No, Grant had promised to look Charles up on behalf of a friend who had known him on the Persian Gulf coast. No, he did not know what the friend wanted of him. He understood that there was some suggestion of a future partnership.
In the expressed opinion of the Martin family, the friend was lucky.
They gave him Armagnac and coffee and little biscuits with Bath-bun sugar on them, and asked him to come again if he was ever in Toulon.
On the doorstep he asked if they had possession of their son's papers. Only his personal ones, they said: his letters. The official ones they had not bothered with or thought about. They were no doubt still with the Marseilles police, who had first made contact with them when the accident happened.
So a little more time was wasted in making friends with the Marseilles officials; but this time Grant spent no energy on conscientiously unofficial methods. He produced his credentials and asked for a loan of the papers. He drank a sirop, and signed a receipt. And he caught the afternoon plane to London on Friday afternoon.
He had two more days. Or one day and a Sunday, to be accurate.
France was still a jewelled pattern as he flew back over it, but Britain seemed to have disappeared altogether. Beyond the familiar outline of the western European coast there was nothing but an ocean of haze. Very odd and incomplete the map looked without the familiar shape of that very individual island. Supposing there never had been that island: How different would the history of the world have been? It was a fascinating speculation. An all-Spanish America, one supposed. A French India: an India without a colour-bar and so racially intermarried that it had lost its identity. A Dutch South Africa ruled by a fanatic Church. Australia? Who would have discovered and colonised Australia? The Dutch from South Africa, or the Spaniards from America? It was immaterial, he supposed, since either race would in a generation have become tall, lean, tough, nasal, drawling, sceptical and indestructible.
They dropped into the ocean of cloud, and found Britain again. A very mundane, muddy, and workaday place to have changed the history of a world. A steady drizzle soaked the land and the lieges. London was a water-colour of grey reflections with spots of vermilion oil paint where the buses plunged dripping through the haze.
All the lights were on in the finger-print department, although it was still daylight; and Cartwright was sitting just as he had last seen him—as he had always seen him —with a half-drunk cup of cold tea at his elbow, the saucer filled with cigarette butts.
"Something I can do for you this beautiful spring afternoon?" Cartwright said.
"Yes. There is one thing I want very much to know. Have you ever drunk the second half of a cup of tea?"
Cartwright considered this. "Come to think of it, I don't know that I ever have. Beryl usually takes my cup away and fills it up with fresh stuff. Something else off the cull?" Or is this just a social call?"
"Yes, something else. But you'll be working for me on Monday, so don't let your sense of benevolence get out of hand." He put Charles Martin's papers on the table. "When can you do these for me?"
"What is this? French identity papers. What are you getting into—or do you want to keep it to yourself?"
"I'm just having one last bet on a horse called Flair. If it comes off I'll tell you about it, I'll pick up the prints tomorrow morning."
He looked at the clock and reckoned that if Tad Cullen was "dating" Daphne, or any other female creature, tonight, he would at this moment be dolling himself up in his hotel room. He left Cartwright and went to a telephone where he could talk unheard.
"We-e-ïï!" said Tad joyously, when he heard Grant's voice. "Where are you talking from. Are you back?"
"Yes, I'm back. I'm in London. Look, Tad, you say you've never known anyone called Charles Martin. But is it possible that you knew him under another name? Did you ever know a very good mechanic, very good with cars, who was French and looked like BÍ117"
Tad thought this over.
"I don't think I've ever known any mechanic who was French. I've known a Swedish mechanic and a Greek mechanic, but neither of them was in the least like Bill. Why?"
"Because Martin worked in the Middle East. And it is just possible that Bill got those papers from him before he ever came to Britain at all. Martin may have sold them to him. He was—is: he may be living—a lazy creature and probably very hard-up at intervals. Out there, where no one bothers very much about credentials, he might have tried to cash them."
"Yes; he might. Someone else's papers are usually more valuable than your own out there. To have around, I mean. But why would Bill buy them? Bill never did anything on the side."
