As the umpire signalled the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, Sir John Hobart’s third wide in succession, and Scatliffe wearily rubbed his hands in the slips as the rain drizzled forlornly down, I looked around this strange bunch of middle-aged men in their white flannels and college jumpers, among whom my destiny lay, little realising that one day not long after, one of them, with the bizarre code name of the Pink Envelope, would be playing a game with me considerably less amusing even than this.
Success or failure for me would depend on how deeply the Envelope had buried his tracks; I had one advantage, which was that with luck none of them except for Fifeshire and Jephcott knew I was here, but I didn’t think that advantage would last very long.
I wondered about Wetherby; whether he was alive on the ocean waves and cursing blindly, or drowned by now, or on dry land, pacing the streets in search of me with a meat cleaver in his hand.
I was going to have to prove my case pretty damn quickly, because if time caught up on me and I didn’t have the answers, I was going to have one great deal of explaining to do and I wasn’t going to know where to begin. My having gone absent without leave from Intercontinental was, according to the rule book, a very serious no-no. I should have gone straight to Hagget, who was my chief there, and told him the facts, then waited for his instructions. There was a simple reason why I hadn’t; it was a sincere belief that if I had, I would be dead by now. I knew that I had stumbled into a deadly game of hide and seek, and it was too late to try and stumble out.
I just managed to avoid solving everyone’s problems, by halting two inches from the tail-overhang of an articulated lorry that didn’t go in for brake lights. For the next couple of miles I actually concentrated on driving, before once again lapsing into my normal pattern of deep thought punctuated by occasional glances through the windscreen.
I found Wetherby’s flat in a tatty building off Pembroke Square in Earl’s Court. There wasn’t even an entry-phone in the porch. I pushed the door and entered the building; it smelt, like many of London’s conversion buildings, of boiled cabbage.
Wetherby’s door was at the top of four steep flights, and there was no answer to my knocking; I hadn’t figured what I was going to say if he himself answered it but the problem didn’t arise. For an apparently insignificant flat it was remarkably well protected by locks; the custodians of the Bank of England would have eaten their hearts out if they could have seen the equipment he had securing that door to its frame. The door had enough ironmongery in it to keep a relay of safe-crackers busy for several weeks. It could have been used as the practical examination for the finals of a locksmith’s apprenticeship course. Without the right crate of keys nothing short of gelignite was going to open that door. Wetherby had made damn sure that entry through this door was going to be on a strictly invitation-only basis. As I didn’t happen to have an invitation I was going to have to find another entrance.
Wetherby’s next-door neighbour’s door was easier; it opened in about five seconds with my trusty AmEx card through the frame, tripping the latch. I let myself in and I found myself in a dim room which stank of joss sticks and burning hash, and was occupied by a hairy object, vaguely human, squatting on a threadbare carpet and jerking his head to the sound of a sitar coming from a portable cassette with nearly flat batteries. ‘Hey, man,’ it said, ‘you might have knocked.’
I stood dumbfounded for a second. It hadn’t actually occurred to me that this flat might be occupied. ‘The door was open,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ it said. It had almost lost interest in me.
‘I’ve locked myself out — I live next door — mind if I use your window?’
‘Use it, man, use it all.’ It lapsed into a trance. Or maybe it was deep thought.
I lifted the window and leaned out. The next window, the start of Wetherby’s flat, was less than an arm’s length away. I wrapped my handkerchief around my wrist, leaned out and punched hard at the glass. It was double-glazed and exploded with a fiendishly loud bang, followed by a seemingly interminable series of smashings as chunks of glass fell down to the concrete basement. I ducked back smartly into the hairy’s room and waited some moments before daring to look out, but the noise didn’t seem to have attracted any attention.
I leaned right out and over, unscrewed the catch, and swung the window wide open. A few more chunks of glass fell out. I crawled out onto the ledge and heaved myself into Wetherby’s abode.
It was a dreary place, sparsely furnished with objects that were old without being of interest. Curtains and upholstery were in nasty cheap fabrics, in faded dull colours; lampshades were yellowing. There was an old record-player, an electric kettle sat on the drawing room floor beside the sofa, and on the far side of the room sat an old black-and-white television set that looked like it had been stolen from a 2-star hotel. And yet there were some objects of outstanding beauty among it alclass="underline" there were a couple of fine oil paintings of ancestors on the walls, another oil depicted a Crimean war scene; a superb George III chiffonier stood against one wall, with a couple of fine Chinese vases on it. But mostly the flat looked the sort of place where secondhand furniture shops acquire their most miserable specimens.
It was clearly a bachelor flat, with bed unmade and the appearance of having been unmade for several weeks judging from the dust on the pillow, filthy crockery including a half-full cup of tea with mould growing out of it, socks and shoes and vests and dirty shirts piled around a bedroom chair. I worked my way carefully and thoroughly around. There was a small room that was his study; it had the only other decent piece of furniture in the flat — an Edwardian roll-top desk, but the appearance was spoilt by a complete absence of polish, and a nasty yellow anglepoise lamp plonked on the top.
I went through all his papers even opening his latest mail for him; judging from the postmarks it had been six weeks since he was last there. I pocketed the mail rather than leave it for him to discover opened, but it wasn’t of much interest. There was an offer from a mail-order bakery in Texas, wondering if he could survive Christmas without having cakes from their world-famous bakeries delivered to all his friends. A note from the Brompton library to say that These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer would be held for him for 14 days, and an application for tickets to the Founder’s Day dinner at Charterhouse were among the more exciting contents of the envelopes.
My visit looked as though it were going to turn out to be no more inspiring than my one to Scatliffe’s house, when the thought struck me that the kitchen looked a great deal smaller than it should have been for a flat of this size. I looked around it carefully but for some minutes I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Then I realised; from its position in the flat it should have run the entire length of the dining room. But it didn’t. It stopped, and yet the dining room didn’t extend into the area where it stopped. There was an area of about 20 square feet completely missing.
I opened the kitchen cupboards that backed onto it and removed a stack of Heinz beans; then I put my hands through and felt the back wall. What my hands touched gave me a shock: instead of plaster, it was wood. I slid my hands round further and found a bolt, which slid easily; suddenly the entire cabinet came free. I pulled it out, revealing a door. I went in through the door into a pitch-dark room. I lit my lighter and found a light switch, which I pushed; the room came to life in a dim orange glow. Looking around it gave me for the first time in the last few days more than just a little reassurance that I might after all not be completely and utterly mad: it was a very comprehensive photographic darkroom. In striking contrast to the rest of the flat this room was spotlessly clean and the equipment was up to date.