“Ruhe, ruhe,” the lady urged him, with the solemnity of a grenadier of Frederick the Great. “Don’t make a scene in the street, it’ll ruin your reputation. Dr Bátky will now call a policeman from Piccadilly Circus. We three will testify that you have stolen the manuscript that you have on your person. If necessary, we shall summon the Director of the British Museum by telephone. We shall ask him to testify that the Doctor received the manuscript from him. On the other hand, you may spare yourself all this trouble, and also the poor innocent Director of the British Museum, if you just hand it over.”
“How can I do that when you’re holding both my arms?”
“Tell us which pocket it’s in, and Dr Bátky will take it out.”
“The right one,” he squealed.
With mounting joy, I extracted it from his pocket and placed it in my own.
“So that’s the business side dealt with,” the Indian gentleman stated. “Dr Morvin, sir, I must draw your attention to the fact that I have a revolver in my right pocket. Don’t try anything funny. Just clear off as fast as you can.”
They let him go. The next moment he was in a taxi and had vanished out of sight.
“János Bátky,” I said, in a trance.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Lene Kretzsch.”
“And I Bannerjee Sadh Mukerjee Osborne Pendragon am,” said the Indian, removing his beard and his turban.
“Let’s drink to this,” I said, as soon as I had begun to recover myself.
But to get a drink in London after eleven isn’t easy. We had no choice but to visit a Lyons Corner House, where you can have alcohol late at night provided you also eat.
We took a table on the first floor of the four-storey tea palace where, among the fake, gaudily-decorated marble columns and blaring orchestra, the less well-off Londoner briefly pursues the illusion that he too is an inhabitant of the glittering party world of the cinema screen.
Osborne adjusted his hair and tie with a fastidious grace. Lene gazed at him with undisguised admiration, and moved forward to put her arm around his neck. Visibly embarrassed, he drew his chair away. I was hardly surprised.
“So, what are we drinking?” I asked.
“Beer,” Lene proclaimed confidently. “Lager for a celebration.”
Beneath his mask of brown, Osborne went pale.
“That’s one drink I have never had in my life. Something else perhaps, just now?”
And to our dismay he ordered champagne: Veuve Clicquot.
“I must seem to you an angel from Heaven,” he began. “One of those you see hovering over the right shoulder of the martyr in Renaissance paintings.”
“Something like that,” I replied. “Could you explain a little more about the workings of Providence?”
“Oddly enough, it’s all quite simple. I can tell you in very few words. Just after you left, the day before yesterday, my uncle sent for me. We had a long chat, something we don’t often do, to our sincere mutual regret. Since I was coming to London anyway, he asked me to call on Seton and tell him what had gone on in the last few days. I suspect he wanted to save himself the trouble of writing a letter: it’s something he hates with a passion. He prefers to send an envoy — that’s another of his princely characteristics.
“But as an historian you will also be interested in the mental and psychological springs of great events. When you finally come to write the history of our family, I’d like you to recall the following passage:
In the last days of July 1933, the youngest scion of the House of Pendragon underwent a strange transformation. In his soul there had long burned an unquenchable craving for adventure which, with nothing to feed on, was consuming his very bosom. During those fateful summer days he came to understand his historical mission. He felt that the grave, possibly fatal, but overriding and exalted duty lay before him to explore the impenetrable web of mystery and vice which, in the first decade of the second quarter of the twentieth century, had enveloped the ancestral seat of his family.”
“It’s like listening to a great … ” declared Lene, with yearning in her voice.
“My starting point was the following observation, a somewhat Sherlockian, or more properly Holmesian, one: Maloney never received any letters at Llanvygan, and always took his own to the post office at Corwen. I was there with him on two of these occasions, but on both I stayed outside. It didn’t seem totally improbable that when he called he also collected his mail. So in the morning I went straight there. His death was still a secret. I asked if there was anything for my friend. The girl knew who I was and immediately handed me an envelope addressed to him.
“As one determined to do whatever was necessary — like a pirate of the Southern Seas — and had renounced all conventional morality — like an ambitious waitress in search of a career — without a moment’s internal struggle, I opened the letter. It was typed, unsigned, and pretty unsympathetic in tone. It threatened our poor friend — who must by now inhabit one of the lower circles of Hell — that unless something decisive happened fairly soon, not only would his future funding be cut off, but he would be handed over to the police, obviously for some earlier misdemeanour. I had the impression it wasn’t the first hint of this kind he’d received. It certainly explains his desperate attempt that last night.”
“This much I knew,” I said.
“As soon as I arrived I went to see Seton. In some way I don’t fully understand I must have made an impression on him, made him think I was now old enough to know my own mind, because for the first time in my life he spoke to me seriously. The conversation certainly opened my eyes. I learnt from him that my uncle had only to stretch out his hand and strike, and with a single blow he could become the master of a mind-numbing fortune.
“For a month or two now,” Osborne went on, “he has been in possession of evidence which points quite unmistakably to the fact that William Roscoe was murdered by his doctor. Or rather, not so much proof as a biological discovery which I don’t actually understand, nor I think does Seton, but on the basis of which it is quite clear that it was murder. Roscoe’s rather romantic will stipulated that if he fell victim to murder the estate should pass to the Earl of Gwynedd.”
“I know this too.”
“But my uncle, to Seton’s perfectly understandable despair, is unwilling to instruct him to take the necessary steps. He carried out the experiments with a Dr McGregor, who died in a car accident.”
“I believe this accident was also Morvin’s doing.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because before I came to Llanvygan someone threatened me over the phone, and told me the same would happen to me. I now understand the whole thing. At that time Morvin and Co thought I was a doctor on my way there to continue what poor McGregor had begun … But why doesn’t the Earl want any of this made public?”
“The reason for his reluctance, so far as I could wheedle it out of Seton, is emotional or sentimental. This may sound unlikely, but my uncle was in love with the lady who is now William Roscoe’s widow and sole heiress. It seems he still has a soft spot for her because he’s convinced that she had no part in Roscoe’s death, and if the full terms of the will were enforced it would punish an innocent person. Morvin’s gang are aware of the Earl’s discovery,” he went on, “because my uncle somehow let Mrs Roscoe know about it, hoping to persuade her to sever her connection with Morvin, whom my uncle considers the only one guilty.
“Seton however is quite certain that Roscoe’s widow knew her husband was murdered. He thinks the only way to get the Earl to take action would be to convince him that she’s been party to the attempts made on his life since the biological evidence came to light, and that she was fully aware of Maloney’s mission. It’s my job now to provide that proof. But where does one start? Even Seton, who is as canny as any man alive, hadn’t the faintest idea. I had nothing to go on but the name Morvin. That much Seton did know. He even gave me Morvin’s address, and that’s what I set out with.