"Perhaps because he looked a little like Martin. I don't know. Anyhow, you yourself have never run into anyone like Martin in the Middle East?"
"Not anywhere, that I can think of. What did you get out of the Martins? Anything worth while?"
"I'm afraid not. They showed me photographs which made it clear how much he would look like Bill if he was not alive. Something that we knew already. And of course the fact that he had gone East to work. Any answers to the advertisement?"
"Five."
"Five?"
"All from fellows called Bill Kenrick."
"Oh. Asking what was in it for them?"
"You've got it."
"Not a word from anyone who knew him?"
"Not a peep. And nothing at the Charles Martin end either, it seems. We're sunk, aren't we?"
"Well—waterlogged, shall we say. We have one remaining asset."
"We have? What is that?"
"Time. We have forty-eight more hours."
"Mr. Grant, you're an optimist."
"You have to be in my business," Grant said, but he did not feel very optimistic. He felt flat and tired. He was within an ace of wishing that he had never heard of Bill Kenrick. Wishing that he had come down that corridor at Scoone just ten seconds later. In ten more seconds Yoghourt would have realised that the man was dead and would have shut the door and gone for help; and he, Grant, would have walked down the empty corridor and stepped down on to the platform unaware that there had ever existed a young man called Bill Kenrick. He would never have known that anyone had died on the train. He would have driven away with Tommy to the hills, and no words about singing sands would have disturbed his holiday. He would have fished in peace, and finished his holiday in peace.
In too much peace perhaps? With too much time to think about himself and his bondage to unreason. Too much time to take his own mental and spiritual pulse. No, of course he was not sorry that he had heard of Bill Kenrick. He was Bill Kenrick's debtor as long as he lived, and if it took him till the end of his days he would find out what had changed Bill Kenrick into Charles Martin. But if only he could clear up this thing before he was swamped by that demanding life that was waiting for him on Monday.
He asked how Daphne was, and Tad said that as a female companion she had one enormous advantage over everyone he had ever known; she was pleased with very little. If you gave her a bunch of violets, she was as pleased as most girls are with orchids. It was Tad's considered opinion that she had never heard of orchids, and he, personally, had no intention of bringing them to her notice.
"She sounds the domestic type. You take care, Tad,
or she'll be going back to the Middle East with you." "Not while I'm conscious," Tad said. "No female is going back East with me. I'm not having any little woman round the house cluttering up our bungalow. I mean, my bun—I mean—" His voice died away.
The conversation became suddenly broken-backed and Grant rang off after promising to call him as soon as he had anything to report or an idea to share. He went out into the wet haze, bought himself an evening paper, and found a taxi to take him home.
The paper was a Signal, and the sight of the familiar heading took him back to that breakfast at Scoone four weeks ago. He thought again how constant in kind the headlines were. The Cabinet row, the dead body of the blonde in Maida Vale, the Customs prosecution, the h
old-up, the arrival of an American actor, the street accident. Even "PLANE CRASH IN ALPS" was common enough to rank as a constant.
"Yesterday evening the dwellers in the high valleys of Chamonix saw a rose of flame break out on the icy summit of Mont Blanc—"
The Signal’s style was constant too.
The only thing waiting for him at 19 Tenby Court was a letter from Pat, which said:
Dear Alan, they say you must have marjuns but I think marjuns is havers, waste not want not, this is a fly I made for you, it was not done in time before you went, it may not be any good for those english rivers but you better have it anyway your affectionate cousin Patrick.
This production cheered Grant considerably, and while he ate his dinner he considered alternately the economy, in capitals as well as in margins, and the enclosed lure. The fly exceeded in originality even that remarkable affair which he had been lent at Clune. He decided to use it on the Severn on a day when fish would take a piece of red rubber hot-water bottle, so that he could write honestly to Pat and report that the Rankin fly had landed a big one.
