Grant sat back and let the stillness fall round him. He could almost hear the dust coming to rest. Year after year the dust falling in the quiet. Like Wabar.
Bill Kenrick came to England. And about three weeks later, when he is due to meet his friend in Paris, he turns up in Scotland as Charles Martin.
Grant could imagine why he wanted to come to England, but why the masquerade? Why the flying visit to the North?
Whom was he going to visit as Charles Martin?
He could have paid that flying visit and still have met his friend in Paris on the appointed date if it had not been for the accident of his tipsy fall. He could have interviewed someone in the Highlands and then flown from Scoone to meet his friend at the Hotel St. Jacques for dinner.
But why as Charles Martin?
Grant put the books back on their shelf with an approving pat that he had never wasted on the Hebrides selection, and went to call on Mr. Tallisker in his little office. He had at least got his line on Kenrick. He knew how to cross his trail.
"Who would you say was the greatest authority on Arabia in England today?" he asked Mr. Tallisker.
Mr. Tallisker waved his beribboned pince-nez and smiled in a deprecating way. There were what might be termed a swarm of successors to Thomas and Philby and the other great names, he said, but he supposed that only Heron Lloyd ranked as a really great authority. It was possible that he, Mr. Tallisker, was prejudiced in Lloyd's favour because he was the only one of the crowd who wrote English that was literature, but it was true that apart from his gifts as a writer he had stature and integrity and a great reputation. He had done some spectacular journeys in the course of his various explorations, and had considerable standing among the Arabs.
Grant thanked Mr. Tallisker and went away to look up Who's Who. He wanted Heron Lloyd's address.
Then he went to have a meal; and instead of going to the Caledonian, which was convenient and sufficiently bestarred, he obeyed an obscure impulse and walked to the other side of the town so that he could eat where he had eaten breakfast with the shade of B Seven on that dark morning only a few weeks ago.
There was no half-lit gloom in the dining-room today; the place was starched and shining, silver, glass, and linen. There was even a shirt-front where a head waiter hovered. But there was also Mary, calm and comfortable and plump as she had been that morning. He remembered how in need of soothing and reassurance he had been, and could hardly believe that that tortured and exhausted creature could have been himself.
He sat down at the same table, near the screens in front of the service door, and Mary came to take his order and to ask how the fishing on the Turlie was these days. "How did you know I was fishing the Turlie?" "You were with Mr. Rankin when you came in for breakfast, off the train."
Off the train. He had come off the train after that night of conflict and suffering; that loathsome night. He had come off the train, leaving B Seven dead there with a casual glance and a passing moment of regret. But B Seven bad paid back a hundred-fold that moment of easy compassion. B Seven had come with him and in the end had saved him. It was B Seven who had sent him to the Islands, on that mad, cold, blown search for nothing. In that strange absurd limbo he had done all those things that he could never have done elsewhere; he had laughed till the tears ran, he had danced, he had let himself be flung about like a leaf from one empty horizon to the next, he had sung, he had sat still and looked. And he had come back a whole man. He owed B Seven more than he could ever repay.
He thought about Bill Kenrick while he had his luncheon; the young man who had had no roots. Had he been lonely in his unattached life, or just free? And if free, was it a swallow's freedom, or an eagle's? A sun-seeking skimming, or a soaring lordliness?
At least he had had a trait that in all climes and ages had been both rare and endearing: he was the man of action who was also by instinct a poet. It was what distinguished him from the light-come crowds of OCAL employees who spun their airy patterns across the continents as unthinking as mosquitoes. It was what distinguished him from the milling five-o'clock crowds in a London railway station to whom adventure was half-a-crown each way. If the dead boy in B Seven had been neither a Sidney nor a Grenfell, he had at least been of their kind.
And for that Grant loved him.
He over-tipped Mary and went away to book two scats on the morning plane to London. He had still more than a week of holiday to come, and the Turlie still swarmed with fish, beautiful silver clean-run fighting fish, but he had other business. Since yesterday afternoon he had only one business: Bill Kenrick.
