Inchcape turned his head slowly and stared directly at Galpin. ‘I am waiting for Mr Dobson,’ he explained in a style that echoed Galpin’s own. ‘Any statement I have to make will be made when he arrives.’
Disconcerted, Galpin took a step backwards, bumping into Screwby who was moving forward to say, in fulsome tones: ‘I must say, sir, I admire your pluck.’
Inchcape’s only acknowledgement of this tribute was a twist of the lips that caused him to wince. Blood welled out again.
Galpin, piqued, muttered to the others: ‘Well, I only hope someone’s sent for a doctor. Things could be worse than they look.’
‘No doctor has been sent for, nor do I want one,’ Inchcape said and, glancing aside at Harriet, he added: ‘Heaven keep me out of the hands of Rumanian doctors.’
Dobson arrived. Looking about him, he said: ‘Oh dear!’ Flustered and at a loss, he stood pulling off his gloves, then suddenly became businesslike. ‘The fellows who did this,’ he asked, ‘were they in uniform?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, an unofficial attack. When we protest, no one will know anything. If we persist, we may get an apology, but that will be the end of it. The authorities are powerless, of course.’
Galpin said: ‘We’re all powerless.’ He was showing signs of impatience. ‘What about that statement?’ he asked.
Everyone waited. Inchcape, the centre of attention, was wiping his mouth again. After some moments, he smiled his old ironical smile and began: ‘I was in my office upstairs, innocently reading Miss Austen, when I heard a fracas down here. Half a dozen young men had burst in and started smashing the place up. I heard my secretary screaming. When I got down, she’d made a bolt for it – no doubt wisely: she had, in any case, begun to doubt the justice of the Allied cause.’
Inchcape paused to smile to himself, apparently recalling the whole occurrence with philosophical amusement. ‘When I appeared,’ he went on, ‘one fellow slammed the door closed and locked it. There were seven or eight of them. Two or three gave their attention to me, the rest were absorbed in their destructive frenzy. I was hit on the head by a framed portrait of our respected Prime Minister …’
‘Deliberately?’ Galpin demanded.
‘I don’t know. The blow knocked me backwards into this chair. When I tried to rise, someone gripped my shoulders and held me down. One of them – the leader, I suppose – then saw fit to question me.’
‘What questions were you asked?’ said Dobson.
‘Oh, the usual. They wanted to know who was head of the British Secret Service here. I said: “Sir Montagu.” That flummoxed them.’ Inchcape laughed at the recollection, but Dobson, frowning like an unhappy baby, burst out: ‘Really, there was no need to bring H.E. into it.’
‘You know they can’t touch him. And if they tried, he’s well protected.’
Dobson seemed about to speak, then shut his mouth, silenced by the change that was coming over Inchcape’s appearance. Bruises like leaden shadows were beginning to show on his brow and cheeks. His handkerchief was dark with blood. Guy offered him another, but he shook his head. ‘I’m all right,’ he said.
Galpin interrupted accusingly: ‘They must have knocked you about?’
Inchcape, clearly under greater strain than he would admit, caught his breath and answered with sardonic brevity: ‘A little perhaps.’
Though he could not admit he had suffered the indignity of attack, the journalists were not deceived. One said: ‘I can’t imagine a few accidental taps got you into this condition.’
‘Are you suggesting that I am lying?’ Inchcape sharply asked.
‘All right.’ Galpin snapped a band round his notebook and put it away. Buttoning his jacket, he looked round at his fellows with the air of one who has got all he wants here and has other calls on his time. ‘We’d better get back,’ he said.
They began moving off. Guy, saying he would take Inchcape home, went out to the street to find a cab. Galpin, on the pavement outside, was saying: ‘It’s my opinion he’s brought this on himself.’
‘In what way?’ Guy asked.
He jerked a thumb at the Bureau. ‘He insisted, against advice, on keeping open. But there was more to it than that. I bet the lads who did this job knew him. Knew him too well, I mean. That’s why he’s keeping his mouth shut. He’s always been a mean old bastard. If you ask me, the lads had something on him.’
‘What rubbish!’ Guy said in disgust. ‘It was obviously a Guardist outrage.’
Galpin snorted. He got into his car and as a parting shot, called out: ‘One has to pay for one’s pleasures, you know.’
Inchcape made his way to the cab with an unconvincing show of vigour. Getting into it, he stumbled and Guy had to hold him up.
At the sight of his master, Pauli gave a cry of distress and waved his arms in the air. Inchcape pushed him away with affectionate impatience, saying: ‘Go and make a good strong pot of tea for all of us.’
While they drank it, Inchcape talked gleefully about his quick-wittedness in naming Sir Montagu as head of the Secret Service. ‘You should have seen their faces. They knew the old charmer was out of their reach. And having got their answer, they couldn’t think of anything else to ask me.’
Before the Pringles left, Inchcape said to them: ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t breathe a word of this to Pinkrose. He’d get into a panic. So promise me, not one word.’
The Pringles promised.
25
Next morning, Pauli telephoned Guy to say he was worried about his master’s condition. The previous evening, Inchcape, though insisting that he was perfectly well, had been unable to sleep until he had taken veronal. That morning he looked much worse and all life had gone from him. He was, in Pauli’s opinion, very sick; and he was asking for Guy.
When this call came, Harriet was in the bathroom. Guy shouted to her that he would be back for luncheon and left the flat before she could ask where he was going. When she went out to the balcony, she could see him making his way rapidly across the square.
He was, in fact, unusually disturbed, and not only by his fears for Inchcape. The previous evening, in need of a drink, he had gone to the English Bar where Galpin had claimed to have ‘inside information’ to the effect that the military mission was soon to be followed by the Gestapo. The Germans had already installed a Gauleiter, who was becoming the talk of the town. He was said to be paralysed from the waist down. Though he lay in bed all day, seeing no one but his agents, he knew everything about everybody. Galpin said: ‘The whole German colony’s piss-scared of this bastard. Even Fabricius. The Rumanians, too. They say that a deputation of Rumanian statesmen called on Fabricius last night to beg the Führer to send in an army of occupation. He said that Germany doesn’t plan to occupy Rumania just yet. That’s all my eye. Everything points to the fact that it’s any day now.’
Harriet, who had been playing a paper game with Sasha, had not accompanied Guy to the bar. When he returned, he did not tell her what he had heard there.
Unnerved by her outburst at Predeal, he had, for the first time, begun to fear for her. He had always thought of her as a pattern of courage, someone tougher than himself about whom he need not worry. Now he was beginning to realise that she had audacity without stamina. His means of living with a situation was to put its dangers behind him. Her method was to keep them in view so they might not come on her unawares. She lived in a state of preparedness that brought undue stress. He told himself he must protect her against her own temperament. He would save her from shock, even the perhaps not very great shock of seeing Inchcape in a state of collapse.