The typical Scots insularity in "those english rivers" made him hope that Laura would not wait too long before sending Pat away to his English school. The quality of Scotchness was highly concentrated essence, and should always be diluted. As an ingredient it was admirable; neat, it was as abominable as ammonia.
He stuck the fly above the calendar on his desk, so that he might go on being amused by its catholicity and warmed by his young cousin's devotion, and got thankfully into pyjamas and dressing-gown. There was at least one consolation for being in town when he might still be in the country: he could get into a dressing-gown and put his feet on the fender in the sure and certain knowledge that no telephone call from Whitehall 1212 would intrude on his leisure.
But he had not had his feet up for twenty minutes when Whitehall 1212 was on the telephone.
It was Cartwright.
"Did I understand you to say that you had had a bet on Flair?" said Cartwright's voice.
"Yes. Why?"
"I don't know anything about it, but I have an idea that your horse has won," said Cartwright. He added, very silky and sweet like a Broadcasting Aunt, "Good night, sir," and hung up.
"Hey!" said Grant, and jiggled the telephone key. "Hey!"
But Cartwright had gone. And it would be no use trying to bring him to the telephone any more tonight. This amiable piece of teasing was Cartwright's comeback, his charge for doing a couple of buckshee jobs.
Grant went back to his Runyon, but he could no longer keep his attention of that strictly legit character, Judge Henry G. Blake. Blast Cartwright and his little jokes. Now he would have to go to the Yard first thing in the morning.
But in the morning he forgot all about Cartwright.
By eight o'clock in the morning Cartwright had sunk back into the great ocean of incidentals that bear us on from one day to the next, unremarkable in their plankton swarming.
The morning began as it always did, with the rattle of china and the voice of Mrs. Tinker as she set down his early-morning tea. This was the preliminary to four glorious minutes during which he lay still more asleep than awake and let his tea cool, so that Mrs. Tinker's voice came to him down a long tunnel that led to life and the daylight but need not yet be traversed.
"Just listen to it," Mrs. Tinker's voice said, referring apparently to the steady beat of the rain. "Stair rods, cats and dogs, reservoyers. Niagara also ran. Seems they've bin and found Shangri-la. I could do with a spot of Shangri-la myself this morning."
The word turned over in his sleepy mind like a weed in calm water. Shangri-la. Very soporific. Very soporific. Shangri-la. Some place in a film. In a novel. Some unspoiled Eden. Shut away from the world.
"According to this mornin's papers they never 'ave no rain at all there."
"Where?" he said, to show that he was awake.
"Arabia, so it seems."
He heard the door close and dropped a little further under the surface of things for the enjoyment of those four minutes. Arabia. Arabia. Another soporific. They had found Shangri-la in Arabia. They—
Arabia!
In one great whirl of blankets he came to the surface and reached for the papers. There were two, but it was the Clarion that came to his hand first because it was the Clarion whose headlines constituted Mrs. Tinker's daily dose of reading.
He did not have to search for it. It was there on the front page. It was the best front-page stuff that any newspaper had had since Crippen.
SHANGRI-LA REALLY EXISTS. SENSATIONAL DISCOVERY. HISTORIC FIND IN ARABIA.
He glanced over the hysterically excited paragraphs and discarded the paper impatiently for the more trustworthy Morning News. But the Morning News was almost as excited as the Clarion. KINSEY-HEWITTS GREAT FIND, said the Morning News. ASTOUNDING NEWS FROM ARABIA.
"We print, with great pride, Paul Kinsey-Hewitt's own despatch," said the Morning News. "As our readers will see, his discovery had been vouched for by three R.A.F, planes sent to locate the place after Mr. Kinsey-Hewitt's arrival at Makallah." The Morning News had had a contract with Kinsey-Hewitt for a series of articles on his present journey, when that journey should be completed, and was now delirious with pleasure at its unexpected luck.
