A door in the passage was ajar and odd sounds came through it as though someone were alternately whistling and sighing, but nothing to the page seemed strange. He just went on: he was a child of this building. People of every kind came in for a night with or without luggage and then went away again; a few died here and the bodies were removed unobtrusively by the service lift. Divorce suits bloomed at certain seasons; co-respondents gave tips and detectives out-trumped them with larger tips -- because their tips went on the expense account. The page took everything for granted.
Rowe said, "You'll lead me back?" At each corner arrows pointed above the legend AIR RAID SHELTER. Coming on them every few minutes one got the impression that one was walking in circles.
"Mr Travers left orders you was to stay."
"But I don't take orders from Mr Travers," Rowe said.
This was a modern building; the silence was admirable and disquieting. Instead of bells ringing, lights went off and on. One got the impression that all the time people were signalling news of great importance that couldn't wait. This silence -- now that they were out of earshot of the whistle and the sigh -- was like that of a stranded liner; the engines had stopped, and in the sinister silence you listened for the faint depressing sound of lapping water.
"Here's six," the boy said.
"It must take a long time to get to a hundred."
"Third floor," the boy said, "but Mr Travers gave orders. . ."
"Never mind," Rowe said. "Forget I said it."
Without the chromium number you could hardly have told the difference between the door and the wall; it was as if the inhabitants had been walled up. The page put in a master-key and pushed the wall in. Rowe said, "I'll just put the case down. . ." But the door had shut behind him. Mr Travers, who seemed to be a much-respected man, had given his orders and if he didn't obey them he would have to find his way back alone. There was an exhilaration in the absurd episode; he had made up his mind now about everything -- justice as well as the circumstances of the case demanded that he should kill himself (he had only to decide the method), and now he could enjoy the oddness of existence; regret, anger, hatred, too many emotions had obscured for too long the silly shape of life. He opened the sitting-room door.
"Well," he said, "this beats all."
It was Anna Hilfe.
He asked, "Have you come to see Mr Travers too? Are you interested in landscape gardening?"
She said, "I came to see you."
It was really his first opportunity to take her in. Very small and thin, she looked too young for all the things she must have seen, and now taken out of the office frame she no longer looked efficient -- as though efficiency were an imitative game she could only play with adult properties, a desk, a telephone, a black suit. Without them she looked just decorative and breakable, but he knew that life hadn't been able to break her. All it had done was to put a few wrinkles round eyes as straightforward as a child's.
"Do you like the mechanical parts of gardening too?" he asked. "Statues that spurt water. . ."
His heart beat at the sight of her, as though he were a young man and this his first assignation outside a cinema, in a Lyons Corner House. . . or in an inn yard in a country town where dances were held. She was wearing a pair of shabby blue trousers ready for the night's raid and a wine-coloured jersey. He thought with melancholy that her thighs were the prettiest he had ever seen.
"I don't understand," she said.
"How did you know I was going to cart a load of books here for Mr Travers -- whoever Mr Travers is? I didn't know myself until ten minutes ago."
"I don't know what excuse they thought up for you," she said. "Just go. Please."
She looked the kind of child you want to torment -- in a kindly way; in the office she had been ten years older. He said, "They do people well here, don't they. You get a whole flat for a night. You can sit down and read a book and cook a dinner."
A pale brown curtain divided the living-room in half; he drew it aside and there was the double bed, a telephone on a little table, a bookcase. He asked, "What's through here?" and opened a door. "You see," he said, "they throw in a kitchen, stove and all." He came back into the sitting-room and said, "One could live here and forget it wasn't one's home." He no longer felt care-free; it had been a mood which had lasted minutes only.
She said, "Have you noticed anything?"
"How do you mean?"
"You don't notice much for a journalist."
"You know I was a journalist?"
"My brother checked up on everything."
"On everything?"
"Yes." She said again, "You didn't notice anything?"
"No."
"Mr Travers doesn't seem to have left behind him so much as a used piece of soap. Look in the bathroom. The soap's wrapped up in its paper."
Rowe went to the front door and bolted it. He said, "Whoever he is, he can't get in now till we've finished talking. Miss Hilfe, will you please tell me slowly -- I'm a bit stupid, I think -- first how you knew I was here and secondly why you came?"
She said obstinately, "I won't tell you how. As to why -- I've asked you to go away quickly. I was right last time, wasn't I, when I telephoned. . ."
"Yes, you were right. But why worry? You said you knew all about me, didn't you?"
"There's no harm in you," she said simply.
"Knowing everything," he said, you wouldn't worry. . ."
"I like justice," she said, as if she were confessing an eccentricity.
"Yes," he said, "it's a good thing if you can get it."
"But They don't."
"Do you mean Mrs Bellairs," he asked, "and Canon Topling? " It was too complicated: he hadn't any fight left. He sat down in the arm-chair -- they allowed in the ersatz home one arm-chair and a couch.
"Canon Topling is quite a good man," she said and suddenly smiled. "It's too silly," she said, "the things we are saying."
"You must tell your brother," Rowe said, "that he's not to bother about me any more. I'm giving up. Let them murder whom they like -- I'm out of it. I'm going away."
"Where?"
"It's all right," he said. "They'll never find me. I know a place. . . But they won't want to. I think all they were really afraid of was that I should find them. I'll never know now, I suppose, what it was all about. The cake. . . and Mrs Bellairs. Wonderful Mrs Bellairs."