The Comedians

'I suppose they fixed up the telephone when they put the Poles in. You're living in a government rest-house for V.I.P.s.'

'Very important pooves we called them in Imphal,' Jones said with the ghost of a laugh.

'I could give you a drink if you let me put on the light.'

'There isn't time, old man. I've got to get out. Concasseur was speaking from Miami. They've sent him to check up. He wasn't suspicious yet, only puzzled. But in the morning when they find I've skipped …'

'Skipped

where?'

'Yes, that's the question, old man, that's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.'

'The

Medea's in port.'

'The very place …'

'I'll have to put on some clothes.'

He followed me like a dog, leaving wet patches in his wake. I missed Mrs Smith's help and advice, for she had a high opinion of Jones. While I dressed - he had to allow me a little light for that - he ambled nervously from wall to wall, well away from the window.

'I don't know what your game was,' I said, 'but surely with a quarter of a million dollars at stake you could be certain that one day they'd investigate.'

'Oh, I'd thought that one out. I'd have gone over to Miami with the investigator.'

'But they'd have kept you here.'

'Not if I'd left a partner behind. I hadn't realized time was so short - I thought I had a week or more at least - or I'd have tried to persuade you earlier.'

I stopped with one leg in my trousers and asked him with astonishment, 'You're telling me just like that, that I was to be the fall guy?'

'No, no, old man, you exaggerate. You can be dead sure I'd have tipped you off in time for you to get into the British Embassy. If it was ever necessary. But it wouldn't have been. The investigator would have cabled O.K. and taken his cut, and you would have joined us afterwards.'

'How big a cut had you planned for him? I know it's only of academic interest now.'

'I'd allowed for all that. What I offered you, old man, was net not gross. All yours.'

'If I survived.'

'One always survives, old man.' As he dried, his confidence returned.

'I've had my setbacks before. I was just as neax the grand coup - and the end

- in Stanleyville.'

'If your plan had anything to do with arms,' I said, 'you've made a bad mistake. They've been stung before …'

'How do you mean, stung?'

'There was a man here last year who arranged half a million dollars'

worth of arms for them, fully paid up in Miami. But the American authorities were tipped off, the arms were seized. The dollars, of course, stayed in the agent's pocket. Nobody knew how many real arms there had ever been. They wouldn't be taken for the same ride twice. You should have done more homework before you came here.'

'My scheme was not exactly that. In fact there were no arms at all. I don't look like a man with that much capital, do I?'

'Where did that introduction of yours come from?'

'From a typewriter. Like most introductions. But you are right about the homework. I put the wrong name on the letter. I talked myself out of that one though.'

'I'm ready to go.' I looked at him where he fidgeted in a corner with a light flex: the brown eyes, the not quite trim officer's moustache: the grey indifferent skin. 'I don't know why I'm running this risk for you. A fall guy again …'

I took the car out on the road with the lights off, and we cruised slowly down towards the city. Jones crouched low and whistled to keep his courage up. I think the tune dated from 1940 - 'The Wednesday after the war'. Just before the roadblock I switched the lights on. There was a chance the militiaman was asleep, but he wasn't.

'Did you pass here tonight?' I asked.

'No. I made a detour through a couple of gardens.'

'Well, there's no avoiding him now.'

But he was too sleepy to be troublesome: he limped across the road and raised the barrier. His big toe was bound up in a dirty bandage and his backside showed through a hole in his grey-flannel trousers. He didn't bother to search us for arms. We drove on down, past the turning to Martha's, past the British Embassy. I slowed down there: all seemed quiet enough - the Tontons Macoute would surely have put guards at the gate if they had known of Jones's escape. I said, 'What about going in there? You'll be safe enough.'

'I'd rather not, old man. I've been a bother to them before, and they won't exactly welcome me.'

'You'd have a worse welcome from Papa Doc. This is your great chance.'

'There are reasons, old man …' He paused, and I thought he was going at last to confide in me, but, 'Oh God,' he said, I've forgotten my cocktailcase. I left it in your office. On the desk.'

'Is it so important?'

'I love that case, old man. It's been with me everywhere. It's my luck.'

'I'll bring it to you tomorrow if it's so important to you. You want to try the Medea then?'

'If there's a snag we can always come back here as a last resort.' He tried out another tune - I think it was 'A nightingale sang' - but stuck. 'To think after all we've been through together that I'd leave it …'

'Is it the only bet you ever won?'

'Bet? What do you mean, bet?'

'You told me you won it in a bet.'

'Did I?' He brooded awhile. 'Old man, you're running a big risk for me, and I'll be straight with you. That wasn't exactly the truth. I pinched it.'

'And Burma - was that not the truth either.'

'Oh, I was in Burma all right. I promise that.'

'You pinched it from Asprey's?'

'Not with my hands, of course.'

'With your wits again?'

'I was working at the time. Something in the city. I used one of the company's cheques, but I signed my own name. I wasn't going to be sent down for forgery. It was just a temporary loan. You know it was love at first sight when I saw that case and I remembered the brigadier's.'

'It wasn't with you in Burma then?'

'I was romancing a bit there. But I did have it with me in the Congo.'

I left the car by the Columbus statue - the police must have been accustomed to seeing my car there at night, though not alone, and I went ahead of Jones to reconnoitre. It was easier than I thought. For some reason the policeman was no longer by the gangplank, which had been kept down for latecomers from Mère Catherine's: perhaps he had a beat, perhaps he'd gone behind the wall to urinate. One of the crew was on guard at the top, but seeing our white faces he let us go by.

We went up to the top deck and Jones's spirits rose - he had hardly uttered a sound since his confession. As he passed the saloon door he said,

'Remember the concert? That was a night, wasn't it? Remember Baxter and his whistle? "St Paul's will stand, London will stand." He was too good to be true, old man.'

'He isn't true any more. He's dead.'

'Poor bugger. That makes him sort of respectable, doesn't it?' he added with a kind of yearning.

We climbed the ladder to the captain's cabin. I did not relish the interview, for I remembered his attitude to Jones after he had received the wireless inquiry from Philadelphia. Everything had gone easily up till now, but I had small hope that our luck would last. I rapped on the door and with hardly an interval the captain's voice came, hoarse and authoritative, bidding me enter.

At least I had not woken him from sleep. He was propped up in his berth wearing a white cotton nightshirt, and he had put on very thick reading-glasses which made his eyes look like broken chips of quartz. He held a book tilted below the reading-lamp, and I saw it was one of Simenon's novels, and this encouraged me a little - it seemed to be a sign that he had human interests.

'Mr Brown,' he exclaimed in surprise, like an old lady disturbed in her hotel room, and like an old lady his left hand went instinctively to the neckline of his nightshirt.

'And Major Jones,' Jones added jauntily and moved out from behind me into view.