“I don’t,” the captain said.
“Ancestral voices,” said Stravino. “All that gurgling they do. That’s not gurgling. That’s an ancestral tongue. You have to keep babies apart, you can’t let them chat, there’s no telling what they might plot amongst themselves.”
“Twins plot,” said the captain.
“Exactly,” said Stravino. “Because they were together as babies. Twins are all weirdies, deny that if you can.”
“I can’t,” said the captain. “I have a twin sister.”
“And she’s a weirdie?”
“No, she’s a unisex hair stylist.”
“I spit on those, whatever they are,” said Stravino. “And also I spit upon architects. They will be the death of us all.”
“Because they design blocks of flats? Ouch!”
“Sorry,” said Stravino. “I just took a little off your ear then. But not enough to affect the hearing. But blocks of flats, did you say? Well, that’s right, but it’s not for why you think.”
“How do you know what I think?” the captain asked.
“I interpret,” said the Greek. “But answer me this. Why do you think the world has all gone potty mad today? Why are people all stony bonker and devil take their hindparts? Answer this.”
“A lack of discipline,” the soldier in the captain said. “Or a lack of hope,” the man inside the soldier added.
“No no no.” Stravino hung his electric clippers on their hook, took up a cut-throat and gave it a strop. “It’s the houses,” said he. “And I am a Greek, so I know what I say. The Greeks were famous throughout the old world for their classical architecture. Am I right or am I barking up a gum tree?”
“The Greeks were famous for many things,” said the captain, peering ruefully at the reflection of his ruined right ear.
“I put the styptic pencil on that,” said the Greek. “But many things, you’re right as tenpence there.”
“Notable shirtlifters,” said the captain. “Their armies had platoons of them. No offence meant, of course.”
“And none taken, I assure you. But when they weren’t lifting each other’s shirts, they were building great temples and amphitheatres and harbours and hippodromes,”
“Hippodromes?” said the captain. “The Greeks built music halls?”
“Race courses,” said Stravino, now taking up a shaving brush and lathering the captain’s head. “Hippos means horse in Greek. Dromos means race. Did they teach you nothing at Sandringham?”
“Sandhurst,” said the captain. “But where is all this leading?”
“Architecture, like I say. It is all in the proportions of the buildings. The size and shape of the rooms. You go in some houses, you feel good. Others and you feel bad. Why is that? Don’t tell me why, because I tell you. The proportions of the rooms. The rooms are wrong, the people in them go wrong. People need the right sized spaces around them where they live.”
“There might be something in what you say,” said the captain.
“More than you know,” said Stravino, now applying his cutthroat. “And babies are little, so to them all rooms are big. Deny that if you please.”
Cormerant opened his mouth and spoke. “I have an urgent appointment,” said he. “Will I be kept much longer?”
“Do you eat out?” the barber enquired.
Cormerant made the face that says, “Eh?”
“Do you insult the chef before your soup is served? The chef he spit in your soup, I’ll wager. I not care to dine with you.”
“Eh?” said Cormerant. “What?”
“Look at this poor soul,” said Stravino, pointing to the captain in the chair. “This man is my friend, but by the caprice of fate, he has all but lost an ear. Think what might befall the man who hurries up his barber.”
“I think perhaps I’ll come back another day.”
“No no,” said the Greek. “I’m all done now.” And he wiped away the shaving foam and dusted down the Velocette and hummed a tune and smacked his lips and then said, “What do you think?”
Captain Drayton stared at his reflection. His stare became a gawp and his gawp became a slack-jawed horror-struck stare. Of his hair little remained but for an unruly topknot.
“But,” went the captain, “but …”
“But?” asked Stravino.
“But,” the captain went once more, “you said a Ramón Navarro. Ramón Navarro doesn’t have his hair cut like that.”
“He does if he comes in here,” said Stravino. “Two and sixpence please.”
Cormerant declined the offer to become the next in the barber’s chair. He left the establishment in a fluster and a hurry. He dropped his bowler hat and he tripped upon the outstretched feet of Icarus Smith and fell down on the floor amongst the clippings and the fluff. Icarus helped him up and dusted him off and opened the door and all. Cormerant hailed a passing cab and Cormerant was gone.
Icarus Smith did not have a Tony Curtis that day. He left Stravino’s only moments after the departure of Cormerant. Some might say, when the coast was clear. But then some might say anything.
Some might for instance say that it was yet another caprice of fate that Mr Cormerant tripped. And some might say that his watch and his wallet fell into the hands of Icarus Smith by accident. And some might say that Icarus took up the black briefcase that Mr Cormerant had inadvertently left behind in the confusion in order to run after him and return it. Along with the wallet and the watch of course. And the most distinctive watch fob.
Some might say any or all of these things.
But then some might say anything.
2
Icarus Smith took an early lunch at the Station Hotel. It is popularly agreed that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But Icarus did not pay for his. The barman, who now wore a most distinctive watch fob, gave Icarus a double helping of mashed potatoes and told him that everything was “on the house”.
An understanding existed between Icarus and the barman. The bar and grill of the Station Hotel was a study in scarlet. The rooms were high-ceilinged and broadly proportioned and would have found favour with Stravino. Long, net-curtained windows looked to the station, where the great steam engines came and went, the mighty King’s Class locomotives with their burnished bits and bobs. Icarus sat down at a window table, recently vacated by a stockbroker’s clerk, and stared wistfully out through the net curtaining to view a passing train.
There were few men alive who were not stirred by steam and Icarus had long harboured a secret ambition to relocate an engine. Exactly to where, and for why, he did not as yet know. And though the thought of it thrilled him, it terrorized him too. His grandfather had been an engineer on the Great Northern Railway and had lost a thumb beneath the wheels of The City of Truro. Icarus prized his digits, but a man must dream his dreams. And if this man be the chosen one, these dreams are no small matter.
Having concluded his early repast and washed it down with a pint of Large and a brandy on the house, Icarus placed the black briefcase upon the table before him and applied his thumbs to the locks. The locks were locked.
Having assured himself that he was unobserved, Icarus removed from his pocket a small roll of tools and from this the appropriate item. It was but the work of a moment or two. Which is one moment more than one less.
The locks snapped open and Icarus returned the item to the roll, and the roll to his pocket.
He was just on the point of opening the briefcase when a hand slammed down upon it.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” said the owner of the hand.
Icarus looked up and made the face that horror brings.
“Chief Inspector Charlie Milverton,” said he, in a wavery quavery voice. “My old Nemesis.”
“I have you bang to rights this time, laddo.”
Icarus held up his hands in surrender. “It’s a fair cop, guv’nor,” he said. “Slap the bracelets on and bung me in the Black Maria.”