The pencil clipped in the breast-pocket: the depressed suit: the air of a man always expecting a rebuff: the little lines of knowledge round the eyes -- when he examined it closely he felt no doubt at all. "A private detective," he said.
"Right the first time. And this little anonymous man had his little anonymous name. . ."
Rowe smiled. "Jones I should imagine."
"You wouldn't think it, Mr Rowe, but you and he -- let's call him Jones -- had something in common. You both disappeared. But you've come back. What was the name of the agency which employed him, Beavis?"
"I don't remember, sir. I could go and look it up."
"It doesn't matter. The only one I can remember is the Clifford. It wasn't that."
"Not the Orthotex?" Rowe asked. "I once had a friend. . ." and stopped.
"It comes back, doesn't it, Mr Rowe. His name was Jones, you see. And he did belong to the Orthotex. What made you go there? We can tell you even if you don't remember. You thought that someone had tried to murder you -- about a cake. You had won the cake unfairly at a fair (what a pun!) because a certain Mrs Bellairs had told you the weight. You went to find out where Mrs Bellairs lived -- from the offices of the Fund for the Mothers of the Free Nations (if I've got the outlandish name correct) and Jones followed, just to keep an eye on them -- and you. But you must have given him the slip somehow, Mr Rowe, because Jones never came back, and when you telephoned next day to Mr Rennit you said you were wanted for murder."
Rowe sat with his hand over his eyes -- trying to remember? trying not to remember? -- while the voice drove carefully and precisely on.
"And yet no murder had been committed in London during the previous twenty-four hours -- so far as we knew -- unless poor Jones had gone that way. You obviously knew something, perhaps you knew everything: we advertised for you and you didn't come forward. Until today, when you arrive in a beard you certainly used not to wear, saying you had lost your memory, but remembering at least that you had been accused of murder -- only you picked out a man we know is alive. How does it all strike you, Mr Rowe?"
Rowe said, "I'm waiting for the handcuffs," and smiled unhappily.
"You can hardly blame our friend Graves," Mr Prentice said.
"Is life really like this?" Rowe asked. Mr Prentice leant forward with an interested air, as though he were always ready to abandon the particular in favour of the general argument. He said, "This is life, so I suppose one can say it's like life."
"It isn't how I had imagined it," Rowe said. He went on, "You see, I'm a learner. I'm right at the beginning, trying to find my way about. I thought life was much simpler and -- grander. I suppose that's how it strikes a boy. I was brought up on stories of Captain Scott writing his last letters home. Gates walking into the blizzard, I've forgotten who losing his hands from his experiments with radium, Damien among the lepers. . ." The memories which are overlaid by the life one lives came freshly back in the little stuffy office in the great grey Yard. It was a relief to talk. "There was a book called the Book of Golden Deeds by a woman called Yonge. . . The Little Duke. . ." He said, "If you were suddenly taken from that world into this job you are doing now you'd feel bewildered. Jones and the cake, the sick bay, poor Stone. . . all. this talk of a man called Hitler. . . your files of wretched faces, the cruelty and meaninglessness. . . It's as if one had been sent on a journey with the wrong map. I'm ready to do everything you want, but remember I don't know my way about. Everybody else has changed gradually and learnt. This whole business of war and hate -- even that's strange. I haven't been worked up to it. I expect much the best thing would be to hang me."
"Yes," Mr Prentice said eagerly, "yes, it's a most interesting case. I can see that to you," he became startlingly colloquial, "this is rather a dingy hole. We've come to terms with it of course."
"What frightens me," Rowe said, "is knowing how I came to terms with it before my memory went. When I came in to London today I hadn't realized there would be so many ruins. Nothing will seem as strange as that. God knows what kind of a ruin I am myself. Perhaps I am a murderer?"
Mr Prentice reopened the file and said rapidly, "Oh, we no longer think you killed Jones." He was like a man who has looked over a wall, seen something disagreeable and now walks rapidly, purposefully, away, talking as he goes. "The question is -- what made you lose your memory? What do you know about that?"
"Only what I've been told."
"And what have you been told?"
"That it was a bomb. It gave me this scar."
"Were you alone?"
Before he could brake his tongue he said, "No."
"Who was with you?"
"A girl." It was too late now; he had to bring her in, and after all if he were not a murderer, why should it matter that her brother had aided his escape? "Anna Hilfe." The plain words were sweet on the tongue.
"Why were you with her?"
"I think we were lovers."
"You think?"
"I don't remember."
"What does she say about it?"
"She says I saved her life."
"The Free Mothers," Mr Prentice brooded. "Has she explained how you got to Dr Forester's?"
"She was forbidden to." Mr Prentice raised an eyebrow. "They wanted -- so they told us -- my memory to come back naturally and slowly of itself. No hypnotism, no psychoanalysis."
Mr Prentice beamed at him and swayed a little on his shooting-stick; you felt he was taking a well-earned rest in the middle of a successful shoot. "Yes, it wouldn't have done, would it, if it had come back too quickly. . . Although of course there was always the sick bay."
"If only you'd tell me what it's all about."
Mr Prentice stroked his moustache; he had the fainéant air of Arthur Balfour, but you felt that he knew it. He had stylized himself -- life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as a writer chooses a technical form. "Now were you ever a habitué of the Regal Court?"
"It's a hotel?"
"You remember that much."
"Well, it's an easy guess."
Mr Prentice closed his eyes; it was perhaps an affectation, but who could live without affectations?
"Why do you ask about the Regal Court?"
"It's a shot in the dark," Mr Prentice said. "We have so little time."
"Time for what?"
"To find a needle in a haystack."
3
One wouldn't have said that Mr Prentice was capable of much exertion; rough shooting, you would have said, was beyond him. From the house to the brake and from the brake to the butts was about as far as you could expect him to walk in a day. And yet during the next few hours he showed himself capable of great exertion, and the shooting was indubitably rough. . .
He had dropped his enigmatic statement into the air and was out of the room almost before the complete phrase had formed, his long legs moving stiffly, like stilts. Rowe was left alone with Beavis and the day wore slowly on. The sun's early promise had been false; a cold unseasonable drizzle fell like dust outside the window. After a long time they brought him some cold pie and tea on a tray.