"And Kenrick thought that he had discovered the site."
"He was sure of it. Poor boy, I hope that I was not short-tempered with him."
"You think that he was wrong, then?"
"Mr. Grant, the legend of Wabar exists from the Red Sea clear across Arabia to the Persian Gulf, and for almost every mile of that distance there is a different alleged site for the city."
"And you don't believe that perhaps someone might stumble on it by accident?"
"By accident?"
"Kenrick was a flyer. It is possible that he saw the place when blown off his course, isn't it?"
"Had he talked to his friend about it then?"
"No. He had talked to no one that I know of. That was my own deduction. What is to hinder the discovery being made that way?"
"Nothing, of course, nothing; if the place exists at all. I have said it is a legend almost universal throughout the world. But where stories of ruins have been tracked to their source the 'ruins' have always proved to be something else. Natural rock formation, mirage-cloud formation even. I think what poor Kenrick saw was the crater of a meteor. I have seen the place myself. A predecessor of mine discovered it when he was looking for Wabar. It is unbelievably like a place made with hands. The thrown-up earth makes pinnacles and jagged ruinous-looking heights. 1 think I have a photograph somewhere. You might like to see it: it is a unique affair." He got up and slid back a panel in the bare painted-wood wall, disclosing shelves of books all the way from floor to ceiling. "It is, perhaps mercifully, not every day a meteor of any size falls on the earth." He picked a photograph album from one of the lower shelves, and came back across the room looking for the place in the collection. And Grant was seized without warning by a strange sense of familiarity, a feeling of having met Lloyd somewhere before.
He looked at the photograph that Lloyd laid before him. It was certainly an uncanny thing. An almost mocking pastiche of human achievement. But his mind was busy with that odd moment of recognition.
Was it just that he had seen Heron Lloyd's photograph somewhere? But if it had been that, if he had merely seen Lloyd's face as adjunct to some description of his exploits, then the sense of recognition would have come when he had first walked into the room and seen him. It was not so much a recognition as a sense of having known Lloyd somewhere else. In some other surroundings.
"You see?" Lloyd was saying. "Even on the ground, one has to go close up to it before one can be sure that the thing is not a collection of human dwellings. How much more misleading it must be from the air." "Yes," agreed Grant, and did not believe it. For one very good reason. From the air the crater would have been plainly visible. From the air it would have looked exactly what it was: a circular hollow surrounded by the thrown-up earth. But he was not going to say that to Lloyd. Let Lloyd talk. He was growing very interested in Lloyd.
"That lies very close to the Kenrick boy's route across the desert, as described by himself, and 1 think that that is what he saw."
"Did he pin-point the place, do you know?" "I don't know. I didn't ask him. But I should think he would. He struck me as being a very efficient and intelligent young man."
"You didn't ask him for details?"
"If someone told you, Mr. Grant, that he had discovered a holly tree growing in the middle of Piccadilly immediately opposite the In and Out, would you be interested? Or would you just think that you must be patient with him? I know the Empty Quarter as well as you know Piccadilly."
"Yes, of course. Then it was not you who saw him off at the station?"
"Mr. Grant, I never see anyone off. A combination of masochism and sadism that I have always deplored. Off where, by the way?"
"To Scoone."
"To the Highlands? I understood that he was longing for some gaiety. Why was he going to the Highlands?"
"We don't know. That is one of the things we are most anxious to find out. He said nothing to you that might provide a clue?"
"No. He did suggest finding other backing. I mean, when I had proved a broken reed. Perhaps he had found a backer, or hoped to find a backer, who lives up there. I can't think of any obvious one off-hand. There is Kinsey-Hewitt, of course. He has Scottish connections. But I think he is in Arabia at the moment."
Well, at least Lloyd had provided the first reasonable explanation of the flying visit north with an overnight case. To talk to a possible backer. He had found a backer at the last moment, when he was almost due to meet Tad Cullen in Paris, and had dashed north to see him. That fitted beautifully. They were getting on. But why as Charles Martin?
