"I know nothing about all that," Hilfe said. "I can't be responsible -- can I? -- for all my people do. That isn't reasonable, Rowe." He asked, "Do you read poetry? There's a poem here which seems to meet the case. . ." He sat up, lifted the book and dropped it again. With a gun in his hand he said, "Just stay still. You see there's still something to talk about."
Rowe said, "I've been wondering where you kept it."
"Now we can bargain sensibly. We're both in a hole."
"I still don't see," Rowe said, "what you've got to offer. You don't really imagine, do you, that you can shoot us both, and then get to Ireland. These walls are thin as paper. You are known as the tenant. The police would be waiting for you at the port."
"But if I'm going to die anyway, I might just as well -- mightn't I? -- have a massacre."
"It wouldn't be economical."
He considered the objection half-seriously and then said with a grin, "No, but don't you think it would be rather grand?"
"It doesn't much matter to me how I stop you. Being killed would be quite useful."
Hilfe exclaimed, "do you mean your memory's come back?"
"I don't know what that's got to do with it."
"Such a lot. Your past history is really sensational. I went into it all carefully and so did Anna. It explained so much I didn't understand at first when I heard from Poole what you were like. The kind of room you were living in, the kind of man you were. You were the sort of man I thought I could deal with quite easily until you lost your memory. That didn't work out right. You got so many illusions of grandeur, heroism, self-sacrifice, patriotism. . ." Hilfe grinned at him.
"Here's a bargain for you. My safety against your past. I'll tell you who you were. No trickery. I'll give you all the references. But that won't be necessary. Your own brain will tell you I'm not inventing."
"He's just lying," Anna said. "Don't listen to him."
"She doesn't want you to hear, does she? Doesn't that make you curious? She wants you as you are, you see, and not as you were."
Rowe said, "I only want the photographs."
"You can read about yourself in the newspapers. You were really quite famous. She's afraid you'll feel too grand for her when you know."
Rowe said, "If you give me the photographs. . ."
"And tell you your story?"
He seemed to feel some of Rowe's excitement. He shifted a little on his elbow and his gaze moved for a moment. The wrist-bone cracked as Anna swung the candlestick down, and the gun lay on the bed. She took it up and said, "There's no need to bargain with him."
He was moaning and doubled with pain; his face was white with it. Both their faces were white. For a moment Rowe thought she would go on her knees to him, take his head on her shoulder, surrender the gun to his other hand. . . "Anna," Hilfe whispered, "Anna."
She said, "Willi," and rocked a little on her feet.
"Give me the gun," Rowe said.
She looked at him as if he were a stranger who shouldn't have been in the room at all; her ears seemed filled with the whimper from the bed. Rowe put out his hand and she backed away, so that she stood beside her brother. "Go outside," she said, "and wait. Go outside." In their pain they were like twins. She pointed the gun at him and moaned, "Go outside."
He said, "don't let him talk you round. He tried to kill you," but seeing the family face in front of him his words sounded flat. It was as if they were so akin that either had the right to kill the other; it was only a form of suicide.
"Please don't go on talking," she said. "It doesn't do any good." Sweat stood on both their faces: he felt helpless.
" Only promise," he said," you won't let him go."
She moved her shoulders and said, "I promise." When he went she closed and locked the door behind him.
For a long time afterwards he could hear nothing -- except once the closing of a cupboard door and the chink of china. He imagined she was bandaging Hilfe's wrist; he was probably safe enough, incapable of further flight. Rowe realized that now if he wished he could telephone to Mr Prentice and have the police surround the flat -- he was no longer anxious for glory; the sense of adventure had leaked away and left only the sense of human pain. But he felt that he was bound by her promise; he had to trust her, if life was to go on.
A quarter of an hour dragged by and the room was full of dusk. There had been low voices in the bedroom: he felt uneasy. Was Hilfe talking her round? He was aware of a painful jealousy; they had been so alike and he had been shut out like a stranger. He went to the window and drawing the blackout curtain a little aside looked out over the darkening park. There was so much he had still to remember; the thought came to him like a threat in Hilfe's dubious tones.
The door opened, and when he let the curtain fall he realized how dark it had become. Anna walked stiffly towards him and said, "There you are. You've got what you wanted." Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done; it isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love -- it's being unhappy together. "Don't you want them," she asked, "now I've got them for you?"
He took the little roll in his hand: he had no sense of triumph at all. He asked, "Where is he?"
She said, "You don't want him now. He's finished."
"Why did you let him go?" he asked. "You promised."
"Yes," she said, "I promised." She made a small movement with her fingers, crossing two of them -- he thought for a moment that she was going to claim that child's excuse for broken treaties.
"Why?" he asked again.
"Oh," she said vaguely, "I had to bargain."
He began to unwrap the roll carefully; he didn't want to expose more than a scrap of it. "But he had nothing to bargain with," he said. He held the roll out to her on the palm of his hand. "I don't know what he promised to give you, but this isn't it."
"He swore that's what you wanted. How do you know?"
"I don't know how many prints they made. This may be the only one or there may be a dozen. But I do know there's only one negative."
She asked sadly, "And that's not it?"
"No."
3
Rowe said, "I don't know what he had to bargain with, but he didn't keep his part."
"I'll give up," she said. "Whatever I touch goes wrong, doesn't it? Do what you want to do."
"You'll have to tell me where he is."
"I always thought," she said, "I could have both of you. I didn't care what happened to the world. It couldn't be worse than it's always been, and yet the globe, the beastly globe, survives. But people, you, him. . ." She sat down on the nearest chair -- a stiff polished ugly upright chair: her feet didn't reach the floor. She said, "Paddington: the 7.20. He said he'd never come back. I thought you'd be safe then."