“Who put him on to you?” Brady asked.
Das appeared to hesitate and Brady started to raise the vase again. “No, please, I’ll tell you,” the Hindu gabbled. “It was a contact of mine in London. We do business together from time to time.”
“What name?”
“Soames — Professor Soames. He’s a naturopath. Has premises in Dell Street near Regent’s Park. I’ve never met him. He’s just a contact I use when I need certain merchandise.”
Brady raised the vase in one quick movement and Das stumbled round the desk, arms outstretched. “I’m telling you the truth, I swear it.”
For a moment Brady looked straight into the twisted, sweating face and then he handed the vase across. “You’d better be,” he said.
Das clasped the vase to his chest with an audible sigh of relief and Brady walked across to the door, past Shaun who was sitting up now and moaning softly like some wounded animal, his face purple.
As Brady opened the door, Das said viciously, “Somebody wants you dead, Brady. I don’t know why, I don’t even know who. But I hope they get their hands on you before the police do.”
Brady didn’t bother to reply. He closed the door and moved back along the covered way to the temple. The woman was standing in the entrance hall in front of a small statue, head bowed in contemplation.
She turned as he approached and smiled. “Was the Swami able to help you?”
“I think you could say that,” Brady told her.
“We, who have been shown the way, have much to thank him for.”
“He’s undoubtedly a most unusual man,” Brady assured her solemnly and passed out into the night.
The door closed softly behind him and he paused for a moment on the top step. Obviously London was his next stop, but how was he going to get there? He had already spent half of the five pounds he had taken from the till at the shop, and the train fare would be more than that, he was sure.
Trying to hitch-hike would be fatal, but there was bound to be a transport café somewhere on the main road out of town. The sort of place where southbound truck drivers stopped for a meal and a rest. If only he could get into the back of a truck without being seen, he could be in London for breakfast and no one the wiser.
The street was deserted except for one car parked a little higher up with its lights on. As he turned out through the main gate, the car started up and moved towards him.
It was the black Mercedes, the one which had splashed him with water earlier. He kept on walking at the same steady pace down towards the main road. Behind him there was a sudden burst of acceleration and the Mercedes bounced on to the pavement with the obvious intention of pinning him against the wall like a fly.
Brady jumped for the top of the railing and lifted his legs. Something seemed to pluck at his coat and then the Mercedes was back on the road and braking to a halt. As it started to reverse, he dropped to the pavement, turned and ran.
Tyres screamed behind him and a great finger of light picked him out of the darkness, throwing a gigantic shadow against a brick wall. He turned desperately and noticed a narrow opening to the left. He barely made it as the car skidded to a halt.
He was standing in the entrance to a narrow, stoneflagged footpath which ran between high stone walls and was lit, half-way along, by an old-fashioned gas lamp bracketed to one of the walls.
The car door slammed and Brady moved back into the shadows and waited. The man came forward and paused a few feet away, and the light from the gas lamp which illuminated the entrance to the footpath, glinted on the pebble-dash spectacles beneath the Homburg hat
The collar of his heavy, Continental greatcoat was turned up to obscure his face, but his teeth showed in a pleasant smile and he said in his peculiar lisping voice, “Let’s be sensible about this, Brady.”
“Suits me,” Brady said. “Who the hell are you? Anton Haras?”
The man laughed once, coldly, and raised his right hand. Brady ducked as flame stabbed through the night. There was a muffled cough and a bullet ricocheted from the wall behind him.
Once, sitting in a cafe in Havana before the Castro regime, he had seen a man assassinated at the next table. The killer had used a Mauser with an SS bulbous silencer and it had made just such a noise. Brady turned and ran, his eyes fixed on the gas lamp halfway along the footpath.
Feet pounded over the flagstones behind him, the sound echoing from the walls and again, there came that peculiar muffled cough and something whispered past his ear.
He stumbled to his knees and his fingers fastened over a large stone. As he scrambled up, he hurled it at the gas lamp, plunging the footpath into darkness, and ran on.
He came out into the narrow alley at the side of the Hippodrome Theatre at a dead run. A few yards down on the left-hand side was the stage door, a small lamp still turned on above it.
As Brady ran forward, the door opened and a woman emerged. She carried a small grip in one hand and turned to lock the door. Brady slipped on the greasy cobbles and stumbled against an overflowing dustbin, the lid falling to the ground with a clatter.
She turned in alarm and he looked down into the white, frightened face of Anne Dunning.
“Don’t be afraid,” he gasped.
The scream died in her throat and she gazed up at him wide-eyed. “But I don’t understand, Mr. Brady. Have they released you?”
The Mauser coughed again and the lamp above the door shattered. Brady caught a fleeting glimpse of Haras standing in the entrance to the footpath.
He kicked the door open and pushed Anne Dunning inside and along the corridor. “No time to explain,” he said. “There’s a man out there with a gun and he’s doing his level best to kill me.”
As they turned the corner at the end of the corridor, the door burst open and Haras came after them.
Brady paused, one hand gripping the girl’s arm. “What’s down here?”
“Dressing-rooms,” she said.
He pulled her up a flight of stairs to the left and they came out in to the wings at one side of the stage. Haras followed them, running surprisingly well for a man of his weight. A single light illuminated the stage and Brady and the girl went across to the temporary safety of the shadows on the other side.
Brady made to go down a short flight of steps, but she pulled him back. “No good, that door’s locked. In here!”
There was another door almost hidden behind some scenery flats and she opened it quickly and dragged him inside. She shot the bolt and they stood there in the darkness and waited.
Haras ran into the wings and paused. After a moment, he went down the steps and tried the door, shaking the handle angrily, and then he returned and went back on stage.
“I’d give a lot to have a gun in my hand right now,” Brady said softly.
The girl clicked on the light. The room was crowded with old costumes and scenery, even furniture, the accumulation of the years.
She moved across to a cupboard, opened it, and turned with a .38 calibre revolver in her hand. “Will this do? It’s only a stage prop, I’m afraid. We used it in the play. There’s a box of blanks here, though.”
Brady broke open the chamber and examined it, sudden, nervous excitement stirring inside him. “I might be able to scare the bastard off, if nothing else.”
She opened the box of cartridges and he quickly loaded the weapon, then crossed to the door and pulled back the bolt.
She moved to his shoulder as he turned off the light and he was aware of the warmth, of the fragrance of her, so near to him in the darkness.
“You keep well back,” he ordered. “This is my affair. I don’t want you to get hurt.”