As if the thought had been transferred, Lloyd said: "By the way, if the Kenrick boy was traveling as Charles Martin, how has he been identified as Kenrick?"
"I travelled on that train to Scoone. I saw him when he was dead, and grew interested in some verse he had been scribbling."
"Scribbling? On what?"
"On a blank bit of an evening paper," Grant said, wondering why it should matter what Kenrick had been writing on.
"Oh."
"I was on holiday, with nothing else to do, so I amused myself with the clues provided."
"You played detective."
"Yes."
"What is your profession, Mr. Grant?"
"I'm a Civil Servant."
"Ah, I was going to suggest the Army." He smiled a little and picked up Grant's glass to refill it "The more rarefied ranks, of course."
"G.S.O. 1?"
"No. An attaché, I think. Or Intelligence."
"I have done a spot of Intelligence during my Army career."
"So that is where you developed your taste for it May I say, your Hair."
"Thank you."
"Or had he Kenrick belongings that made the identification easy?"
"No. He was buried as Charles Martin."
Lloyd paused as he was setting the filled glass down and said: "That is so typical of the careless Scottish way of dealing with sudden death. They are always very smug about their lack of inquests. Myself, I think Scotland must be an ideal place in which to get away with murder. If ever I plan one, I shall lure my victim north of the Border."
"There was an inquest, as it happens. The accident took place shortly after the train left Euston."
"Oh." Lloyd thought this over and then said: "Don't you think that this should be reported to the police? I mean the fact that they have buried someone under a wrong name."
Grant was about to say, "The only proof we have that the dead Charles Martin was Kenrick is my identification of a not very good snapshot," but something stopped him. Instead he said, "We should like first to know why he had Charles Martin's papers."
"Ah, yes. I see. That of course is a sufficiently questionable matter. One doesn't acquire a man's papers without some—preliminaries. Does anyone know who Charles Martin is—or was?"
"Yes. The police were satisfied on that score. There was no mystery."
"The only mystery is how Kenrick came by his papers. I see why you are reluctant to go to official sources. What about this man who saw him off? At Euston. Could he have been Charles Martin?"
"He could, I suppose."
"The papers may merely have been lent. Kenrick somehow did not strike me as a—shall we say, nefarious type?"
"No. On all the evidence, he wasn't"
"It's a very curious business altogether. This accident that you say he had: 1 suppose there is no doubt that it was an accident? No suggestion of a quarrel?"
"No, it was just one of those things. A fall that might happen to anyone."
"Distressing. As I say, there are too few young men nowadays who have the combination of courage and intelligence. A great many come to me, indeed they travel great distances to see me—"
He went on talking, and Grant sat watching and listening.
Were there, in fact, so many who came? Lloyd seemed very pleased to sit and talk to a stranger. There was no suggestion that he had an engagement for the evening or guests coming to dinner. None of the conveni
ent pauses that a host leaves in the conversation so that a casual guest may take his leave. Lloyd sat talking in that thin, complacent voice and admiring the hands that lay in his lap. He continually changed the position of the hands, not as a gesture to emphasise a phrase, but as one making a new arrangement of some decoration. Grant found this Narcissus-like preoccupation fascinating. He listened to the silence of the little house, shut away from the town and its traffic. In the biography in Who's Who there had been no mention of wife or children, possessions that the owners of both are habitually proud to mention; so the household no doubt consisted of Lloyd and his servants. Had he sufficient interests to compensate for that lack of human companionship?
He, Alan Grant, had a household just as bare of human warmth; but his life was so full of people that to come back to his empty flat was a luxury, a spiritual delight. Was Heron Lloyd's life full and satisfying?
Or did your true Narcissus ever need any company other than his own image?
