He leaped the stairs to his office three at a time, got Bell on the phone immediately, and put the facts before him.
“We’ll get him, sir,” said Bell. “We’ll get him, with a bit o’luck.”
The Governor sat back, and lit a cigarette. Ye gods! What a beautifully laid plan it had all been! What a clever sod Evans was! Careless leaving that question paper behind; but then, they all made their mistakes somewhere along the line. Well, almost all of them. That’s why they were doing their porridge, and that’s why very very shortly Mr. clever-clever Evans would be back inside doing his once more.
The phone on his desk erupted in a strident burst, and Superintendent Carter informed him that McLeery had spotted Evans driving off along Elsfield Way; they’d got the number of the car all right and had given chase immediately, but had lost him at the Headington roundabout; he must have doubled back into the city.
“No,” said the Governor quietly. “No, he’s on his way to Newbury.” He explained his reasons for believing so, and left it at that. It was a police job now — not his. He was just another good-for-a-giggle, gullible governor, that was all.
“By the way, Carter. I hope you managed to get McLeery to hospital all right?”
“Yes. He’s in the Radcliffe now. Really groggy, he was, when we got to the Examination offices, and they rang for the ambulance from there.”
The Governor rang the Radcliffe a few minutes later and asked for the accident department.
“McLeery, you say?”
“Yes. He’s a parson.”
“I don’t think there’s anyone—”
“Yes, there is. You’ll find one of your ambulances picked him up from Elsfield Way about—”
“Oh, that. Yes, we sent an ambulance all right, but when we got there, the fellow had gone. No one seemed to know where he was. Just vanished! Not a sign—”
But the Governor was no longer listening, and the truth seemed to hit him with an almost physical impact somewhere in the back of his neck.
A quarter of an hour later they found the Reverend S. McLeery, securely bound and gagged, in his study in Broad Street. He’d been there, he said, since 8:15 A.M., when two men had called and...
Enquiries in Newbury throughout the afternoon produced nothing. Nothing at all. And by tea-time everyone in the prison knew what had happened. It had not been Evans, impersonating McLeery, who had walked out; it had been Evans, impersonating McLeery, who had stayed in.
The fish and chips were delicious, and after a gentle stroll round the centre of Chipping Norton, Evans decided to return to the hotel and have an early night. A smart new hat concealed the wreckage of his closely cropped hair, and he kept it on as he walked up to the reception desk of the Golden Lion. It would take a good while for his hair to regain its former glories — but what the hell did that matter. He was out again, wasn’t he? A bit of bad luck, that, when Jackson had pinched his scissors, for it had meant a long and tricky operation with his only razor blade the previous night Ah! But he’d had his good luck, too. Just think! If Jackson had made him take his bobble hat off! Phew! That really had been a close call. Still, old Jackson wasn’t such a bad fellow... One of the worst things — funny, really! — had been the beard. He’d always been allergic to sticking plaster, and even now his chin was irritatingly sore and red.
The receptionist wasn’t the same girl who’d booked him in, but the change was definitely for the better. A real honey, this one. As he collected his key, he gave her his sexiest smile, told her he wouldn’t be bothering with breakfast, ordered the Dally Express, and asked for an early-morning call at 6:45 A.M. Tomorrow was going to be another busy day.
He whistled softly to himself as he walked up the broad stairs... He’d sort of liked the idea of being dressed up as a minister — dog-collar and everything. Yes, it had been a jolly good idea for “McLeery” to wear two black fronts, two collars. But that top collar! Phew! It had kept on slipping off the back stud; and there’d been that one panicky moment when “McLeery” had only just got his hand up to his neck in time to stop the collars springing apart before Stephens... Ah! They’d got that little problem worked out all right, though: a pen stuck in the mouth whenever the evil eye had appeared at the peep-hole. Easy! But all that fiddling about under the blanket with the black front and the stud at the back of the collar — that had been far more difficult than they’d ever bargained for... Everything else had gone beautifully smoothly, though. In the car he’d found everything they’d promised him: soap and water, clothes, the map — yes, the map, of course. The Ordnance Survey Map of Oxfordshire... He’d got some good friends; some very clever friends. Christ, ah!
He unlocked his bedroom door and closed it quietly behind him — and then stood frozen to the spot, like a man who has just caught a glimpse of the Gorgon.
Sitting on the narrow bed was the very last man in the world that Evans had expected — or wanted — to see.
“It’s not worth trying anything,” said the Governor quietly, as Evans’s eyes darted desperately around the room. “I’ve got men all round the place.” (Well, there were only two, really: but Evans needn’t know that.) He let the words sink in. “Women, too. Didn’t you think the blonde girl in reception was rather sweet?”
Evans was visibly shaken. He sat down slowly in the only chair the small room could offer, and held his head between his hands. For several minutes there was utter silence.
Finally, he spoke. “It was that bloody correction slip, I s’pose.”
“We-ell” (the Governor failed to mask the deep satisfaction in his voice) “there are a few people who know a little German.”
Slowly, very slowly, Evans relaxed. He was beaten — and he knew it. He sat up at last, and managed to smile ruefully. “You know, it wasn’t really a mistake. You see, we ’adn’t been able to fix up any ’otel, but we could’ve worked that some other way. No. The really important thing was for the phone to ring just before the exam finished — to get the screws out of the way for a coupla minutes. So we ’ad to know exactly when the exam started, didn’t we?”
“And, like a fool, I presented you with that little piece of information on a plate.”
“Well, somebody did. So, you see, sir, that correction slip killed two little birds with a single stone, didn’t it? The name of the ’otel for me, and the exact time the exam started for, er, for, er...”
The Governor nodded. “It’s a pretty common word, though, “Löwe.” It’s on the beer labels for a start.”
“Good job it is pretty common, sir, or I’d never ’ave known where to come to, would I?”
“Nice name, though: zum goldenen Löwen.”
“ ’Ow did you know which Golden Lion it was? There’s ’undreds of ’em.”
“Same as you, Evans. Index number 313; Centre number 271. Remember? Six figures? And if you take an Ordnance Survey Map for Oxfordshire, you find that the six-figure reference 313/271 lands you bang in the middle of Chipping Norton.”
“Yea, you’re right. Huh! We’d ’oped you’d bugger off to Newbury.”
“We did.”
“Well, that’s something, I s’pose.”
“That question paper, Evans. Could you really understand all that German? I could hardly—”