My mind kept on reeling, thunder and violence filling the four walls of senses. The night was alive with delirium and chaos.
With Harley Street physicians, Carnaby Street Mod fashions, Savile Row sanity, the bank known as The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, Petticoat Lane, the marketplace extraordinary, Old Vic, Young Vic, Drury Lane, the Maze at Hampton Court and Derry and Tom's—that rooftop tearoom surrounded by lovely Spanish and Tudor Gardens, loaded with flamingoes and herons, where sparrows flew in through the windows to munch on the crumbs of your last meal. A Paradise on the top of a department store in the heart of Kensington. Where a cuppa was a lasting memory.
And Chancery Lane and Curzon Street in Mayfair.
And Sherlock Holmes of 221 B Baker Street. The marvelous pipe, hawk-nose, and deer-stalker cap just this side of Basil Rathbone. The wonderful old fog, atmosphere, hansom carriages and gaslight. And that sage bit of advice right out of Professor Moriarty's mouth: ". . . always Homes—until the end!" Thank you, George Zucco and Doyle.
Waves of shock and lightning rolled across the glowing, hazy Stoke-Newington ceiling. I teetered between darkness and daylight.
And the last piece of word-marksmanship came to me.
Christianna Brand's superb capsule of character-identification when she had once told me why she had listed herself as C. Brand, Author, in the London telephone book. We'd met at a party given by the Crimewriters Association on Albemarle Street and gotten along just fine, and when she asked me to give her a ring sometime, she told me how her name was listed in the book. Jokingly, I wanted to know why the anonymity of gender. She shuddered and explained about having been pestered with a series of phone calls from perverts who panted and said unprintable things, and I said, "We have lots of them in the States, too" and she replied, and I have never forgotten her words, "Yes, those filthy ringeruppers!" That's what I call untoppable. A Brand of excellence.
That's verbal Robin Hooding of the highest stamp. Annie Oakley King's English. Bullseye phraseology. Would to God that we all had a little of the same, some time. Instead of talking around things, inventing falsehoods. In place of doubletalk and circumlocutory lying. Instead of the Lie in the guise of the Truth.
If we'd had any of that, I wouldn't have been lying in a daze on the hard vulgar ground of Stoke-Newington, waiting for a streetcar.
The sirens were still screaming, the shouts and windows and doors still blending with the thunder of running feet and reverberating noises in the nightmare of the fiery, flaming night, when the tall, looming figure of a P.C. bobbed up before me like a shadowy phantom of the sulphur-tinged darkness. A patrolman constable, immediately identifiable by his high, bell-shaped hat. One of London's boys in blue. And never more welcome in any private operator's career.
"Here—what's this, sir?——"
"A funny thing happened to me on the way to Madame Tussaud's, Constable—" I began, as light-heartedly as ever. But I never did finish what I had to say. "I met this bird who liked me and——"
To my great surprise, I passed out.
Right on the spot. Dead away.
Squatting on the shapely backside of Christine, still holding Desmond Allan Cursitor's limp body over my shoulder, and probably looking, for all the world to see, like an escaped lunatic. A fanatic, at least.
Fainted against a backdrop of flaming sky, burning Stoke-Newington, and a somehow muted battleground of fire, smoke, and complete uproar. Just closed my eyes and went to sleep without so much as a by-your-leave from the startled constable towering above me. He couldn't have had that sort of scene visited upon his beat very often. It was one for the lads down at the station house, all right. Perhaps, even for the boys at the Pub.
As for me, the whole world had ended.
I had copped out.
Without so much as a murmur.
I'd been too long at the Fair.
Much too long. A regular little boy lost. Like Torin Bird.
Like I wanted to tell Noel Coward—it wasn't only mad dogs and Englishmen who went out in the noonday sun.
Noon did too, the poor sap.
And not always for the right reasons . . .
Me. An aware, sophisticated child of the Big City who should have known better. Who should have stood in bed.
Making love to a lady, no matter how dumb she was.
When girls look like Christine, a man ought to be able to overlook a little stupidity. Even when it might blow him into the next world.
Like the man once said, what a way to go.
At least, you could die on the rise.