He skipped the Morning News on its own triumph and went on to the far soberer prose of the triumphant explorer himself:
We were in the Empty Quarter on scientific errands .., no thought in our minds of human history either factual or legendary .., a well-explored country .., bare mountains that no one had ever considered climbing .., a waste of time between one well and the next .., in a land where water is life no one turns aside to climb precipitous heights . . .attention caught by a plane that came twice in five days and spent some time circling low above the mountains . . , occurred to us that some plane had crashed . . , possible rescue . . , conference . . . Rory Mallard and I to search while Daoud went on to the well at Zaruba and brought a load of water back to meet us .., no entrance apparent . . , walls like the Garbh Coire on Braeriach . . , giving up ... Rory .., a track that even a goat would baulk at .., two hours to the ridge .., a valley of astounding beauty . . , green almost shocking . . , kind of tamarisk . . , crumbled architecture reminiscent of Greece rather than Arabia . . , colonnades . . , paved squares and streets . . , oddly metropolitan .., in the position of a small island in an ocean of desert . . , strip cultivation . . , monkey god in stone . . . Wabar . . , volcanic convulsion . . . Wabar . . . Wabar .. .
The Morning News had inset a neat outline map of Arabia with crosses in the appropriate place. Grant lay and stared at it. So that was what Bill Kenrick had seen. He had come out of the shouting heart of the storm, out of the whirling sand and the darkness, and looked down at that green valley lying among the rocks. Not much wonder that he had come back looking "concussed," looking as if his mind were "still back there." He had not quite believed it himself. He had gone back to search; to look for, and eventually look at, this place that appeared on no map. This—this—was his Paradise.
This was what he had been writing about on the blank space of an evening paper.
This was what he had come to England to—
To Heron Lloyd to—
To Heron Lloyd!
He flung the News away and leaped out of bed.
"Tink!" he called as he turned on the bath-water. "Tink, never mind breakfast. Get me some coffee."
"But you can't go out on a morning like this with- just a cup of—"
"Don't argue! Get me some coffee!"
The water roared into the bath. The liar. The Goddamned smooth heartless limelight-hogging liar. The vain vicious murdering liar. How had he done it?
By God, he would see that he hanged for this.
"On what evidence?" said his inner voice, nasty-polite.
"You shut up! I'll get the evidence if I have to discover a whole new continent to find it? Poor boy! Poor boy!" said he, shaking his head over so sad a fat
e. "Sweet Christ, I'll hang for him myself if I can't kill him any other way!"
"Calm down, calm down. That's no mood to interview a suspect in."
"I'm not interviewing a suspect, blast your police mind. I'm going to tell Heron Lloyd what I think of him. I'm not a police-officer until after I've dealt personally with Lloyd."
"You can't hit a man of sixty."
"I'm not going to hit him. I'm going to half murder him. The ethics of hitting or not hitting don't enter into the matter at all."
"He may be worth hanging for but not worth being requested to resign for."
" *I found him delightful,' said he, kind and patronising. The bastard. The smooth vain murdering bastard. The—"
From the wells of his experience he dredged up words to serve his need. But his anger went on consuming him like a furnace.
He flung out of the house after two mouthfuls of toast and three gulps of coffee, and went round to the garage at the double. It was too early to hope for a taxi; the quickest way was to use his car.
Would Lloyd have read the papers yet?
If he did not normally leave the house before eleven o'clock, then surely breakfast could not be until nine. He would like very much to be at 5 Britt Lane before Lloyd opened his morning paper. It would be sweet, consoling sweet, satisfying sweet, to watch Lloyd take the news. He had murdered to keep the secret his own, to ensure that the glory should be his, and now the secret was front-page news and the glory belonged to his rival. Oh, sweet Jesus, let him not have read about it yet.
He rang twice at 5 Britt Lane before his summons was answered, and then it was answered not by the amiable Mahmoud but by a large woman in felt slippers.
"Mr. Lloyd?" he asked.
"Oh, Mr. Lloyd's up in Cumberland for a day or two."
"Cumberland! When did he go to Cumberland?"
"Thursday afternoon."
"When do you expect him back?"
"Oh, they've just gone for a day or two."
"They? Mahmoud too?"