Game Without Rules, page 22
Across one end of the room was stretched an enormous piece of blank white paper pasted onto a backing of plywood. Coming closer, Mr. Behrens saw that six large pieces of lining paper had been joined together. Coming closer still, he saw that the paper was not, as he had supposed, blank. Considerable areas of it were covered with Mr. Calder’s neat, crabbed writing, interspersed with curious symbols and pictures.
“I have been engaged for some weeks,” said Mr. Calder. After a pause he went on, “I fear it may have made me seem unsociable, but I have been engaged in one of the most curious and most important tasks that I have ever undertaken in my life.”
“I can’t understand a word of it.”
“Some of it is in a special shorthand which I use for this particular purpose. Otherwise I couldn’t hope to get it all in.”
“But what is it?”
“I am tracing the genealogy of Prometheus – back to Adam, and down to myself.”
“Down to you?”
“Down to me,” said Mr. Calder. He seemed to be entirely serious.
“But how,” said Mr. Behrens mildly, “can you be sure that you are descended from Prometheus? Of course, I know that if one goes back far enough everyone is descended from everyone else, approximately.”
“There is nothing approximate about this. I have felt for some time that there was royal blood in my veins. But sometimes I have been aware that there is a higher plane than royalty. The plane of divinity.”
Mr. Behrens looked at his old friend, and there was grief in his eyes. “Have you really come to believe this bosh?” he said.
Mr. Calder was not embarrassed.
“It is hard to grasp,” he said, “but that is because you do not have the clue. Curiously enough, I was put on the track by Rasselas—”
The great dog, hearing its name, moved into the room and stood looking up at Mr. Calder. Mr. Calder patted his head absent-mindedly.
“When you consider a dog’s pedigree,” he said, “you realise that it is essential to follow both the male and female lines. The mistake we make in human genealogy is concentrating on the male. Prometheus was no ordinary divinity. He was the inventor of architecture and astronomy, of writing and the use of figures, of prophecy, medicine, navigation, and metal-work. He inherited strength and intelligence from his father, imagination and curiosity from his mother. He bestowed on mankind the gifts of fire – from his father. And from his mother, the gift of hope.”
“His mother’s was the greater gift,” said Mr. Behrens.
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Mr. Behrens said to Mr. Fortescue on the following afternoon.
The meeting took place in one of the group of offices occupied by the Committee for European Coordination in Richmond Terrace, under the shadow of the hideous new Air Ministry building. The third man present was Commander Richard Harcourt, small, compact, dark, and energetic, and recognisable the length of St. James’s as a product of the Royal Navy.
All Mr. Behrens knew about him was that he had had a Greek mother, and had made a big reputation for himself in submarines in the Adriatic during the war – two reasons, no doubt, for his presence on this particular committee.
“The last time I saw him myself,” said Mr. Fortescue, “he spoke somewhat wildly on the subject of classical mythology.”
“Do you think he’s gone broody?” said Commander Harcourt.
Mr. Behrens was familiar enough with the jargon of the Security Service to know what he meant.
“I didn’t detect any ideological slant in his conversation,” he said. “It was quite a generalised form of eccentricity.”
“Basically, I’m sure he’s still sound,” said Mr. Fortescue.
“He may be sound,” said the commander, “but is he still a good security risk?”
The same thought was troubling them all. The store of secrets inside Mr. Calder’s dome-shaped head was such that even a casual overspill would be priceless gleaning for the enemy.
“You’ll have to keep as close an eye on him as you can,” said Mr. Fortescue.
Mr. Behrens travelled sadly back to Lamperdown.
When Mr. Calder and he had retired from active service in MI6 (as it was then called) and had joined Mr. Fortescue’s organisation, they had been encouraged to set up house within a few miles of each other. They would thus be able, as Mr. Fortescue had put it, to give each other covering fire. It was a sensible precaution which had already stood them in good stead more than once.