There are worse things.
TIDBITS OVER
TRAFALGAR SQUARE
□ "How do you like the Landseer lions, sir?"
"We've got the same stone babies outside the Public Library on Fifth Avenue, Superintendent. Skip the guided tour, will you. Tell me how Cursitor is."
"Forgive us, sir, for these rather informal surroundings. I trust you will understand. My superiors felt that if we had invited you down to the Yard, too much interest might be aroused by the wrong parties. There's the newspapermen, of course. And if I may say so, one always can't trust the very people one works with. You see how it is."
"I do indeed. None of us is safe anymore. I repeat—how's Cursitor?"
"The wonder is he's still alive. They broke every ringer of both hands, he's got needle marks all over his torso—not drugs, we think. Simply plain old-fashioned Chinese torture. Your Mr. Morrow and his Sebastian seem to have starved Cursitor. That, or—he simply refused to eat, trying to kill himself that way before he revealed the boy's whereabouts. Nasty business this, right down the line."
"Can I quote you?" I was feeling rotten and taking it out on him. "You just won the Understatement of The Year Award, hands down. Nasty? It stinks to high heaven. And beyond. And he's not my Mr. Morrow, either. He doesn't belong to anybody but Moscow, and then who knows?"
"You may be right about that too, I'm afraid. We haven't seen the end of this, sir. If he manages to get the boy out of the country—"
"How do you know he hasn't already?"
"He can't have unless he's invisible. Everything is covered. The sea, the air, the land—no, he's still here. Lying low, waiting for his chance. We know that much, sir. Trust me."
"What choice do I have, Gridley?"
"Oh, I dunno, sir. You have many, actually, if you think about it."
I had been thinking plenty, already. Thinking too much.
There we were, me and Superintendent Gridley and his Detective Allister, lolling in the very center of Trafalgar Square on the morning of the next day. Another sunless, looking-like-rain London day. Gridley had not been at all as I had imagined in that hospital room of long ago. He was not too tall, either. Just a wedge-shouldered, blunt-faced man with no mustache to see but a plain, leathery mien that bespoke efficiency, bulldog pertinacity, and maybe old-fashioned guts. He wasn't the sleuth of the thrillers. He looked more like a truckdriver on my side of the ocean. As for Detective Allister, standing off about ten yards from us, topcoated and slouch-hatted, pretending to feed one of the countless pigeons that make the Square their home, he was even more of a letdown. A huge, round-shouldered, very fat man who looked more like a candidate for Weight Watchers than a pride of the Force. I'd been right about only one thing. There was a cold pipe clenched between his jaws. My nose hadn't lied in that hospital room. The pipe was a Sherlock Holmes special.
Nelson's Column, with the great Horatio on the high pillar almost two hundred feet above us, dominated the Square. The two fountains in each upper corner had drawn their usual quota of sight-seers, lolling students, and idlers. The National Gallery building, directly above, overlooking Trafalgar, had been the familiar magnet for red busloads of tourists. Yet the area was less crowded than customary; the pigeons, the Superintendent, Allister, and myself were among a handful of customers that morning. Not that there is anything to sell in Trafalgar Square. Except maybe ideas, dreams, Ban-the-Bomb programs, Peace S
it-Ins, and Indian rallies. It was the meeting place for anything political, as Piccadilly Circus was the meeting place for anything pleasurable. The great stone lions at Nelson's pedestaled feet were facing toward Whitehall and St. James's and New Scotland Yard, as if considering the wisdom of breaking loose and devouring things. The Square is on a rise of ground which suddenly slopes down into all those historical blocks and squares that lead to Westminster, the House of Parliament. I could see Big Ben, that wonderful old clock, rising on the horizon, like a wondrously enormous toy. It was my favorite London sight. I guess I'll always have a soft spot for clocks, thanks to my name.
Time for me, too, is always something of the essence.
There just never seems to be enough of it. For anybody. Or anything. And maybe for Desmond Allan Cursitor there was no time left at all.
The sands had been running out of his glass, steadily.
"I say, Mr. Noon—are you all right, sir?"
"Oh—sorry. Just thinking. Have you notified my country?"
