb in Patrick's direction.
"Oh, God," Simon groaned, "and the fatted calf not half-way down our gullets. I suppose it had to come sooner or later!"
Bee drank the remains of her coffee. "Come on, Brat!" she said, putting out her hand and pulling him to his feet. "We might as well go and get it over. You too, Simon." She led Brat out of the room, laughing at him, and still hand in hand with him. The warm friendliness of her clasp sent a rush of emotion through him that he could not identify. It was like nothing he had so far experienced in life. And he was too busy with thoughts of the reporter to pause to analyse it.
The library was the dark room at the back of the house where Bee kept her roll-top desk, her accounts, and her reference books. A small young man in a neat blue suit was puzzling over a stud book. At their entrance he dropped the book and said in a rich Glasgow accent: "Miss Ashby? My name is Macallan. I'm working on the Westover Times. I'm awfully sorry about barging in like this, but I thought you'd have finished eating this long time."
"Well, we began late, and I'm afraid we lingered over things," Bee said.
"Uh-huh," said Mr. Macallan understandingly. "A very special occasion. I've no right to be spoiling it for you, but 'the first with the latest' is my motto, and just this minute you're the latest."
"I suppose you mean my nephew's homecoming."
"Just that."
"And how did you find out about it so soon, Mr. Macallan?"
"One of my contacts heard about it in one of the Clare pubs."
"A deplorable word," said Bee.
"Pub?" Mr. Macallan said, puzzled.
"No. Contact."
"Och, well, one of my stooges, if you like that better," Mr. Macallan said agreeably. "Which of these young gentlemen is the returned prodigal, may I ask?"
Bee introduced Brat and Simon. Some of the cold tightness had come back to Simon's face; but Brat, who had been around when Nat Zucco had cut his throat in the kitchen of his ex-wife's eating-house and had witnessed the activities of the American Press on that occasion, was entranced by this glimpse of news-gathering in Britain. He answered the obvious questions put to him by Mr. Macallan and wondered if there would be any suggestion of a photograph. If so, he must get out of it somehow.
But it was Bee who saved him from that. No photograph, said Bee. No; positively no photograph. All the information he liked to ask for, but no photograph.
Mr. Macallan accepted this, but reluctantly. "The story of the missing twin won't be half so good without a photograph," he complained.
"You're not going to call it 'The Missing Twin, are you?" Bee said.
"No; he's going to call it 'Back From The Dead'," Simon said, speaking for the first time. His cool drawl fell on the room like a shadow.
Mr. Macallan's pale blue eyes went to him, rested a moment on him consideringly, and then came back to Bee. "I had thought of 'Sensation at Clare'," he said, "but I doubt the Westover Times won't stand for it. A very conservative organ. But I expect the Daily Clarion will do better."
"The Clarion!" Bee said. "A London paper! But-but I hope there is no question of that. This is an entirely local-an entirely family matter."
"So was that affair in Hilldrop Crescent," Mr. Macallan said.
"What affair?"
"Crippen was the name. The world's Press is composed of family affairs, Miss Ashby."
"But this is of no possible interest to anyone but ourselves. When my nephew-disappeared, eight years ago, the Westover Times reported it quite-quite incidentally."
"Ay, I know. I looked it up. A small paragraph at the bottom of page three."
"I fail to see why my nephew's return should be of any more interest than his disappearance."
"It's the man-bites-dog affair over again. People go to their deaths every day, but the amount of people who come back from the dead is very small indeed, Miss Ashby. Coming back from the dead, in spite of the advances of modern science, is still a sensation. And that's why the Daily Clarion is going to be interested."
"But how should they hear about it?"
"Hear about it!" Mr. Macallan said, genuinely horrified. "Miss Ashby, this is my own scoop, don't you see."
"You mean you are going to send the story to the Clarion?"
"Assuredly."
"Mr. Macallan, you mustn't; you really must not."
"Listen, Miss Ashby," Mr. Macallan said patiently, "I agreed about the no-photographs prohibition, and I respect the agreement-I won't go sneaking around the countryside trying to snap the young gentlemen unawares, or anything like that-but you can't ask me to give up a scoop like this. Not a scoop of 'London daily' dimensions." And as Bee, caught in the toils of her natural desire to be fair, hesitated, he added: "Even if I didn't send them the story, there's nothing to hinder a sub-editor lifting the story from the Westover Times and making it front-page news. You wouldn't be a scrap better off and I'd have lost my chance of doing a bit of good for myself."
"Oh, dear," Bee said, tacitly acknowledging that he was right, "I suppose that means swarms of newspaper men from London."
"Och, no. Only the Clarion. If it's the Clarion's story none of the rest will bother. And whoever they send down you don't have to worry. They're all Balliol men, I understand."
With which flip at the English Press, Mr. Macallan looked round for his hat and made motions of departure.
"I'm very grateful to you, and to you, Mr. Ashby, for being so accommodating in the matter of information. I won't keep you any longer. May I offer you my congratulations on your happiness"-for a second the pale blue eyes rested in mild benevolence on Simon-"and my thanks for your kindness."
"You're a long way from home, aren't you, Mr. Macallan?" Bee said conversationally as she went to the front door with him.
"Home?"
"Scotland."
"Oh, I see. How did you know I was Scots? Oh, my name, of course. Ay, it's a far cry to Glasgow; but this is just the long way round to London, so to speak. If I'm going to work on an English paper it's as well to know something of the-the — "
"Aborigines?" suggested Bee.
"Local conditions, I was going to say," Mr. Macallan said solemnly.
"Haven't you a car?" Bee said, looking at the empty sweep in front of the door.
"I left it parked at the end of your drive there. I've never got used to sweeping up to strange houses as if I owned them."
With which startling exhibition of modesty the little man bowed, put on his hat, and walked away.
13
In the library, as the voices of Bee and Mr. Macallan faded down the hall and into the out-of-doors, there was silence. Brat, uncertain of the quality of that silence, turned to the shelves and began to consider the books.
"Well," said Simon, lounging in the window, "another hazard safely negotiated."