‘You are a very mystifying young man.’
‘Not young. It’s you, Professor, who are young by the look of things.’
In his anxiety he spoke aloud, ‘If only Beatrice were here.’ The professor said quickly, ‘I absolutely assure you, dear, that I know nobody called Beatrice. Nobody.’
The young woman gave a tigerish laugh.
‘You seem to have come here,’ the professor said, ‘with the sole purpose of making trouble.’ It was his first complaint and it seemed a very mild one under the circumstances. ‘I cannot think what you have to gain by it,’ he said and walked into the house and closed the door.
‘He’s a monster,’ the girl said. ‘A monster. A sexual monster. A satyr.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I know that tag to know all is to forgive all. Not in this case, it isn’t.’ She seemed to have lost her hostility to Wormold. ‘Maria, me, Beatrice I don’t count his wife, poor woman. I’ve got nothing against his wife. Have you a gun?’
‘Of course not. I only came here to save him,’ Wormold said. ‘Let them shoot,’ the young woman said, ‘in the belly -low down.’ And she too went into the house with an air of purpose.
There was nothing left for Wormold to do but go. The invisible alarm gave another warning as he walked toward the gate, but no one stirred in the little white house. I’ve done my best, Wormold thought. The professor seemed well prepared for any danger and perhaps the arrival of the police might be a relief to him. They would be easier to cope with than the young woman.
Walking away through the smell of the night flowering plants he had only one wish: to tell Beatrice everything. I am no secret agent, I’m a fraud, none of these people are my agents, and I don’t know what’s happening. I’m lost. I’m scared. Surely somehow she would take control of the situation; after all she was a professional. But he knew that he would not appeal to her. It meant giving up security for Milly. He would rather be eliminated like Raul. Did they, in his service, give pensions to offspring? But who was Raul? Before h had reached the second gate Beatrice called to him, ‘Jim. Look out. Keep away.’ Even at that urgent moment the thought occurred to him, my name is Wormold, Mr Wormold, Senor Vomell, nobody calls me Jim. Then he ran -hop and skip towards the voice and came out to the street, to a radio-car, and to three police-officers, and another revolver w pointing at his stomach. Beatrice stood on the sidewalk and the girl was beside her,, trying to keep a coat closed which hadn’t been designed that way. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I can’t understand a word they say.’ One of the officers told him to get into their car. ‘What about my own?’ ‘It will be brought to the station.’ Before he obeyed they felt him down the breast and side for arms. He said to Beatrice, ‘I don’t know what it’s all about, but it looks like the end of a bright career.’ The officer spoke again. ‘He wants you to get in too.’ ‘Tell him,’ Beatrice said, ‘I’m going to stay with Teresa’s sister. I don’t trust them.’ The two cars drove softly away among the little houses of the millionaires, to avoid disturbing anyone, as though they were in a street of hospitals; the rich need sleep. They had not Ľ far to go: a courtyard, a gate closing behind them, and then the odour of a police-station like the ammoniac smell of zoos all the world over. Along the whitewashed passage the por traits of wanted men hung, with the spurious look of bearded old masters. In the room at the end Captain Segura sat playing draughts. Ľ ‘Huff,’ he said, and took two pieces. Then he looked up at them. ‘Mr Wormold,’ he said with surprise, and rose like a small tight green snake from his seat when he saw Beatrice. He looked beyond her at Teresa; the coat had fallen open again, perhaps with intention. He said, ‘Who in God’s name…?’ and then to the policeman with whom he had been playing, ‘Anda!’
‘What’s the meaning of all this, Captain Segura?’
‘You are asking me that, Mr Wormold?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wish you would tell me the meaning. I had no idea I should see you
Milly’s father. Mr Wormold, we had a call from a Professor Sanchez about a man who had broken into his house with vague threats. He thought it had something to do with his pictures; he has very valuable pictures. I sent a radio-car at once and it is you they pick up, with the Senorita here (we have met before) and a naked tart.’ Like the police-sergeant in Santiago he added, ‘That is not very nice, Mr Wormold.’
‘We had been at the Shanghai.’
‘That is not very nice either.’
‘I’m tired of being told by the police that I am not nice.’
‘Why did you visit Professor Sanchez?’
‘That was all a mistake.’
‘Why do you have a naked tart in your car?’
‘We were giving her a lift.’
‘She has no right to be naked on the streets.’ The police-officer leant across the desk and whispered. ‘Ah,’ Captain Segura said. ‘I begin to understand. There was a police-inspection tonight at the Shanghai. I suppose the girl had forgotten her papers and wanted to avoid a night in the cells. She appealed to you…’
‘It wasn’t that way at all.’
‘It had better be that way., Mr Wormold.’ He said to the girl in Spanish, ‘Your papers. You have no papers.’
She said indignantly, ‘Si, yo tengo.’ She bent down and pulled pieces of crumpled paper from the top of her stocking. Captain Segura took them and examined them. He gave a deep sigh. ‘Mr Wormold, Mr Wormold, her papers are in order. Why do you drive about the streets with a naked girl? Why do you break into the house of Professor Sanchez and talk to him about his wife and threaten him? What is his wife to you?’ He said ‘Go’ sharply to the girl. She hesitated and began to take off the coat.
‘Better let her keep it,’ Beatrice said.
Captain Segura sat wearily down in front of the draughts board. ‘Mr Wormold, for your sake I tell you this: do not get mixed up with the wife of Professor Sanchez. She is not a woman you can treat lightly.’ ‘I am not mixed up…’
‘Do you play checkers, Mr Wormold?’
‘Yes. Not very well, I’m afraid.’
‘Better than these pigs in the station, I expect. We must play together sometimes, you and I. But in checkers you must move very carefully, just as with the wife of Professor Sanchez.’ He moved a piece at random on the board and said, ‘Tonight you were with Dr Hasselbacher.’
‘Yes.’
‘Was that wise, Mr Wormold?’ He didn’t look up, moving the pieces here and there, playing against himself.
‘Wise?’
‘Dr Hasselbacher has got into strange company.’
‘I know nothing about that.’
‘Why did you send him a postcard from Santiago marked with the position of your room?’
‘What a lot of unimportant things you know, Captain Segura.’ ‘I have a reason to be interested in you, Mr Wormold. I don’t want to see you involved. What was it that Dr Hasselbacher wished to tell you tonight? His telephone, you understand, is tapped.’
‘He wanted to play us a record of Tristan.’
‘And perhaps to speak of this?’ Captain Segura reversed a photograph on his desk -a flashlight picture with the characteristic glare of white faces gathered round a heap of smashed metal which had once been a car. ‘And this?’ A young man’s face unflinching in the flashlight: an empty cigarette-carton crumpled like his life: a man’s foot touching his shoulders. ‘Do you know him?’
‘No.’
Captain Segura depressed a lever and a voice spoke in English from a box on his desk. w ‘Hullo. Hullo. Hasselbacher speaking.’ ‘Is anyone with you, H-Hasselbacher?’
‘Yes. Friends.’
‘What friends?’
‘If you must know, Mr Wormold is here.’
‘Tell him Raul’s dead.’
‘Dead? But they promised…’
‘You can’t always control an accident, H-Hasselbacher.’ The voice had a slight hesitation before the aspirate.