However, I was in no mood for basking in the magnificence, or my own small future share of it. The road itself was crowded with traffic. The massed hum of all the electric engines was like the feedback from a pair of headphones with the volume turned full up. The air was thick with the smell of electricity. I looked at Pakeshi. Though somewhat darker, his face was as drained of expression as the new facades.
“So, what do we do next?” I asked. Pakeshi put down his knife and fork and stared thoughtfully at me. Half an hour in Marks & Spencer, and 23s.6d of his money, had got me out of my pyjamas. I hadn’t quite the cultured look of Dr Markham’s usual self. But no one would now be giving me sideways looks as I hurried past. We were still in the Baker Street branch of Marks & Spencer, and the late English breakfast was a welcome break from a random hurrying along streets that, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow, were always crowded.
“I might suggest a visit to the telephone boxes in the basement of this most luxurious emporium for a call to your Inspector O’Brien,” came the reply. Pakeshi took up his folded overcoat and fished into one of its breast pockets. Folded, so it had cracked down the length of its scorched foolscap, was the Churchill Memorandum. I straightened my face out of the scowl I was beginning at the sight of the damage. Pakeshi smiled. He leaned down and opened his briefcase under the table. He put in the document, still folded, and closed the catch.
“It is this that your supposed police officers wanted—isn’t it?” he asked. I nodded. It was for the best he’d taken it, I told myself. I couldn’t see what else the men had come for. They’d have killed me and walked off with the Memorandum. If we’d left without it, they’d still surely be after me. With it, we might be in a better position. Certainly, I could show it to O’Brien.
“And what about you?” I asked. “You’ll come with me to the station, won’t you? If it’s a matter of immigration status, I don’t think that will be a problem after this.” Pakeshi smiled and gave me a satiric toast with his teacup.
“This is, my dearest Anthony,” he said, “a matter to which I had given no consideration whatever before you raised it. I saved your life purely out of the deep love I bear you as my neighbour. Now you mention it, however, it was rather fortunate that I brought Mr Churchill’s memorandum with me.” He looked sideways at me through slitted eyes, and, with unerring aim, plucked a bristle straight from the left side of his upper lip.
“I need to visit the gents,” I said, putting my napkin on the table.
After washing my hands, I stood awhile smoking and looking at myself in the mirror. A comb and a razor would have been useful. But I put the cigarette down and rubbed at my face to try and smooth off the hunted look. I’d never see twenty five again. But, on a good day, I might pass for somewhat less. And there was no reason why, today, I should look considerably past thirty.
There was a flush in one of the cubicles behind me. The door opened and a man in late middle age stepped out. We’d seen each other perhaps a dozen times. For just a moment, our eyes met in the mirror. Then we both looked away. He stood beside me and washed his hands in silence. I patted a lock of hair into something like its normal outgoing position and walked back out.
Pakeshi was waiting just outside the door. He pulled me over against one of the screens separating the restaurant from the rest of the shop and shoved one of the mid-morning newspapers under my nose. Half way down the front page was a picture of Goering and an account of some “clarification” von Mises, his Finance Minister, had made to try settling the markets. Pakeshi waited until one of the waitresses had gone past with a tray of coffee. Then, with an impatient grunt, he stabbed at the main headline. I stared in total confusion at my own photograph. It was the one Richardson had commissioned for the first Churchill volume. Odd it hadn’t been the first thing I saw on the page. I looked back at Pakeshi.
“But this can’t be,” I said in soft despair. “We must go at once to Inspector O’Brien. He knows I didn’t kill those men. Besides, how can I be wanted for murdering you, when you’re alive and standing beside me?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The police were out in force by all the platforms at King’s Cross. For the hundredth time that afternoon, I resisted the urge to put up a gloved hand and touch the brown face paint. Instead, I showed my ticket to the inspector. He nodded and I stepped with Pakeshi through the barrier.
“THE 6:27 WILL SHORTLY LEAVE FROM PLATFORM EIGHT,” the announcement boomed crisply overhead, “CALLING AT….” Where it was calling didn’t matter. I was in Pakeshi’s hands. Where we went was his decision.
The motor was already revving up as we boarded, and I nearly tripped when the magnets came on and raised everything an inch off the single rail. We found our way to the first class compartment marked on the ticket. Pakeshi closed the door and pulled down the blind. I sat gloomily and looked again at the newspapers we’d picked up on our way through the concourse. I was on every one of the front pages. My face burned red beneath the paint as I looked at some of the horrid things that had been written about me. Leave aside the details of what I was supposed to have done to Pakeshi and the two Germans—the incidentals were perfectly beastly.
“The books a man keeps on his shelves at home are none of the world’s business,” I wailed softly. “Can’t they understand that I’m a scholar, and that I need to have all sorts of research materials ready to hand?” Pakeshi smiled and looked up from an account of the rioting that had now spread to Madras. Reading the upside down headlines, I was able to see there had been thousands of deaths, and that the Moslem League was now preaching jihad against us and the Hindus. No doubt, the Hindus in turn were rioting against us again and the Moslems. So far as I could tell, this had all blown up from a sermon given in Seringapatam by a French Catholic priest. I’d normally have followed this with moderate interest. But there were other photographs of me all over the inside pages. I couldn’t imagine how the newspapers had laid hands on those.
“I don’t think, Anthony dear,” Pakeshi replied with a glance out of the window—the platform was floating gently past as we left the station—“any of your neighbours will be surprised by the details of your private life. The eminently perceptive Mrs Dale spotted your little weakness a day after you moved in. I hope you will appreciate my reticence if I do not ask what ‘objects’ were taken from your flat that ‘are not suitable for a family newspaper to name’” Pakeshi gave me his first greasy smile of the day, and went back to the Indian news.
I sat a while in silence. I tried not to think about the newspaper reports. I tried not to wonder what had gone so dreadfully wrong with everything in the past two days. I tried not to think about many things. I ended with all of them jumbled hopelessly together in my mind. King’s Cross was already several minutes behind us, and there was a rising hum from the motor as it took us towards our cruising speed. I put a cigarette into my mouth and reached for my matches. Without looking up, Pakeshi pointed at the No Smoking sign on the window.