"About Mr. Cursitor? Of course. But very very hush-hush. The Prime Minister got in touch with your President. Beyond that, nothing. I have no idea when they will publish the news for the world to know. You see, we don't know very much either, sir, about why Mr. Cursitor was here. Why they wanted him. But we did manage to get something of a statement from him sometime early this morning. We felt we ought to do everything we could to find Torin Bird."
"Then he'll live? Good. That's a relief in spite of everything that's gone wrong. Did my President venture any information about me at all? Or was it strictly that old dodge—No Comment?"
Superintendent Gridley's foxy old eyes were unreadable.
"Only that we were to cooperate with you in every way. And that he would get in touch with you soon enough. That suit you, sir?"
"Barely. But it will have to do. Now, would you mind bringing me up to date on a few things? I went to sleep in Stoke-Newington, sitting on a woman and hanging onto a man, and I woke up this morning at the Regent Palace with Allister standing guard outside my door. After we had some kippers and eggs in Piccadilly, he brought me here. You know that boy is a regular clam? He wouldn't tell me anything other than that I was seeing you for a pow-wow. I'm spoiling for information, Superintendent. So give."
"Allister had his instructions. He is a good man because he follows instructions to the letter. He didn't win his spurs breaking the rules, you see. But—enough of that. What is it you wish to know?"
"Question-and-Answer technique, eh? Okay. It'll do as well as any long speeches from you. Who was the girl, and what's happened to her?"
Superintendent Gridley sighed. He looked pained.
"Bad woman, that. Why are they always so young? Pity."
"Agreed. But answer the questions."
"Miss Christine Clearlake," he said, without dropping a stitch. "Stage name, obviously. Works as a stripper in most of the clubs in Soho. Aspirations for the theatre, but Dame Edith need never fear. The young woman had no talent to speak of, save of the apparent kind. The nearest we can come to her meeting with Malvolio Morrow is that he encountered her one evening when she was gambling her earnings at the Palm Beach Casino. You may not know, but that would be a bit steep for the Christine Clearlakes of our world. Very fashionable club in Berkeley Street, sir, should you ever want to go there. At any rate, Mr. Morrow began his relationship with her there. Oh, not a sexual one. Our Mr. Morrow is a homosexual, it appears. But he seems to have found Miss Clearlake most useful in his affairs in London. Such as this latest operation with the Cursitor thing. So you see—she was not unknown to us. Thanks to your efforts, holding her until P. C. Miller arrived, she is now safely behind bars. There is nothing more to be learned from her, I fear. Merely a dupe, a tool, for a very clever master spy. She knows absolutely nothing about his affairs. It was enough for her that he paid her money and gave her gifts from time to time." The Superintendent favored me with a curious half-smile. "She left me with a bit of a message for you, sir, should I see you again. Do you care to know what that message is?"
"Hit me," I said, expecting the worst. The woman scorned, etcetera.
"She told me to tell you that she's grateful about the bomb. You being right and saving her life. And also, she bears you no ill will for coshing her. But she did say something else that is rather indecipherable to me, but I expect you'll understand. Her exact wording was, if memory serves—'ten inches, my foot!' Do you know what she meant by that, sir? Is it a code of some kind?"
I smiled, shaking my head. There are laughs, even in espionage.
"It only means that Christine Clearlake is not as dumb as I thought she was. Forget it, Superintendent. Private joke, you might say."
"Well," he shrugged, "they can't all be Maralee Mitchums, can they? I suppose if any woman is going to be so —ah—endowed, she must be inevitably short-changed somewhere along the line."
"Inevitably," I agreed. "What about Sebastian?"
He pushed his own slouch hat back on his head and sighed again.
"You are referring, of course, to the Battle of Albert Memorial. I only connected Sebastian with you and Mr. Morrow when reports came into my desk yesterday. It took two P.C.'s and about several strongarmed youths to pin him down after you fled by taxi with the boy. But it all ended very badly. Sebastian broke away from the arresting officers, cuffs and all, as he was being led out of the park and stepped directly in front of a Number Seventy-three bus. Killed instantly. There'll be no more to learn from him unless some more comes in on his file which we sent out over the teletype; I suspect Interpol and the others will have all sorts of spicy details about Mr. Sebastian. A bad actor, that one. I know the type."
