They watched the stiff old-fashioned figure make his way up the street; he was just the kind of man to have a city tailor - somebody reliable and not expensive whom he could recommend to his son. Presently about fifty yards along he turned in: a man stood at the next corner and lit a cigarette. A motor-car drew up next door and a woman got out to do some shopping, leaving a man at the wheel.
Rowe said, "It's time for me to be moving." His pulse beat with excitement; it was as if he had come to this adventure unsaddened, with the freshness of a boy. He looked suspiciously at Davis, who stood there with a nerve twitching at his cheek. He said, "A hundred and you follow." Davis said nothing. "You understand. You count a hundred."
"Oh," Davis said furiously, "this play-acting. I'm a plain man."
"Those were his orders."
"Who's he to give me orders?"
Rowe couldn't stay to argue: time was up.
War had hit the tailoring business hard. A few rolls of grey inferior cloth lay on the counter; the shelves were nearly empty. A man in a frock-coat with a tired, lined, anxious face said, "What can we do for you, sir?"
"I came here," Rowe said, "to meet a friend." He looked down the narrow aisle between the little mirrored cubicles. "I expect he's being fitted now."
"Will you take a chair, sir?" and "Mr Ford," he called, "Mr Ford." Out from one of the cubicles, a tape measure slung round his neck, a little bouquet of pins in his lapel, solid, city-like, came Cost, whom he had last seen dead in his chair when the lights went out. Like a piece of a jig-saw puzzle which clicks into place and makes sense of a whole confusing block, that solid figure took up its place in his memory with the man from Welwyn and the proletarian poet and Anna's brother. What had Mrs Bellairs called him? He remembered the whole phrase "Our business man".
Rowe stood up as though this were someone of great importance who must be greeted punctiliously, but there seemed to be no recognition in the stolid respectable eyes. "Yes, Mr Bridges?" Those were the first words he had ever heard him speak; his whole function before had been one of death.
"This gentleman has come to meet the other gentleman."
The eyes swivelled slowly and rested; no sign of recognition broke their large grey calm - or did they rest a shade longer than was absolutely necessary? "I have nearly taken the gentleman's measurements. If you would not mind waiting two minutes. . ." Two minutes Rowe thought, and then the other, the straw which will really break you down.
Mr Ford -- if this was now to be his name -- walked slowly up to the counter; everything he did, you felt, was carefully pondered; his suits must always be well-built. There was no room in that precision for the eccentricity, the wayward act, and yet what a wild oddity lay hidden under the skin. He saw Dr Forester dabbling his fingers in what looked like blood.
A telephone stood on the counter; Mr Ford picked up the receiver and dialled. The dial faced Rowe. He watched with care each time where the finger fitted. B. A. T. He felt sure of the letters; but one number he missed, suddenly wavering and catching the serene ponderous gaze of Mr Ford as he dialled. He was unsure of himself; he wished Mr Prentice would appear.
"Hullo," Mr Ford said, "hullo. This is Pauling and Crosthwaite."
Along the length of the window towards the door dragged the unwilling form of the man with the bowler hat: Rowe's hands tightened in his lap. Mr Bridges was sadly straightening the meagre rolls of cloth, his back turned. His listless hands were like a poignant criticism in the Tailor and Cutter.
"The suit was dispatched this morning, sir," Mr Ford was saying, "I trust in time for your journey." He clucked his satisfaction calmly and inhumanly down the telephone, "Thank you very much, sir. I felt very satisfied myself at the last fitting." His eyes shifted to the clanging door as Davis looked in with a kind of wretched swagger. "Oh, yes, sir. I think when you've worn it once, you'll find the shoulders will settle. . ." Mr Prentice's whole elaborate plot was a failure: that nerve had not broken.
"Mr Travers," Davis exclaimed with astonishment.
Carefully putting his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone Mr Ford said, "I beg your pardon, sir?"
"You are Mr Travers." Then Davis, meeting those clear calm eyes, added weakly, "Aren't you?"
"No, sir."
"I thought. . ."
"Mr Bridges, would you mind attending to this gentleman?"
"Certainly, Mr Ford."
The hand left the receiver and Mr Ford quietly, firmly, authoritatively continued to speak up the wire. "No, sir. I find at the last moment that we shall not be able to repeat the trousers. It's not a matter of coupons, no. We can obtain no more of that pattern from the manufacturers -- no more at all." Again his eyes met Rowe's and wandered like a blind man's hand delicately along the contours of his face. "Personally, sir, I have no hope. No hope at all." He put the receiver down and moved a little way along the counter. "If you can spare these a moment, Mr Bridges. . ." He picked up a pair of cutting-shears.
"Certainly, Mr Ford."
Without another word he passed Rowe, not looking at him again, and moved down the aisle, without hurry, serious, professional, as heavy as stone. Rowe quickly rose: something, he felt, must be done, be said, if the whole plan were not to end in fiasco. "Cost," he called after the figure, "Cost." It was only then that the extreme calm and deliberation of the figure with the shears struck him as strange. He called out "Prentice" sharply in warning as the fitter turned aside into a cubicle.
But it was not the cubicle from which Mr Prentice emerged. He came bewilderedly out in his silk shirt-sleeves from the opposite end of the aisle. "What is it?" he asked, but Rowe was already at the other door straining to get in. Over his shoulder he could see the shocked face of Mr Bridges, Davis's goggling eyes. "Quick," he said, "your hat," and grabbed the bowler and crashed it through the glass of the door.
Under the icicles of splintered glass he could see Cost-Travers-Ford. He sat in the arm-chair for clients opposite the tall triple mirror, leaning forward, his throat transfixed, with the cutting-shears held firmly upright between his knees. It was a Roman death.
Rowe thought: this time I have killed him, and heard that quiet respectful but authoritative voice speaking down the telephone. "Personally I have no hope. No hope at all."
Chapter 2
MOPPING UP
"You had best yield."
The Little Duke
1
MRS Beilairs had less dignity.
They had driven straight to Campden Hill, leaving Davis with his wrecked bowler. Mr Prentice was worried and depressed. "It does no good," he said. "We want them alive and talking."
Rowe said, "He must have had great courage. I don't know why that's so surprising. One doesn't associate it with tailors. . . except for that one in the story who killed a giant. I suppose you'd say this one was on the side of the giants. I wonder why."