He had qualms about the air journey to London, but not very serious qualms. He could hardly recognise, when he looked back at him, the demon-ridden frightened creature who had stepped down on to Scoone platform from the London mail less than a month ago. All that was left of that deplorable object was a slight fear of being afraid.
The terror itself was no longer there.
He bought enough sweets for Patrick to keep him sick for three months on end, and drove back to the hills. He was afraid that the sweets were a little too elegant to please Patrick entirely—a little too "jessie-like" perhaps —since Pat's avowed favourites were something in Mr. Mair's window labelled Ogo-Pogo Eyes. But Laura would no doubt dole out the Scoone ones in driblets anyway.
He halted the car above the river, half-way between Moymore and Scoone, and went down across the moor to look for Tad Cullen. It was still early afternoon, and he would not yet have finished his after-luncheon spell on the river.
He had not yet begun it. As Grant came to the edge of the moor and looked down at the river's immediate hollow, he saw below him in the mid-distance a small group of three persons, idle and relaxed on the bank. Zoë was propped in her favourite position against a rock, and on either side of her, on a level with her crossed feet and a gazing at her with an unwavering attention, were her two followers: Pat Rankin and Tad Cullen. Looking at them, amused and indulgent, Grant became aware that Bill Kenrick had done him a final service for which he had not yet had credit. Bill Kenrick had saved him from falling in love with Zoë Kentallen.
A few more hours would have done it. A few more hours in her uninterrupted company, and he would have been involved past recovery. Bill Kenrick had intervened just in time.
It was Pat who saw him first and came to meet him and bring him back to the company as children and dogs do to those of whom they approve. Zoë tilted her head back to watch him come and said: "You haven't missed anything, Mr. Grant. No one has had a nibble all day. Would you like to take my rod for a little? Perhaps a change of rhythm will fetch them."
Grant said that he would like that very much, since his time for fishing was running out.
"You have still a week to catch everything in the river," she said.
Grant wondered how she had known that. "No," he said, "I am going back to London tomorrow morning," and for the first time saw Zoë react to a stimulus as an adult would. The instant regret on her face was as vivid as that on Pat's, but unlike Pat she controlled and removed it. She said in her polite gentle voice how sorry she was, but her face no longer showed any emotion. It was her fairytale face again, the Hans Andersen illustration.
Before he could consider the phenomenon, Tad Cullen said: "Can I come back with you, Mr. Grant? To London."
"I meant you to. I've booked two seats on the morning plane."
In the end Grant took the rod that Tad Cullen was using —a spare one from Clune—so that they could go downriver together and talk. But Zoë made no motion to continue her fishing.
"I've had enough," she said, unjointing her rod. "I think I shall go back to Chine and write some letters."
Pat stood irresolute, still like a friendly dog between two allegiances, and then said, "I'm going back with Zoë."
He said it, Grant thought, almost as if he were championing her instead of merely accompanying her; as if he had joined an Unfair-to-Zoë movement. But since no one could ever think of being unfair to
Zoë, his attitude was surely unnecessary.
From the rock where he sat with Tad Cullen to give him the news, he watched the two figures grow small across the moor, and wondered a little at that sudden withdrawal, at the dispirited air that hung about her progress. She looked like a discouraged child, tired and trailing homeward un-expectant. Perhaps the thought of David, her husband, had suddenly drowned her. That was the way with grief: it left you alone for months together until you thought that you were cured, and then without warning it blotted out the sunlight.
"But that wouldn't be much to get excited about, would it?" Tad Cullen was saying.
"What wouldn't?"
"This ancient city you're talking about. Would anyone get all that excited about it? I mean, about a few ruins. Ruins arc two a nickel in the world nowadays."
"Not these, they aren't," Grant said, forgetting Zoë". "The man who found Wabar would make history."
"I thought when you said he had found something important, you were going to say munition works in the desert or something like that."