"And Troy O'Connell? The Mystery Man. Anything on him at all?"
"Not a whisper, sir. He could be Mr. X, if you come right down to it—perhaps when Mr. Cursitor is up to another interview, we may learn a bit more. As it stands right now, our major problem is Mr. Morrow and Torin Bird. Lord only knows where they are right now."
"Amen, Superintendent. What kind of bomb did Morrow plant in that house——and how bad was it?" That was still bothering me.
"A small thermite bomb, sir, as near as the Lab could make it. Just enough to blow the building, but then the fire was the main thing, you see. Fortunately no one was killed. Just a few bumped noses, skinned arms and legs, and a great deal of shock. Some damage to the surrounding houses, but the Stoke-Newington Fire Department managed to keep things from getting out of hand. Morrow must have used a small watch device. Very common but effective; bits and pieces of the mechanism were found. It's in all the papers, sir. But naturally, we kept the important facts to ourselves. Big Fire, Suspected Arson—that sort of muck—they're already blaming the teenagers for it, worse luck."
"Don't they always? They happen to be this year's Fall Guys as far as the last generation is concerned. But it will pass, Superintendent, it will pass. The right people will get blamed, sooner or later."
"If you say so, sir. Now about Mr. Cursitor's statement. I do have a transcript with me, and I think you should read it. He couldn't do much talking, you see, but he talked enough before he was given another sedative. It may explain much that might be puzzling you, Mr. Noon."
He smiled almost cheerily, tucked back the broad lapel of his coat, and reached into an inner pocket. As he produced the long, carefully folded sheaf of thin tissue paper, obviously a copy of some kind, Detective Allister had come wandering over, brushing his hands. Nearby, at the curved rim of one of the lovely Trafalgar fountains, a youthful girl and boy hippie were locked in each other's arms, laughing and singing. Allister looked about as jovial as a large hippo hungry for a meal.
A small group of walking pigeons, scavenging for crumbs, scattered as his big, fat body lumbered toward us. Detective Allister stared right through me as he went by, but out of the side of his mouth, he had something for his Superintendent. "Area clear, sir," he said tightly. "A stroll around the Square is in order, I think." The pipe
was like a prow.
"Mmmm," Superintendent Gridley grunted, and handed over the statement of Desmond Allan Cursitor. I took it from him and sat down on the low stone wall and faced toward the Nelson Monument. Off to the left and beyond, the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Fields church thrust upward into the grey, moody sky. Buses, all makes of cars, and a steady stream of passersby moved around the Square in all directions. London was humming with activity. It was a working day, close to twelve o'clock, but the main centers of the city always seemed to be thriving. The mark of a truly cosmopolitan town.
I forgot about all that and slowly flipped open the important sheet in my fingers. Whatever was left to the riddle of Torin Bird and Desmond Allan Cursitor might be in my hands right then and there. While Allister prowled on patrol, Superintendent Gridley studied the normal panorama of the vicinity, and pigeons fluttered and searched, I read on. Avidly.
The transcription was typewritten, single-spaced, and filled with more information than the Encyclopaedia Britanica. A bonanza of poop.
And I knew what I had to know. What I should have known in D.C.
The proof glistened and shone beneath my eyes in unwavering, solid, black-typewriter-ribbon ink. It was inescapable. It was TNT all the way.
And it had to be true. Cursitor had given the word. His word.
Delirium or no, brainwashed or not, he all unconsciously filled out a clean bill of health for Torin Bird and put the seal of approval on that Empire State Building tall story the kid had dished out in the shadows of the Tower of London only yesterday. An explosion and a disappearance ago.
I remembered Cursitor's diary, remembered the lines, recalled the tone, seeing even now in my mind's eye the words he had used to describe his fear of O'Connell, his doubts about going back to London, his apprehension about the future. Small wonder about that now. The man who had also liked to put down his opinions of the films he had viewed on board the palatial QE2 was a breed apart, all right. And the President had taken advantage of him, just as he had of me. The mixture as before.
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