Beavis was not inclined to conversation. It was as though his words might be used in evidence, and Rowe only once attempted to break the silence. He said, "I wish I knew what it was all about" and watched Beavis's long-toothed mouth open and clap to like a rabbit snare. "Official secrets," Beavis said and stared with flat eyes at the blank wall.
Then suddenly Mr Prentice was with them again, rushing into the room in his stiff casual stride, followed by a man in black who held a bowler hat in front of him with both hands like a basin of water and panted a little in the trail of Mr Prentice. He came to a stop inside the door and glared at Rowe. He said, "That's the scoundrel. I haven't a doubt of it. I can see through the beard. It's a disguise."
Mr Prentice gave a giggle. "That's excellent," he said. "The pieces are really fitting."
The man with the bowler said, "He carried in the suitcase and he wanted just to leave it. But I had my instructions. I told him he must wait for Mr Travers. He didn't want to wait. Of course he didn't want to, knowing what was inside. . . Something must have gone wrong. He didn't get Mr Travers, but he nearly got the poor girl. . . and when the confusion was over, he'd gone."
"I don't remember ever seeing him before," Rowe said.
The man gesticulated passionately with his bowler, "I'll swear to him in any court of law."
Beavis watched with his mouth a little open and Mr Prentice giggled again. "No time," he said. "No time for squabbles. You two can get to know each other later. I need you both now."
"If you'd tell me a little," Rowe pleaded. To have come all this way, he thought, to meet a charge of murder and to find only a deeper confusion. . .
"In the taxi," Mr Prentice said. "I'll explain in the taxi." He made for the door.
"Aren't you going to charge him?" the man asked, panting in pursuit.
Mr Prentice without looking round said, "Presently, presently, perhaps. . ." and then darkly, "Who?"
They swept into the court-yard and out into broad stony Northumberland Avenue, policemen saluting: into a taxi and off along the ruined front of the Strand: the empty eyes of an insurance building: boarded windows: sweet-shops with one dish of mauve cachous in the window.
Mr Prentice said in a low voice, "I just want you two gentlemen to behave naturally. We are going to a city tailor's where I'm being measured for a suit. I shall go in first and after a few minutes you, Rowe, and last you, Mr Davis," and he touched the bowler hat with the tip of a finger where it balanced on the stranger's lap.
"But what's it all about, sir?" Davis asked. He had edged away from Rowe, and Mr Prentice curled his long legs across the taxi, sitting opposite them in a tip-up.
"Never mind. Just keep your eyes open and see if there's anyone in the shop you recognize." The mischief faded from his eyes as the taxi looped round the gutted shell of St Clement Danes. He said, "The place will be surrounded. You needn't be afraid. . ."
Rowe said, "I'm not afraid. I only want to know --" staring out at odd devastated boarded-up London.
"It's really serious," Mr Prentice said. "I don't know quite how serious. But you might say that we all depend on it." He shuddered away from what was almost an emotional statement, giggled, touched doubtfully the silky ends of his moustache and said, with sadness in his voice, "You know there are always weaknesses that have to be covered up. If the Germans had known after Dunkirk just how weak. . . There are still weaknesses of which if they knew the exact facts. . ." The ruins around St Paul's unfolded; the obliterated acres of Paternoster Row. He said, "This would be nothing to it. Nothing." He went slowly on, "Perhaps I was wrong to say there was no danger. If we are on the right track, of course, there must be danger, mustn't there? It's worth -- oh, a thousand lives to them."
"If I can be of any use," Rowe said. "This is so strange to me. I didn't imagine war was this," staring out at desolation. Jerusalem must have looked something like this in the mind's eye of Christ when he wept. . .
"I'm not scared," the man with the bowler said sharply, defensively.
"We are looking," Mr Prentice said, clasping his bony knees and vibrating with the taxi, "for a little roll of film -- probably a good deal smaller than a cotton reel. Smaller than those little rolls you put in Leica cameras. You must have read the questions in Parliament about certain papers which were missing for an hour. It was hushed up publicly. It doesn't help anybody to ruin confidence in a big name -- and it doesn't help us to have the public and the press muddying up the trail. I tell you two only because -- well, we could have you put quietly away for the duration if there was any leakage. It happened twice -- the first time the roll was hidden in a cake and the cake was to be fetched from a certain fête. But you won it," Mr Prentice nodded at Rowe, "the password as it were was given to the wrong man."
"Mrs Bellairs?" Rowe said.
"She's being looked after at this minute." He went on explaining with vague gestures of his thin useless-looking hands, "That attempt failed. A bomb that hit your house destroyed the cake and everything -- and probably saved your life. But they didn't like the way you followed the case up. They tried to frighten you into hiding -- but for some reason that was not enough. Of course they meant to blow you into pieces, but when they found you'd lost your memory, that was good enough. It was better than killing you, because by disappearing you took the blame for the bomb -- as well as for Jones."
"But why the girl?"
"We'll leave out the mysteries," Mr Prentice said. "Perhaps because her brother helped you. They aren't above revenge. There isn't time for all that now." They were at the Mansion House. "What we know is this -- they had to wait until the next chance came. Another big name and another fool. He had this in common with the first fool -- he went to the same tailor." The taxi drew up at the corner of a city street.
"We foot it from here," Mr Prentice said. A man on the opposite kerb began to walk up the street as they alighted.
"Do you carry a revolver?" the man in the bowler hat asked nervously.
"I wouldn't know how to use it," Mr Prentice said. "If there's trouble of that kind just lie flat."
"You had no right to bring me into this."
Mr Prentice turned sharply. "Oh yes," he said, "every right. Nobody's got a right to his life these days. My dear chap, you are conscripted for your country." They stood grouped on the pavement: bank messengers with chained boxes went by in top hats: stenographers and clerks hurried past returning late from their lunch. There were no ruins to be seen; it was like peace. Mr Prentice said, "If those photographs leave the country, there'll be a lot of suicides. . . at least that's what happened in France."
"How do you know they haven't left?" Rowe asked.
"We don't. We just hope, that's all. We'll know the worst soon enough." He said, "Watch when I go in. Give me five minutes with our man in the fitting-room, and then you, Rowe, come in and ask for me. I want to have him where I can watch him -- in all the mirrors. Then, Davis, you count a hundred and follow. You are going to be too much of a coincidence. You are going to be the last straw."