"Now that really is something that is two for a nickel!"
"What?"
"Secret munition plants. No one who found one of those would be a celebrity."
Tad's ears pricked. "A celebrity? You mean the man who found this place would be a celebrity?"
"I've already said so."
"No. You just said he would make history."
"True. Too true." Grant said. "The terms are not synonymous any more. Yes, he would be a celebrity. Tutankhamen's tomb would be nothing to it."
"And you think Bill will have gone to see this fellow, this Lloyd guy?"
"If not to him, then to someone else in the line. He wanted to talk to someone who would take what he had to tell as a serious matter; I mean, who would not just tease him about seeing things. And he wanted to meet someone who would be personally interested and excited by his news. Well, he would do just what I did. He would go to a museum, or a library, or perhaps even to one of the Information Departments, and find out who the best-known English explorer of Arabia happened to be. He would probably be given a choice, since librarians and curators are pedantic people and Information Departments subject to the law of libel, but Lloyd is head and shoulders above the others because he writes almost as well as he explores. He is the household word of the bunch, so to speak. So the chances are twenty to one that Bill would choose Lloyd."
"So we find out when and where he saw Lloyd and pick up his trail from there."
"Yes. We also find out whether he went to see Lloyd as Charles Martin or under his own name."
"Why would he go as Charles Martin?"
"Who knows? You said that he was a little cagey. He may have wanted to keep back his connection with OCAL. Are OCAL strict about their routes and schedules? It may be as simple as that."
Cullen sat in silence for a little, making a pattern in the turf with the butt of the fishing-rod. Then he said:
"Mr. Grant, don't think I'm being dramatic or—or sensational or silly, but you don't think, do you, that Bill could have been bumped off?"
"He could have been, of course. Murder docs happen. Even clever murders. But the chances against it are very long."
"Why?"
"Well, for one thing it has passed a police investigation. In spite of all the detective stories to the contrary, the Criminal Investigation Department really is a highly efficient organisation. By far the most efficient organisation, if you'll accept a slightly prejudiced opinion, that exists in this country today—or in any other country, in any period."
"But the police have already been wrong about one thing."
"About his identity, you mean. Yes, but they can hardly be blamed for that."
"You mean, because the set-up was perfect. Well, what's to hinder the other set-up being as perfect as the Charles Martin one?"
"Nothing, of course. Clever murders, as I say, do happen. But it is much easier to forge an identity than to get away with murder. How do you think it was done? Someone came in and slugged him after the train left Euston, and arranged it to look like a fall?"
"Yes."
"But no one visited B Seven after the train left Euston. B Eight heard him come back shortly after the attendant had done his round, and close his door. After that there was no conversation."
"It doesn't need conversation to slug a man on the back of the head."
"No, but it does need opportunity. The chances against opening that door and finding the occupant in the right position for slugging him are astronomical. A sleeping-compartment is not an easy place to take a swing at anyone, even choosing your own time. Anyone with lethal intentions would have to come into the compartment: it couldn't be done from the corridor. It couldn't be done when the victim was in bed. And it couldn't be done with the victim facing you; and he would face round as soon as he was aware that there was someone in the compartment. Therefore it could only be done after preliminary conversation. And B Eight says there was no conversation or visiting. B Eight is the kind of woman who 'can't sleep on a train.' She makes up her mind about that beforehand, and every little sound and squeak and rattle is welcomed as a sign of her suffering. She is usually dead asleep and snoring by about half-past two; but long before that time Bill Kenrick was dead."
"Did she hear him fall?"
"She heard a 'thump,' it seems, and thought that he was taking down a suitcase. He had no suitcase, of course, that would make a thump in being handled. Did Bill speak French, by the way?"
"Well enough to get by."
"Avec moi."
"Yes. About that. Why?"
"I just wondered. It looks as if he planned to spend a night somewhere."
"In Scotland, you mean?"
"Yes. The Testament and the French novel. And yet he didn't speak French."