Mr. Behrens felt the defection of his ally very keenly. He was so silent at dinner that night that even his aunt, who was not given to small talk, noticed it. She supposed, since he had been up twice already that week to see his bank manager, that his troubles must be financial.
In the early hours of the following morning Mr. Behrens got quietly out of bed, put on a pair of flannel trousers that were hanging ready behind the door and pulled a sweater over his head. As an afterthought he opened the drawer of his bedside table and extracted a gun, which he dropped into his trouser pocket.
As he stood in silence in the front hall, he heard again the noise that had summoned him from sleep. It was a scratching – gentle but persistent, as if someone were making repeated but unsuccessful attempts to strike a match.
He walked across and opened the front door. The great dog Rasselas was standing in the misty moonlight. He made no attempt to come in, but when Mr. Behrens moved toward him, the animal sighed and backed away.
“Understood,” said Mr. Behrens. “I’ll have to get some shoes and a coat. Wait here.”
It took them half an hour to climb the hill to Mr. Calder’s cottage. The door was closed but unlatched, and Mr. Behrens went through the place carefully. There was no sign of disturbance. There had been a wood fire in the grate and Mr. Behrens felt the ashes; there was still heat in them.
He went up to Mr. Calder’s bedroom and opened one or two of the drawers. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. He returned to the sitting room, and here he noticed something.
The framed genealogy of Prometheus had disappeared.
Mr. Behrens was at Richmond Terrace by ten o’clock that morning, and since he had telephoned ahead, Mr. Fortescue and Commander Harcourt were waiting for him.
“I’ve shut the cottage up,” said Mr. Behrens, “and told all the tradesmen that he’s been called to the bedside of a sick cousin. His dog is with me for the time being. I thought I should have the devil of a job persuading Rasselas, but oddly enough he came quite quietly.”
Mr. Fortescue nodded. It was the tradition of the Service. When a disaster occurred, you concentrated first on covering up. And this was black disaster.
“He’ll have to be found,” said Commander Harcourt. “Even if he’s just had a brainstorm and wandered off somewhere, we can’t leave him loose.”
“No,” said Mr. Fortescue. That was clear, too. “Is there any indication where he can have gone?”
“I had a word with the station-master at the junction. There’s a very early train for London – it leaves about five in the morning. Takes the milk up and brings the newspapers back. There was a man on it who might easily have been Calder.”
“I have a feeling that London is the place to start,” said Mr. Fortescue. “I’ll get the department onto it. Keep in touch.”
The summons came three days later, after breakfast. It was a glorious morning of high summer, and Mr. Behrens was contemplating a quiet day among his hives when the telephone rang.
“Tottenham Court Road police station,” said Mr. Fortescue. “And bring the dog with you.”
Mr. Behrens found three men in shirt-sleeves in the superintendent’s baking oven of an office – the superintendent himself, Detective Inspector Inskip, and Commander Harcourt. They were studying a large-scale street map as Mr. Behrens came in. The heat, which had been so pleasant in the country, was a heavy burden in London.
“One of our men spotted him in Charlotte Street yesterday evening,” said the Commander. “He lost him, but as Calder seemed to be shopping, it seems likely that he’s hiding out somewhere in the area. That’s the idea we’re working on, anyway.”
The superintendent nodded, even though the whole affair seemed to him to be quite irregular. The man they were looking for had apparently committed no offence, and there was no warrant in existence for his apprehension. Nevertheless his instructions, which he had received personally from the assistant commissioner in the early hours of that morning, were too specific to admit of argument or even of discussion.
“I’ve got men blocking the roads—” He demonstrated on the map. “I gather you’re going in to look for him. Inskip will be with you. He knows the area well, but it won’t be easy to search.”
“We’re hoping the dog will help us,” said the commander.
“Rather you than me,” said the superintendent. “Best get going.”
