Hive’s final eager embellishment of these arrangements was his suggestion that he should pretend to be slightly deaf. “That will make him speak up, you see.”
Purbright stood well back in his refuge, a space between the two display windows of a greengrocer and florist, and watched Hive step jauntily through the school’s gateway and up to the main entrance. One of the big plate-glass doors swung inwards and turned for an instant into a sheet of orange flame as it sent back the reflection of the evening sun.
Remaining all the time within sight, Hive first made a tour of inspection. He looked at some pictures on the walls, glanced at all the doors in turn, and spent some time inspecting a display of pottery, docketed with pupils’ names, on a low table. He sat on a chair, nursed his knee, scratched his head, got up again, stretched. He walked slowly in a circle, head down, hands clasped behind; then took a turn in the opposite direction, head up, hands in pockets.
Where the hell was Booker? Purbright gazed across at as many windows as were within range. The school appeared to have been voided completely. He concentrated on the entrance hall once more.
Five minutes went by. Mr Hive had settled into a sort of sentry-go in the centre of the floor. Purbright guessed that he was clashing his foot at the turn in an effort to advertise his presence.
Suddenly he saw him stop and face half-left. Someone had come into the hall from the farther end.
The inspector watched intently. Hive was being approached, but by whom it was not yet possible to make out. It certainly did not look like Booker...No, it was a boy. Hive leaned and listened. The boy pointed the way he had come. Hive nodded. The boy went away again, swinging one arm round and round and giving a skip every now and then. As soon as the boy disappeared, Hive turned to face in Purbright’s direction and delivered himself of a great pantomimic shrug. Then he began to walk backwards, jerking his thumb like a hitch-hiker.
Purbright judged from this performance that his guess about one of the interview rooms had been proved awry. Booker had had a different idea.
The inspector broke cover, crossed the road, and cautiously approached the glass doors. He shouldered one open and slipped inside the hall. Of Hive there now was no sign.
Keeping close to the wall on his left, he made his way towards the double doors near which he had last seen the gesticulating Hive. From somewhere beyond them came shouting, faint but unmistakeably boisterous, punctuated by sounds of human collision. Boys, thought Purbright. There were still boys in the building.
Carefully he pushed one of the doors far enough back to enable him to peer up and down the corridor on to which it opened. To his left, the corridor was lined with long glass windows of classrooms. Their partitions, too, were of glass, giving an uninterrupted view to the end of the block. Every room was empty save one in which two aproned women were sweeping the floor.
The right-hand section of corridor was shorter. It went past another empty classroom and then opened into a lobby. Purbright saw beams set with numbered pegs. The noises were louder now. They came from the other side of the lobby. Purbright walked towards it. He could smell the sweat of young males.
As he entered the lobby, there tumbled into it through a doorway on the left three boys locked in a puppy-like tussle. They saw him, stopped yelling at one another, and disentangled.
“I wonder,” the inspector said, “if you could tell me where I am likely to find Mr Booker.”
The nearest boy tugged at his ravaged clothing and recovered his breath. He looked eager to help. “He might be still in the gym, sir.”
“Shall I go and see, sir?”
“Sir—I’ll go, sir!”
Purbright raised a dissuading hand. “No, I only want to know where he is. I can find him if you’ll tell me which way to go.”
There began a competitive babel of instruction. It was quelled partly by Purbright himself, partly by the arrival of an older boy whom he assumed to be a prefect. To him, the inspector put his question again.
“He’s been taking an after-school coaching session, sir, but I think another gentleman is with him at the moment.”
“That’s all right. It’s a friend of mine. They’re expecting me.”
“Well, you just go through here, sir, and along that passage. The gym’s at the end of it.”
Purbright thanked his helpers and crossed the lobby, hoping that helpfulness would not send any of them in pursuit; eavesdropping was distasteful enough without its being witnessed by small boys.
Fortunately, the passage curved sufficiently for its further half to be out of sight from the lobby. Another feature that Purbright noted with satisfaction was the small observation window in the door of the gymnasium ahead.
He reached the door and listened. He could hear nothing but the noise from the changing-room behind him. Warily, he peeped through the window. Bringing his eye close to the glass, he angled his head to command a view of one half of the room, then of the other.
The gymnasium was empty.
Purbright went in.
It would not be quite true to say that he felt alarmed. By now, his was the sort of apprehension that is temporarily relieved by each postponement of discovery. But he knew that even in this many-doored building he would reach in the end some place whose entrance and exit were one. That was when mere unease might be turned on the instant to dismay.
He glanced about him. Wall bars, hanging beams, a vaulting horse docile in one corner, a stack of long benches varnished to the colour of maple syrup, rolled up mats, looped ropes and captive rings, windows high out of harm’s way...
And—of course—a door.
This one was in the centre of the opposite wall, recessed between two sets of wall bars. It was painted battleship grey.
Very gently, Purbright turned its bright brass handle and leaned a little of his weight against it. The door was locked.
Still leaning, he pressed his ear to the wood.
Nothing. No voices, certainly.
He kept listening, puzzled by a silence that had something curiously vibrant about it, as if it had only just succeeded an explosion or a collapse. It was more like a long extended echo, sinister yet of unidentifiable origin. And surely there was a sound there, too..liqueous, lapping...
Water.
Purbright seized and twisted the handle and shook the door violently. He shouted, banged with foot and fist, then turned and raced back to the changing-room lobby.
Five boys, dressed but still lingering, gazed incredulously at the spectacle of a mature adult at full gallop. Purbright halted in the passage entrance only long enough to take two gasps of breath and to wave the boys into close attendance before launching himself upon the return run.