He wondered how old the man was. Older than he seemed, certainly; he was the doyen of Arabian exploration. Fifty-five or more. Probably nearer sixty. He had not given his date of birth in the biography, so the chances were that he was nearly sixty. There could not be many years of hard-living left to him, even given his good physique and condition. What would he do with the remaining years? Spend them admiring his hands?
"The only true democracy in the world today," Lloyd was saying, "and it is being destroyed by the thing that we call civilisation."
And again Grant had the sense of familiarity, of recognition. Was it that he had met Lloyd before? Or was it that Lloyd reminded him of someone?
If so, of whom?
He must get away and think, about it. It was time that he took this leave anyhow.
"Did Kenrick tell you where he was staying?" he asked as he began to take his leave.
"No. We made no definite appointment to meet again, you understand. I asked him to come to see me again before he left London. When he did not come I believed that he was resentful, perhaps angry, at my lack of—sympathy, shall we say?"
"Yes, it must have been a blow to him. Well, I have taken up a great deal of your time, and you have been very forbearing. I am most grateful."
"I am very glad to have been of help. I am afraid it has not been very valuable help. If there is anything else that I can do in the matter, I hope very much that you will not hesitate to call on me."
"Well—there is one thing, but you have already been so kind that I hate to ask you. Especially since it is a little irrelevant."
"What is it?"
"May I perhaps borrow the photograph?"
"The photograph?"
"The photograph of the meteor crater. I notice that the print is slotted into your album, not pasted. I should like very much to show it to Kenrick's friend. I promise faithfully to return it. And in perfect—"
"But of course you may have the photograph. And don't bother to return it. I took the picture myself, and the negative is filed in the proper place. I can replace the print at any time with ease."
He manoeuvred the print from its anchorage in the album, and handed it to Grant. He came downstairs with Grant and saw him to the door, talked a bit about the little courtyard when Grant admired it, and waited courteously until Grant had reached the gate before closing the door on him.
Grant opened the evening paper that was lying on the car cushions and laid the photograph carefully between its folds. Then he drove down to the river and along the Embankment.
The old place looked very much as usual, he thought, as the hideous pile loomed up in the dusk. And so, too, did the fingerprint department once he got there. Cartwright was stubbing out a cigarette in the saucer of a half-drunk cup of cold tea and admiring his latest handiwork: a complete set of left-hand prints.
"Lovely, 'im?" he said, looking up as Grant's shadow fell across him. "These are going to hang Pinky Mason."
"Hadn't Pinky the price of a pair of gloves?"
"Huh! Pinky could have bought up Dent's. He just couldn't believe, clever little man Pinky, that the police would ever get round to thinking it anything but a suicide. Gloves are for small-time trash, burglars, and such, not for master-minds like Pinky. You been away?"
"Yes. I've been fishing in the Highlands. If you're not too busy, could you do something off the cuff for me?"
"Now?"
"Oh, no. Tomorrow would do."
Cartwright looked at the clock. "I've nothing to do till I meet my wife at the theatre. We're going to Marta Hallard's new play. So I can do it now, if you like. Is it a difficult job?"
"No. Dead easy. Just here, in the lower right-hand corner of this photograph, there is a beautiful thumb-print. And at the back I think you'll find a nice set of finger-tips. I want to check them with the files."
"All right. Will you wait?"
"I'm going to the library. I'll come back."
In the library he took down Who's Who, and looked up Kinsey-Hewitt. The paragraph on Kinsey-Hewitt was a very modest little affair compared with the half-column on Heron Lloyd. He was a much younger man, it seemed; married, with two children; and his address was a London one. The "Scottish connection" that Lloyd had mentioned seemed to consist in the fact that he was the younger son of some Kinsey-Hewitt who had a place in Fife.
Well, there was always the chance that he was now, or had been lately, in Scotland. Grant went to a telephone and called the London address. A woman with a pleasant voice answered, and said that her husband was not at home. No, he would not be at home for some time; he was in Arabia. He had been in Arabia since November and was not expected back until May at the earliest. Grant thanked her and hung up. It had not been to Kinsey-Hewitt that Bill Kenrick had gone. Tomorrow he would have to go through the various authorities on Arabia, one by one, and ask them the question.
