'No...' said Peregrine but his answer was drowned by the boom of Glodstone's voice.
'Of course he is. Damnation, man, you don't imagine I'd bring an under-age drinker into your place?'
'I've known it happen,' said the barman, 'so I'll make it on bitter and a lemonade shandy and you can take your glass outside to a table.'
'We can do better than that and take our custom elsewhere said Glodstone and stalked out of the pub. 'That's the trouble wit the damned world today, people don't know their place any more In my father's day, that fellow would have lost his licence and no mistake. Anyway, with a manner like that, the beer was probably flat.'
They drove on to the next village and stopped again. This time Glodstone lowered his voice and they were served. As they sat on bench outside admiring their reflections in the shining waxed coachwork of the great car and basking in the comments it caused Glodstone cheered up.
'You can say what you like but there's nothing to touch a pint of the best British bitter,' he said.
'Yes,' said Peregrine, who had hardly touched his beer and didn't much like it anyway.
'That's something you won't find in any other country. The Hun swills lager by the gallon and the Dutch have their own brew which isn't bad but it's got no body to it. Same with the Belgians, but it's all bottled beer. Mind you, it's better than the Frog muck. Charge the earth for the stuff too but that's the French all over. Dashed odd, when you come to think of it, that the wine-drinking countries have never been a match for the beer ones when it comes to a good scrap. Probably something in the saying they've got no guts and no stomach for a fight.'
Peregrine drank some more beer to mark his allegiance while Glodstone spouted his prejudices and the world shrank until there was only one decent place to be, and that was sitting in the summer twilight in an English village drinking English beer and gazing at one's reflection in the coachwork of an English car that had been made in 1927. But as they drove back to the school, Glodstone's melancholy returned. 'I'm going to miss you,' he said. 'You're my sort of chap. Dependable. So if there's anything I can ever do for you, you've only to ask.'
'That's jolly good of you, sir,' said Peregrine.
'And another thing. We can forget the "sir" bit from now on. I mean, it's the end of term and all that. All the same, I think you'd better hop out when we get to the school gates. No need to give the Head any reason to complain, eh?'
So Peregrine walked back up the avenue of beeches to the school while Glodstone parked the Bentley and morosely considered his future. 'You and I are out of place here, old girl,' he murmured, patting the Bentley's headlight affectionately, 'we were born in a different world.'
He went up to his room and poured himself a whisky and sat in the darkening twilight wondering what the devil he was going to do with himself during the holidays. If only he'd been younger, he'd be inclined to join Major Fetherington's walkabout in Wales. But no, he'd look damned silly now and anyway the Major didn't like anyone poaching on his own private ground. It was a fairly desperate Glodstone who finally took himself off to bed and spent half an hour reading The Thirty-Nine Steps again. 'Why the hell can't something challenging come my way for once?' he thought as he switched out the light.
A week later it did. As the last coach left for the station and the cars departed, Slymne struck. The School Secretary's office was conveniently empty when he tucked the envelope addressed to G. P. Glodstone, Esq., into the pigeonhole already jammed with Glodstone's uncollected mail. Slymne's timing was nicely calculated. Glodstone was notorious for not bothering with letters until the pigeonhole was full. 'A load of bumpf,' he had once declared. 'Anyone would think I was a pen-pusher and not a schoolmaster.' But with the end of term, he would be forced to deal with his correspondence. Even so, he would leave it until the last moment. It was in fact three days before Glodstone took the bundle of letters up to his room and shuffled through them and came to the envelope with the familiar crest, an eagle evidently tearing the entrails from a sheep. For a moment Glodstone gazed almost rapturously at the crest before splitting the envelope open with a paper-knife. Again he hesitated. Letters from parents were too often lists of complaints about the treatment of their sons. Glodstone held his breath as he took it out and laid it flat on the desk. But his fears were unfounded.
'Dear Mr Glodstone,' he read, 'I trust you will forgive me writing to you but I have no one else to turn to. And, although we have never met, Anthony has expressed such admiration for you indeed maintains you are the only gentleman among the masters at Groxbourne that I feel you alone can be trusted.' Glodstone re-read the sentence he had never suspected the wretched Wanderby of such perception and then continued in a ferment of excitement.
'I dare express nothing in a letter for fear that it will be intercepted, except that I am in the greatest danger and urgently need help in a situation which is as hazardous as it is honourable. Beyond that I cannot go in writing. Should you feel able to give me that assistance I so desperately require, go to the left-luggage office at Victoria Station and exchange the enclosed ticket. I can say no more but know you will understand the necessity for this precaution.'
The letter was signed, 'Yours in desperation, Deirdre de Montcon. P.S. Burn both the letter and the envelope at once.'
Glodstone sat transfixed. The call he had been awaiting for over thirty years had finally come. He read the letter several times and then, taking the left-luggage ticket, which he put into his wallet, he ceremoniously burnt the letter in its envelope and as an extra precaution flushed the ashes down the lavatory. Seconds later, he was packing and within the half hour the Bentley rolled from the coach-house with a rejuvenated Glodstone behind the wheel.
From the window of his rooms in the Tower, Slymne watched him leave with a different excitement. The loathsome Glodstone had taken the bait. Then Slymne too carried his bags down to his car and left Groxbourne, though less hurriedly. He would always be one step ahead of his enemy.
Chapter 8
It was late afternoon by the time Glodstone parked the Bentley in a street near Victoria Station. He had driven down in a state of euphoria interspersed with occasional flashes of insight which told him the whole affair was too good to be true. There must be some mistake. Certainly his judgement of Wanderby had been wholly wrong. What had the letter said? 'Maintains that you are the only gentleman among the masters.' Which was true enough, but he'd hardly expected Wanderby to have recognized it. Still, the boy's mother was La Comtesse, and he evidently knew a gentleman when he saw one.
But for the most part, Glodstone had spent the drive concentrating on ways of reaching the Château Carmagnac as speedily as possible. It would depend on what message he found at the left-luggage office, but if he took the Weymouth to Cherbourg ferry, he could drive through the night and be there in twenty-four hours. He had his passport with him and had stopped at his bank in Bridgnorth to withdraw two thousand pounds from his deposit account and change them into travellers' cheques. It was the sum total of his savings but he still had his small inheritance to fall back on. Not that money counted in his calculations. He was about to embark on the expedition of his dreams. He was also going alone. It was at this point that a feeling of slight disappointment crept over him. In his fantasies, he had always seen himself accompanied by one or two devoted friends, a small band of companions whose motto would be that of The Three Musketeers, 'All for one and one for all.' Of course when he was young it had been different, but at fifty Glodstone felt the need for company. If only he could have taken young Clyde-Browne with him but there was no time for that now. He must act with speed.