Mr. Behrens recollected having visited Mr. Calder, some years before, when his old friend had been lying in a private ward of the Woolavington Wing of the Middlesex Hospital suffering from what was described on his medical sheet as “multiple gunshot wounds” (and was, in fact, the aftereffects of a nearly successful attempt by a German student to exterminate him with a home-made bomb). On these visits Mr. Behrens had walked to the hospital from the Tottenham Court Road, through the maze of courts and alleys which lies to the north of Oxford Street. And he had noticed what a curious chunk of Central Europe had settled itself into this small area – a sort of Quartier Latin whose existence was unsuspected by Londoners who kept to the main roads.
The larger shops were mostly tailors, furriers and boot-makers, but there were smaller and more curious trades: wig-makers and button-molders; gilders; glass polishers; key cutters; and bead-stringers. There were shops which sold bath chairs and perambulators, shops which sold harps and shops which sold trusses; bakers; butchers; cut-price wine shops; delicatessen stores; and hundreds of cafés – tiny flyblown places devoted to the fellow nationals of the proprietor – Greeks, Cypriots, Poles, Danzigers.
The heat wave had brought the women out onto the rickety, first-story balconies where they sat in frowsy housecoats and dressing gowns, surveying life as it passed up and down the steaming street in front of their dispassionate eyes; men in cotton singlets and tight trousers, lounging in the cafés or basking in the sun; and, of course, swarms of children.
It was the children who attached themselves to Rasselas. A chattering, expectant covey of them followed him everywhere.
“What’s the point of it?” growled Inspector Inskip. “Are they waiting for the dog to do tricks, or what?”
“Children have always loved Rasselas,” said Mr. Behrens. Where the other two were hot and cross, he was perversely cheerful. He found the gaudy streets, with their dirty shop-fronts and exciting smells, stimulating.
“It seems to me,” said Commander Harcourt, “that we’re on a wild-goose chase. The finest bloodhound in England couldn’t smell out his owner in – this.” He waved his hand at the street ahead.
They had been quartering the area systematically, taking each road in turn, walking down it on one side and up it on the other. Now they had reached the end of Surrey Street, and a choice of two narrow passages lay ahead of them.
“Oh, I think he’ll tell us if Mr. Calder is anywhere about,” said Mr. Behrens. “He doesn’t do it by smell. He does it by instinct.”
“He must have a hell of an instinct to work in these conditions,” said the inspector.
“Let’s take the left-hand one first,” said the commander. “It looks a bit cleaner.”
At the end of the passage, Rasselas paused for the first time of his own accord. He was staring up at the back of the building which lay between them and the parallel passage. Then he swung round and padded off down the pavement. The men followed.
His objective was the other passage, and the house at the end of it. It was a lonely relic of the Blitz, standing like a surviving tooth in an ancient head among the shored-up stumps of its fellows. The ground floor was a shop, but the window was so grimy that it was impossible to tell what merchandise it dealt in. The name above the door was Margolis.
Rasselas sank onto his haunches outside the door, and stared upward. It was a three-story house. The windows were curtained and uncommunicative.
“If he was a game dog,” said the commander, “I should say he was pointing. Do you know anything about this place?”
The inspector said, “An old woman keeps it – a Greek, I think. She’s never given us any trouble.”
Rasselas’ tail had begun to thump gently against the pavement. The children had fallen silent. They looked hopeful. Whatever it was they had come to see was clearly about to happen.
“If we all go in,” said Mr. Behrens, “the lady’ll have a fit. Why don’t you go, Inspector?”
The inspector nodded, pushed the door open and disappeared into the gloomy interior.
Five hot minutes trickled by. Mr. Behrens wiped the perspiration from his forehead. The crowd, he noticed, had grown.
The inspector reappeared. He came up to the other two and said very quietly, “I think it’s our man. He’s got a room on the top storey. I got the old girl to go up and speak to him, but he’s locked his door and he won’t come out.”
“He might come out for me,” said Mr. Behrens. “He’ll know my voice, anyway.”
“Worth a try,” said the commander. “Where the hell did this crowd come from?” There were older people with the children now – dark faces, flashing teeth, bright eyes – all silent, expectant.