He went back, after some coffee-housing with such friends as he happened to run into at that hour, to Cartwright.
"Got the photograph or am I too early?"
"I've not only got it but looked it up for you. The answer is No."
"No, I didn't really think there would be anything. I was just clearing decks. But thank you, all the same. I'll take the print with me. I thought the new Hallard show got awful notices."
"Did it? I never read 'em. Neither does Beryl. She just likes Marta Hallard. So do I, if it comes to that. Nice long legs. Good night."
"Good night, and thanks again."
"You don't seem awfully sweet on this guy," Tad Cullen said, when Grant had finished his story over the telephone.
"Don't I? Oh, well, perhaps it's just that he doesn't happen to be what we call my cup of tea. Look, Tad, you're quite sure that you have no idea, even in the back of your mind, where Bill could have been staying?" "I haven't got a back to my mind. I have just a small, narrow space in front where I keep all that's useful to me. A few telephone numbers, and a prayer or two."
"Well, tomorrow I'd like you to do the round of the more obvious places, if you would."
"Yes, sure. I'll do anything. Anything you say." "All right. Have you got a pen? Here's the list." Grant gave him the names of twenty of the more likely places, going on the assumption that a young man from the wide open spaces and the small towns would look for a caravanserai that was both large and gay and not too expensive. And just for good measure he added a couple of the best-known expensive ones; young men with several months' back-pay were liable to be extravagant.
"I don't think I'd bother with any more than that," he said.
"Are there any more?"
"If he didn't stay in one of these, then we're sunk, because if he didn't stay in any of them we'd have to hunt every hotel in London to find him, to say nothing of the boarding-houses."
"Okay. I'll start first thing in the morning. Mr. Grant, I'd like to tell you how much I appreciate what you're doing for me. Giving up your time to something that no one else could do; I mean, something the police wouldn't touch. If it wasn't for you?
??"
"Listen, Tad. I'm not being benevolent. I'm being self-indulgent and typically nosey and I'm enjoying myself to the top of my bent. If I wasn't, believe me I wouldn't be in London. I'd be going to sleep tonight in Clune. So good night and sleep well. We'll crack this thing between us."
He hung and went to see what Mrs. Tinker had left on the stove. It seemed to be a sort of shepherd's pie. He carried it into the living-room and ate it absent-mindedly, his thoughts still on Lloyd. What was familiar about Lloyd?
He went back in his mind over the few moments before his first feeling of recognition. What had Lloyd been doing? Pulling open the panel of the book cupboard. Pulling it open with a gesture self-consciously graceful, faintly exhibitionist. What was there in that to provoke a sense of familiarity?
And there was something even more curious. Why had Lloyd said "On what?" when he had mentioned Kenrick's scribbling?
That, surely, was a most unnatural reaction. What exactly had he said to Lloyd? He had said that he became interested in Kenrick because of some verses he had been scribbling. The normal come-back to that was surely, "Verses?" The operative word in the sentence was "verses." That he was scribbling was entirely by the way. And that anyone's reaction to the information should be to say "On what?" was inexplicable.
Except that no human reaction was inexplicable. It was Grant's experience that it was the irrelevant, the unconsidered words in a statement that were important. Quite surprising and gratifying revelations lay in the gap between an assertion and a non-sequitur.
Why had Lloyd said "On what?"
He took the problem to bed with him, and fell asleep with it.
In the morning he began his hunt through the authorities on Arabia, and finished it not at all astonished that it had produced no result. People who explored Arabia as a hobby very seldom had money to back anything. They were, on the contrary, usually prospecting for backing themselves. The only chance had been that some one of them had proved interested to the point of being willing to share his backing. But none of them had ever heard of either Charles Martin or Bill Kenrick.