YOUNG WOMEN – an opportunity for adventure and foreign travel with generous remuneration. Applicants must be unattached, security minded. Apply in person, Carradine, No. 67, Great Portland Street. Discretion expected and assured.
“It needn’t be that,” Nigel pointed out. “Might be any of these we checked, you know. ‘Companion wanted for journey to Continent,’ anything of that sort.”
“Still…”
“Yes, it does look promising. Damn, I’ve got to get to the theater. If you’d like, I’ll go round to Great Portland Street with you in the morning.”
“I’ll go now.”
“I shouldn’t think they’d be open, actually.”
“I don’t even think they exist,” I said. “That’s what I want to find out.”
The building on Great Portland Street housed a dealer in coins and medals on the ground floor, with the other four floors broken up into a variety of small offices, all of which were closed for the day. The name Carradine did not appear either on the directory posted on the first floor or on any of the office doors. I waited in the coin and medal shop while a small boy and his father selected several shillings’ worth of small foreign coins. The transaction took an inordinate amount of time, and when it was finally completed the clerk seemed relieved that I didn’t want to buy anything. “Carradine,” he said. “Carradine, Carradine. Would that be a Mr. Carradine, do you suppose, or the name of the establishment?” I told him his guess was as good as mine, if not better. “Carradine,” he said again. “August, you say. First fortnight of August. Would you excuse me for a moment, sir? I’ll ask our Mr. Talbot.”
He disappeared into the back, then reappeared a few moments later. “If you’ll step into the back room, sir, our Mr. Talbot will see you.”
Our Mr. Talbot was a red-faced man with uncommonly large ears. He sat at a rolltop desk dipping coins into a glass of clear liquid and wiping them on a soft rag. The solution, whatever it was, managed to turn the coins bright and silvery while staining the tips of our Mr. Talbot’s fingers dark brown.
“Carradine,” he said. “Never met the gentleman, but I do recall the name. Late summer, I think. Don’t believe he was here long. Have you tried the owner?”
I hadn’t. He gave me a name and address and telephone number, and I thanked him. He said, “Not a collector, are you?” I admitted that I wasn’t. He grunted and resumed dipping coins. I thanked the clerk on the way out and called the building’s owner from a booth down the block.
A voice assured me the man was out and no one knew when he might be returning. I thought for a moment, then called again and announced that I was an inquiry agent interested in the whereabouts of a former tenant. The same voice introduced itself as the owner. Evidently he’d been avoiding some tenant who wanted his office painted; landlords, after all, are the same the whole world over.
He told me what I wanted to know. A Mr. T. R. Smythe-Carson had taken a third-floor office under the name of Carradine Imports in late July, paid a month’s rent in advance, left before the month was over, and provided no forwarding address.
For form’s sake, I looked for Smythe-Carson in the telephone directory. He wasn’t there, and I wasn’t surprised.
There are some nights when I envy those who sleep. I have not slept since World War 2.1, when a sliver of North Korean shrapnel entered my mind and found its way to something called the sleep center, whereupon I entered a state of permanent insomnia. I was eighteen when this happened, and by now I can barely remember what sleep was like.
In the past few years scientists have taken an interest in sleep. They’ve been trying to determine just why people sleep, and what dreams do, and what happens when a person is prevented from sleeping and dreaming. I could probably answer a few of their questions. When a person is prevented from sleeping and dreaming he embraces a wide variety of lost causes, studies dozens of languages, eats five or six meals a day, and uses his life to furnish those elements of fantasy that other men find in dreams. This may not be how it works for every absolute insomniac, but it’s how it works for the only absolute insomniac I know, and for the most part I’m quite happy with it. After all, why waste eight hours a night sleeping when, with proper application, one can waste all twenty-four wide awake?
Yet there are times when sleep would be a pleasure, if only because it provides a subjectively speedy way to get from one day to the next when there is absolutely nothing else to do. This was one of those times. Nigel and Julia had repaired to their separate bedrooms. There was no one in London whom I wanted to see. The hunt for Smythe-Carson and Carradine would have to wait until morning. Meanwhile…
Meanwhile what?
Meanwhile I bathed and shaved and put on reasonably clean clothes and drank tea with milk and sugar and fried up some eggs and bacon and read part of a collection of the Best Plays of 1954 (which were none too good) and stretched out on my back on the floor for twenty minutes of Yoga-style relaxation. This last involves flexing and relaxing muscle groups in turn, then blanking the mind through a variety of mental disciplines. The mind-blanking part of it was easier than usual this time because my mind was very nearly empty to begin with.
Then I read fifty pages of an early Eric Ambler novel, at which point I remembered how it ended. Then I picked up that morning’s copy of the London Times, which I had already read once, which is generally enough. I had a go at the bridge and chess columns and the garden news, and then I turned to the Personals. Halfway down the first column it occurred to me that I had a particular reason to check out the Personals, and halfway down the third column I found the reason.
IF YOU ARE female, under 40, unmarried, intelligent, adventurous, free to travel, opportunity awaits you! Do not mention this ad to others but reply in person at Penzance Export, No. 31, Pelham Court, Marylebone.
“Of course it’s Smythe-Carson again,” Nigel said the next morning. “Quite the same sort of message, isn’t it? He’s stopped mentioning the high pay and has-”
“And has abandoned Carradine in favor of Penzance,” Julia put in.
“And Smythe-Carson for something else, no doubt. And took new offices, but hasn’t left Marylebone. I don’t know just where Pelham Court is, Evan. Julia?”
I said, “I was there last night.”
“No one home, I don’t suppose?”
“No. The building was locked.” I had guessed it would be, but I found the ad around 3:30 and had four hours to kill before Nigel and Julia would get up, and there are times when pointless activity is preferable to inactivity.
“So whatever he was doing before-”
“He’s doing it again,” I said.
“I wonder what it is.”
I stood up. “Whatever it is, I’ll find out soon enough. And I’ll find out just what the hell happened to Phaedra, and-”
“How?”
I looked down at Julia. “Why, I’ll ask him, I suppose.”
“But don’t you suppose he’s bent?” I looked puzzled. “I’m sorry, you people say crooked, don’t you?”
“Oh.” Two countries, I thought, divided by a single language. “I’m certain he’s working some sort of racket. Oh.” I nodded slowly. For the past few days I had operated on the vague assumption that Phaedra had gone on a tour or taken some form of legitimate employment, after which something went awry. Thus I had shown her photograph to travel agents and employment agencies and had inquired after her by both of her names, in the full expectation of getting an honest answer to an honest question. That line wouldn’t work with Mr. Smythe-Carson.
“You might call the police,” Nigel suggested.
I thought it over. But if S-C was working a racket, or playing some version of foreign intrigue, it was more than possible that Phaedra was involved to a point where official attention might be a bad idea. Besides, I wasn’t entirely certain how I stood with the police – they might turn out to be displeased with my presence in their country.