“I think it’s the combination of the dog and the inspector,” said Mr. Behrens. “I’d better go up and see if I can’t settle it quietly. We don’t want to start a riot.”
Inside the shop, which was so dark that Mr. Behrens was still unable to see exactly what it sold, he found a large lady, dressed in black.
She gestured upward. “Poor man. He is, I think, touched.”
“I’m afraid he is,” said Mr. Behrens. “We’ll try to get him out with as little trouble as possible. Is this the way?”
There was a door at the back of the shop leading to a flight of linoleum-covered stairs. Mr. Behrens trudged up. His heart was heavy. When he got to the top landing he saw that the door, directly opposite the head of the stairs, was ajar.
He called out, “It’s me, Behrens. Are you in there, Calder?”
From inside the room a voice, which Mr. Behrens barely recognised, said, “Come no nearer, son of Jupiter. Prometheus stands at bay.”
Mr. Behrens walked forward and slowly opened the door. Mr. Calder, his chin fringed with a three-day beard, was sitting in his shirt-sleeves on the edge of the bed. The framed genealogy of Prometheus filled the two walls behind him.
But it was not this that caught and held Mr. Behrens’ eye.
Mr. Calder had an automatic pistol in his hand. Before Mr. Behrens could say another word, Mr. Calder had raised it and pointed it. As the gun went off with a deafening roar, Mr. Behrens went down. The bullet sang through the half open doorway, exploded a pane of glass in the landing window and whined out into the street.
The gun went off again.
Mr. Behrens, who had been crawling rapidly backward, found himself halfway down the top flight of stairs, his chin on a level with the landing floor. He turned his head, and saw Commander Harcourt and Inskip crouching below him.
Outside, the crowd was giving tongue.
“Damn and blast,” said the commander. “This is just exactly what we didn’t want to happen.”
“What sort of gun?” said Inskip.
“A Colt automatic. Eight shots, if the clip’s full.”
“Six to come then,” said the inspector gloomily. “Is he a good shot?”
“He’s a marksman, with any sort of weapon.”
“He missed you.”
“I don’t think he meant to hit me. It was meant as a sort of warning salvo.”
“It’s going to be impossible to rush him,” said the inspector. “We might call out the fire brigade, put up a ladder, and lob a couple of tear-gas bombs through the window.”
The commander said acidly, “Our instructions were to take him with a minimum of fuss. Not the maximum.”
“Can you suggest any other way?”
“Yes,” said the commander. “I can.”
They saw he had a gun in his hand.
“From the top of the stairs, I think I could hit him in the leg before he could hit me.”
“Hitting him in the leg won’t stop him,” said Mr. Behrens. “You’d have to hit him in the head to do that.”
“That might be a solution,” said the commander softly. The two men were lying on the stairs, their faces a few inches from each other.
Mr. Behrens said, “I couldn’t agree to that.”
“Kinder, really,” said the commander. “In the long run.”
Mr. Behrens hesitated.
At that moment something hit them in the back and there was a sudden flurry of movement. Rasselas had cleared their prostrate bodies, bounded along the short landing and disappeared through the door. From inside came a crash.
“Come on!” said Mr. Behrens.
They found Mr. Calder flat on his back, with Rasselas on top of him, trying to lick his face off.
The months that followed were the saddest that Mr. Behrens could remember. The newspapers splashed the story, and then forgot about the siege of Surry Street. Mr. Calder had been removed to an institution near Godalming. His condition had become steadily worse, and no one had been allowed to visit him.
“He wouldn’t know you,” the doctor in charge had said to Mr. Behrens, when he made his third application. “And you wouldn’t enjoy it.”
Mr. Behrens had only seen Mr. Fortescue once. He gathered that Operation Prometheus was proceeding. Commander Harcourt was going in in place of Mr. Calder. Mr. Behrens was too well-trained to ask any further questions.
Eventually his low spirits attracted the attention of his aunt, who suggested that he take a holiday. She said she had heard that the west coast of Italy was very pleasant in the autumn.
