“Last night you mentioned that you objected to some of Sir Basil’s plans for the future of the college,” Simon reminded him. “Couldn’t those plans have led to just such a situation?”
“That question is now, alas, academic,” put in Nyall, but the Saint ignored him and continued to concentrate his attention on the dean.
“But couldn’t they?” he repeated.
“It is possible,” Burridge admitted.
“You didn’t like Sir Basil, did you, Dr. Burridge?”
Simon’s tone was even and the very directness of the question robbed it of offence.
The dean returned the Saint’s stare and for several seconds the two men appraised each other in a silence that grew steadily more tense.
“I had nothing against him personally,” said Burridge at last, and there was a new and harsher edge to his voice. “But I most certainly did not like what he was planning to do to St. Enoch’s.”
Burridge paused and the others round the table waited for him to continue. When he did so the even tenor of his speech was quickly shaken and then broke completely, and what began as an explanation rapidly turned into an impassioned diatribe.
“I have seen his like too many times before. I have seen what they’ve done to other colleges. I didn’t want him here but I was overruled. I feared for the future of St. Enoch’s. Sir Basil and his so-called progressive ideas would have been the ruin of the college, as has happened elsewhere. Once the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford were seats of learning, of intellectual debate and reasoning. We produced scholars of the arts, great philosophers, statesmen, men who shaped and expanded the culture of the world. But not now. Once knowledge was the goal; not now. Now all that matters is the degree, a slip of parchment, a ticket to halfway up the executive ladder. Instead of scholars we produce salesmen. Instead of broadening minds we are narrowing them, channelling them for a specific use, turning out fuel for the furnaces of commerce and industry, all in the hallowed name of progress. Progress to what? That’s a question Sir Basil and his like never stop to consider. Bigger. Better. Newer. That’s all they worry about. Well, it may be all very well for the modern universities to follow the trend. But not Cambridge. That was not why we were founded, that is not why we have survived, and that is not how we are going to continue to survive.”
Throughout his speech the Saint had never taken his eyes off the dean and had felt the heat of the fire that flared in the man’s eyes and the force of emotion behind the unconscious clenching and unclenching of his hands. The silence that followed his tirade was as brittle as glass; even the waiters clearing away the bar had stopped to listen.
Only one man seemed unaffected, and it was he who shattered the quiet. Edwin Darslow giggled.
“Hear, hear,” he chuckled. “Quite right. Don’t want to get a name for turning out economists and people like that, do we? Eh, Nyall?”
The Saint looked quizzically at the bursar, who coloured slightly beneath his gaze.
“I think Professor Darslow has over enjoyed your hospitality, Mr. Templar,” Nyall remarked acidly. “The fact that I have a degree in economics has always been a strange source of amusement to the professor.”
“Always telling other people what to do with their money, but never doing it themselves,” retorted Darslow. “Like racing tipsters. If they were any good they’d back the horses themselves, not tell other people about them.”
Darslow tapped the side of his nose with his finger in an exaggerated gesture of conspiratorial wisdom.
“Physician, heal thyself,” he lisped. “latre, therapeuson seauton.”
His display of erudition was somewhat marred by his enunciation, which phoneticised the transliterated Greek according to the atrocious British academic tradition, and with the accent invariably in the wrong places. Neither St. Luke nor Archbishop Makarios would have had the faintest idea what he was trying to say.
Had Chantek not slipped a restraining arm beneath his shoulder as he began to slip forward he would have crumpled gently to the floor. As she pulled him into a more upright pose he emitted a loud snore.
The dean regarded him with distaste.
“Dreadful. Quite dreadful.”
“I think perhaps we had better get Professor Darslow home,” suggested Nyall.
The Saint nodded sympathetically.
“I think you had,” he agreed.
He was not sorry that the party was breaking up. He had gleaned more than he had originally hoped. He helped Nyall get Darslow downstairs and loaded into a taxi. The dean walked a few paces behind as if trying to dissociate himself from them. They said their goodbyes and thanks on the pavement, and Simon returned upstairs to Chantek.
“Will Professor Darslow be all right?” she asked.
He smiled.
“Fine, but I wouldn’t like to have his head when he wakes up.”
Chantek’s eyes roamed over the remains of the luncheon table.
“I was surprised at Dr. Burridge,” she said. “He was so angry. He almost made me feel afraid.”
“Yes, it was an interesting little revelation, wasn’t it?” he agreed thoughtfully.
“What do we do now?” Chantek asked.
He looked at his watch. It was almost three-thirty, still two and a half hours before his appointment with Brian Casden.
“Let’s get some fresh air. A walk around town to get rid of some of the calories is called for. I may even get around to buying some Christmas presents.”
“Not from a Santa, I hope,” she laughed.
The Saint smiled as he slipped his arm through hers.
“No, definitely not from a Santa,” he agreed.
9
The dashboard clock showed one minute to six when the Hirondel drew up to the gates of the Happy Time Toy Co. The Saint sounded the klaxon and the strident blast brought a figure in blue uniform and peaked cap from a kiosk just the other side of the barrier.
Simon spoke to the man from his driving seat.
“I have an appointment with Mr. Casden.”
“Name?”
Simon told him, and the man checked it against the sheet of paper on his clipboard.
“Drive round to the side of the building over there, Mr. Casden’s office is on the top floor. Can’t miss it.”
The Saint did as he was instructed, driving slowly and taking in the topography as he followed the road around, and braked outside a door marked staff entrance.
The factory and offices of the Happy Time Toy Co. were situated on a new industrial estate on the edge of the city. The factory comprised three linked single storey buildings that reminded him of aircraft hangars. The offices were housed in a three-storey block of concrete and glass tacked onto the end nearest the gates.
A high wire-mesh fence encircled the site, dividing it from the road at the front and similar style factories on either side, and a few rubble-strewn acres at the rear where another factory was being built. It certainly looked secure enough.
He had spent the afternoon with Chantek wandering around the Cambridge shops and finally being fleeced for an afternoon tea of scones and jam in a dimly lit shoppe where the cost was in inverse proportion to the height of the ceiling. They had talked no further of the murders. The Saint had long since cultivated the ability to switch off his problems and relax in the same way that he could sleep at any time like a cat. Now, after the breathing space he had permitted himself, his thoughts were completely back with the matter in hand.
He climbed out of the car and tried the door. It was unlocked. Both factory and offices appeared to be totally deserted. He followed the stairs up to the top-floor landing without meeting anyone. The lack of any form of security, even the most ancient of night watchmen, worried him. In ordinary circumstances he would have expected to be challenged. And these were not ordinary circumstances.