Reality returned with a rush. This was not Brussels. It was London, Lang’s flat.
He got out of bed, quietly, and stood in the dark, listening. He heard sounds, the secretive sounds of someone creeping along the landing outside the flat. He remembered he had bolted the door, so that was all right. It could not be opened any longer as it had been during the day. He was safe. He had time to raise an alarm. They couldn’t carry him off as they had carried off Kusitch.
The sounds continued, faint as the gnawing of mice. Then a stair creaked loudly. And another stair. The noctambulist had passed the landing and was creeping up the next flight, a home going tenant, thoughtful for his neighbours, anxious to disturb nobody.
That was all right. Go to bed again. Get more sleep.
But it was not all right. Fear had come up the stairs and entered the flat, bringing the thought of the girl in the lonely house at Cheriton Shawe.
He was at once desperately anxious and paralysed by the feeling that it was too late to help her. The argument that the enemy could not discover the link between John Quayle Meriden and Walden House now seemed absurd. Kretchmann and Haller were resourceful and ruthless. They had ruthless followers to help them: the shadow in Brussels, the whistler in London.
Andrew felt the prickle of sweat on his scalp.
One of them might have followed him to Cheriton Shawe while another stayed in London to search the flat. If he had been followed, then the lead would be obvious to them.
They would have gone to Walden House tonight. They would have questioned the girl, tortured her, demanding the whereabouts of the yawl. They would have refused to accept her plea of ignorance, and in their incredulity lay the danger for her. They were desperate men; would stop at nothing. Jordaens had been emphatic on that score. Deserters, gangsters, outlaws, murderers…
Were they also clairvoyants?
Andrew grasped at that question as a defence. He switched on the light and that, too, seemed to help. The thing was not to be believed. It was a night thought out of a bad dream. The Green Line coach had dropped him into solitude. The next stop was some distance on, and if anyone wanted to get off he had to wait for it. A shadow could not have come back all that way and picked up the trail. Wyminden Lane had been a desolation of glasshouses, and the one solitary pedestrian had turned off into that desolation, never to be seen again.
He had encountered no one else except the gnome who had given him a lift. Was it possible that the fellow had followed the coach from London in his car, had waited a reasonable time before overtaking him on Wyminden Lane so as not to rouse suspicion? A good way to find out the destination of a person was to offer him a lift. It was true that the gnome had asked no questions; had shown no wish to converse, but had not his need to do so been obviated by his passenger’s naive inquiry about Walden House?
Andrew flinched at the thought of it. Then he remembered how quickly the gnome had changed the station on the car radio, cutting off Till Eulenspiegel. Andrew flinched again, but checked his racing thoughts. Could it possibly be maintained that such an act was significant of anything more than a dislike of tone poems and a preference for military bands?
Absurd! The fact was plain: the car could not have trailed him from London. It could not have picked him up outside the flat. He had taken the underground to Oxford Circus, and cars cannot follow you when you travel by tube.
He felt a little better, but still uneasy. He looked at his watch: four-thirty. It would soon be daylight. He would normally have slept till seven, but he knew it was no use going back to bed. The anxiety would keep on nagging at him, urging him to some unspecified act.
There was nothing rational to do except make coffee. He put on his gown and started the percolator. He sat down with the diaries again, and read on from where he had left off. He read and sipped coffee. There was no further reference to Calabria, the yawl, or the landing stage by the mill. But every time he encountered Ruth Meriden’s name the nagging increased.
He would never forgive himself if any harm had come to her.
At the same time he assured himself that nothing could have happened. There was no question in his mind; there was merely the nervous demand for confirmation of what reason told him must be. Confirmation? He had only to find a car or a taxi to run him out to Cheriton Shawe. He might even hire a car to drive himself, for he had kept on renewing his licence, during his service abroad.
His watch told him it was too late. He had been too long over the diaries and coffee. By the time he dressed and got out to Walden House, she might be on the way to town, and then he would miss her altogether.
He bathed, dressed, breakfasted, and at nine o’clock reached the Blandish Gallery. The beautiful door of burnished bronze was locked. The hand-lettered placard in the bronze frame indicated that the exhibition was open from ten till five-thirty. The small Dufy was still in the large window. Its gaiety irritated him. It was of a world of sun and bright colour.
Andrew went away. When he returned some time before ten, the door was open. A decorative young lady was sympathetic, but not very informative. She had no idea when they would see Miss Meriden again, although there was some talk of another exhibition. His best course was to write to Miss Meriden and the Blandish Gallery would forward the letter.
“Look here,” he said firmly. “Miss Meriden is coming in this morning. She told me so last night. I have to see her. It’s most important, urgent. It’s too late to catch her at Cheriton Shawe.”
The girl was impressed. “It must be Mr. Hinckleigh,” she said. “I’ll look in his engagement book.” She came back. “Perhaps you’d better wait for Mr. Hinckleigh.”
“What time is the appointment?” he demanded.
“Ten-thirty,” she admitted reluctantly. “Would you like to take a seat?”
He declined with thanks. He walked up and down the pavement outside. There was a man on the opposite side who looked like someone he had seen in the tube from Holland Park that morning, but he was wary of that sort of idea now. Once you had been followed, it was too easy to imagine that the attention was being repeated. He had satisfied himself last night that he was no longer under observation.
The man opposite entered a tobacconist’s shop. He was inside for some time. Then he went briskly along the street and disappeared into a small arcade of shops. A tall man in a cap and an overlong grey raincoat that flapped about and slapped at his legs as he walked. Very different from that fellow in Brussels; not the remotest resemblance to old Jolly-Face of Holland Park.
Andrew checked himself for the second time in less than two minutes. It was idiotic to suppose that the whole world was interested in his movements. Even if the man had travelled by the Central Line, what was there to prove that he had not got on at Ealing Broadway?
A dark, slender person in a faultlessly cut tweed overcoat pushed at the bronze door of the gallery with a gloved hand that held a ball-top cane. Mr. Hinckleigh?
Andrew became uneasy again about Ruth Meriden. It was nearly half past ten, and, even while he looked along the street for her and watched the approach of every taxi, he was convinced that she would not come. All the fears of the night were on him again, and growing with every minute. He turned restlessly, looking up and down the street, and no longer glanced in the direction of the arcade.
Fool, he was! He should have rushed out to Cheriton Shawe when the thought first struck him. Or he should have called up Stock at Scotland Yard. There might have been time then, but now…
She was crossing the roadway, punctual to the minute.
He felt such a lift of relief, he could think of nothing to say to her. He stammered over words that were absurdly formal.