"Perhaps the Scotch party didn't either."
"No. Scotch parties usually don't. But if he planned to spend a night somewhere, he couldn't meet you that day in Paris."
"Oh, being a day late wouldn't worry Bill. He could have sent me a wire on the 4th."
"Yes ... I wish I could think of his reason for blacking himself all over."
"Blacking himself?"
"Yes. Dressing the part so completely. Why did he want someone to think that he was French?"
"I can't think why anyone would want anyone to think they were French," Mr. Cullen said. "What are you hoping from this Lloyd guy?"
"I'm hoping that it was Lloyd who saw him away at Euston. They were talking about the Rub'al-Khali, remember. What sounded to Old Yoghourt's ear—quite typically—as 'rob the Calley.' "
"Does this Lloyd live in London?"
"Yes. In Chelsea."
"I hope he's home."
"I hope so indeed. Now I am going to have a last hour with the Turlie, and if you can bear just to sit and think the problem over for a little then perhaps you would come back to supper at Clune and meet the Rankin family?"
"That would be fine," Tad said. "I haven't said goodbye to the Countess. I'm a convert to Countesses. Would you say that the Countess is typical of your aristocracy, Mr. Grant?"
"In the sense of having all the qualities of the type, she is indeed typical," Grant said, picking his way down the bank to the water.
He fished until the level light warned him that it was evening, but he caught nothing. This was a result that neither surprised nor disappointed him. His thoughts were elsewhere. He no longer saw Bill Kenrick's dead face in the swirling water, but Bill Kenrick's personality was all round him. Bill Kenrick possessed his mind.
He reeled in for the last time with n sigh, not for his empty bag or his farewell to the Turlie, but because he was no nearer to finding a reason why Bill Kenrick should have blacked himself all over.
"I'm glad I had this chance of seeing this island," Tad said as they walked up to Clune. "It's not a bit the way I imagined it."
From his tone Grant deduced that he had imagined it as a sort of Wabar, inhabited by m
onkeys and jinns.
"I wish it had been a happier way of seeing it," he said. "You must come back some day and fish in peace."
Tad grinned a little shamefacedly and rubbed his tumbled hair. "Oh, I guess it will always be Paris for me. Or Vienna, maybe. When you spend your days in God-forsaken little towns, you look forward to the bright lights."
"Well, we do have bright lights in London."
"Yes. Maybe I'll have another smack at London. London's all right."
Laura came to the door as they arrived and said, "Alan, what's this I hear about—" and then noticed his companion. "Oh. You must be Tad. Pat says you don't believe that there are any fish in the Turlie. How d'you do. I'm so glad you've come up. Go in and Pat will show you where to wash, and then come and join us in a drink before supper." She summoned Pat, who was hovering, and passed the visitor into his charge, blocking the way firmly on any advance by her cousin. When she had got rid of Mr. Cullen, she turned again to her charge. "Alan, you're not going back to town tomorrow?"
"But I'm cured, Lalla," he said, thinking that that was what disturbed her.
"Well, what if you are? There is still more than a week of your leave, and the Turlie better than it has been for seasons. You can't give up all that just to get some young man out of some hole that he's got himself into."
"Tad Cullen's not in any hole. I'm not being quixotic, if that is what you're thinking. I'm going away tomorrow because that is the thing I want to do." He was going to add, "I just can't wait to get away," but even with an intimate like Laura that might lead to misunderstanding.
"But we are all so happy, and things were—" She broke off. "Oh, well. Nothing I can say will make you change your mind. I ought to know that. Nothing has ever made you deviate by a hair's breadth from any line that you once set your mind on. You've always been a damned Juggernaut."
"A damned horrible metaphor," he said. "Couldn't you make it a bullet or a bee-line or something equally undeviating but less destructive?"
She put her arm through his, friendly and a little amused. "But you are destructive, darling." And as he began to protest: "All in the very kindest and most lethal way imaginable. Come and have a drink. You look as if you could do with one."