‘Who is Rudy?’
‘Your assistant accountant. I told you last night.’
‘Thank God,’ Wormold said, ‘there seems to be something I’ve forgotten about last night.’
‘Come along in, Rudy, and relax.’
‘It’s no earthly use telling him to come in,, Wormold said. ‘Come in where? There’s no room for him.’
‘He can sleep in the office,’ Beatrice said.
‘There isn’t enough room for a bed and that safe and my desk.’ ‘I’ll get you a smaller desk. How’s the airsickness, Rudy? This is Mr Wormold, the boss.’
Rudy was very young and very pale and his fingers were stained yellow with nicotine or acid. He said, ‘I vomited twice in the night, Beatrice. They’ve broken a Rantgen tube.’
‘Never mind that now. We’ll just get the preliminaries fixed. Go off and buy a camp-bed.’
‘Righto,’ Rudy said and disappeared. One of the Negresses sidled up to Beatrice and said, ‘I’m British.’
‘So am I,’ Beatrice said, ‘glad to meet you.’
‘You the gel who poured water on Captain Segura?’
‘Well, more or less. Actually I squirted.’
The Negress turned and explained to the crowd in Spanish. Several people clapped. The policeman moved away, looking embarrassed. The Negress said, ‘You very lovely gel, miss.’
‘You’re pretty lovely yourself,’ Beatrice said. ‘Give me a hand with
this case.’ They struggled with Rudy’s suitcase, pushing and pulling. ‘Excuse me,’ a man said, elbowing through the crowd, ‘excuse me, please.’
‘What do you want?’ Beatrice asked. ‘Can’t you see we are busy? Make an appointment.’
‘I only want to buy a vacuum cleaner.’
‘Oh, a vacuum cleaner. I suppose you’d better go inside. Can you climb over the suitcase?’
Wormold called to Lopez, ‘Look after him. For goodness’ sake, try and sell him an Atomic Pile. We haven’t sold one yet.’
‘Are you going to live here?’ the Negress asked.
‘I’m going to work here. Thanks a lot for your help.’
‘We Britishers have to stick together,’ the Negress said. The men who had been setting up the safe came downstairs spitting on their hands and rubbing them on their jeans to show how hard it had all been. Wormold tipped them. He went upstairs and looked gloomily at his office. The chief trouble was that there was just room for a camp-bed, which robbed him of any excuse. He said, ‘There’s nowhere for Rudy to keep his clothes.’ ‘Rudy’s used to roughing it. Anyway there’s your desk. You can empty what’s in the drawers into your safe and Rudy can keep his things in them.’ ‘I’ve never used a combination.’
‘It’s perfectly simple. You choose three sets of numbers you can keep in your head. What’s your street-number?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Well, your telephone-number no, that’s not secure. It’s the kind of thing a burglar might try. What’s the date of your birth?’
‘1914.’
‘And your birthday?’
‘6 December.’
‘Well then, let’s make it 19-6-14.’
‘I won’t remember that.’
‘Oh yes, you will. You can’t forget your own birthday. Now watch me. You turn the knob anti-clockwise four times, then forward to 19, clockwise three times, then to 6, anti-clockwise twice, forward to 14, whirl it round and it’s locked. Now you unlock it the same way -196-14 and hey presto, it opens.’ In the safe was a dead mouse. Beatrice said, ‘Shop-soiled, I should have got a reduction.’
She began to open Rudy’s case, pulling out bits and pieces of a radio-set, batteries, camera equipment, mysterious tubes wrapped up in Rudy’s socks. Wormold said, ‘How on earth did you bring all that stuff through the customs?’
‘We didn’t .59200 stroke 4 stroke 5 brought it for us from Kingston.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘A Creole smuggler. He smuggles in cocaine, opium and marijuana. Of course he has the customs all lined up. This time they assumed it was his usual cargo.’
‘It would need a lot of drugs to fill that case.’
‘Yes. We had to pay rather heavily.’
She stowed everything quickly and neatly away after emptying his drawers into the safe.
She said, ‘Rudy’s shirts are going to get a bit crushed, but never mind.’
‘I don’t.’
‘What are these?’ she asked, picking up the cards he had been examining.
‘My agents.’
‘You mean you keep them lying about on your desk?’
‘Oh, I lock them away at night.’
‘You haven’t got much idea of security, have you?’ She looked at a card.
‘Who is Teresa?’
‘She dances naked.’
‘Quite naked?’
‘Yes.’
‘How interesting for you. London wants me to take over contact with your agents. Will you introduce me to Teresa some time when she’s got her clothes on?’
Wormold said, ‘I don’t think she’d work for a woman. You know how it is with these girls.’
‘I don’t. You do. Ah, Engineer Cifuentes. London thinks a lot of him.
You can’t say he would mind working for a woman.’
‘He doesn’t speak English.’
‘Perhaps I could learn Spanish. That wouldn’t be a bad cover, taking Spanish lessons. Is he as good-looking as Teresa?’
‘He’s got a very jealous wife.’
‘Oh, I think I could deal with her.’
‘It’s absurd, of course, because of his age.’
‘What’s his age?’
‘Sixty-five. Besides, there’s no other woman who would look at him because of his paunch. I’ll ask him about the Spanish lessons if you like.’ ‘No hurry. We’ll leave it for the moment. I could start with this other one. Professor Sanchez. I got used to intellectuals with my husband.’ ‘He doesn’t speak English either.’
‘I expect he speaks French, My mother was French. I’m bi-lingual.’
‘I don’t know whether he does or not. I’ll find out.’
‘You know, you oughtn’t to have all these names written like this en clair on the cards. Suppose Captain Segura investigated you. I’d hate to think of Engineer Cifuentes’s paunch being skinned to make a cigarette-case. Just put enough details under their symbol to remember them by 59200 stroke 5 stroke 3 jealous wife and paunch. I will write them for you and burn the old ones. Damn. Where are those celluloid sheets?’
‘Celluloid sheets?’
‘To help burn papers in a hurry. Oh, I expect Rudy put them in his shirts.’
‘What a lot of knick-knacks you carry around.’
‘Now we’ve got to arrange the darkroom.’
‘I haven’t got a darkroom.’
‘Nobody has nowadays. I’ve come prepared. Blackout curtains and a red globe. And a microscope, of course.’
‘What do we want a microscope for?’
‘Microphotography. You see, if there’s anything really urgent that you can’t put in a telegram, London wants us to communicate direct and save all the time it takes via Kingston. We can send a microphotograph in an ordinary letter. You stick it on as a full stop and they float the letter in water until the dot comes unstuck. I suppose you do write letters home sometimes. Business letters…?’
‘I send those to New York.’
‘Friends and relations?’
‘I’ve lost touch in the last ten years. Except with my sister. Of course I send Christmas cards.’
‘We mightn’t be able to wait till Christmas.’
‘Sometimes I send postage stamps to a small nephew.’ ‘The very thing. We could put a microphotograph on the back of one of the stamps.’
Rudy came heavily up the stairs carrying his camp-bed, and the picture-frame was broken all over again. Beatrice and Wormold retired into the next room to give him space and sat on Wormold’s bed. There was a lot of banging and clanking and something broke.
‘Rudy isn’t very good with his hands,’ Beatrice said. Her gaze wandered.