brought him in. “I didn’t mean to upset him. I never thought he’d take it seriously and try to harm himself this way.”
The livid eyes peered secretly down. A sharply drawn breath, again the knife blade of fear. The hands seized the suffocating afghan, thrust it back in its place as the silent feet slipped back through the darkened room and out into the empty hall. The door closed quietly. No one would come. No one ever came. There would be no one until Pegott brought the breakfast tray in the morning—later than to any other room, because the little grey man did not matter. He would stay there, silent and motionless, until it was safe to return. In the morning they would find him down there in the street.
“I never thought he’d do himself harm.” Then Miss Grimstead could weep and explain he really had looked ever so seedy lately. It was her constant explanation for tenants who vacated their flats, whether they married, emigrated to South Africa, or died—it made no difference. They had looked very seedy. Miss Grimstead always recalled it vividly.
4
AS DAN MCGRATH’S taxi skidded into Godolphin Square the driver stopped talking long enough to sound his horn viciously at a man who had slipped out of the shadowy darkness almost under the wheels.
“Number Four you said, sir?” He drew up at the curb and went round to open the door. “And as I was telling the wife just this morning, you voted for the beggars, I didn’t.”
He was a voluble man with politico-domestic grievances; Dan McGrath was an American newly arrived and interested. “—now in America, sir, it’s my understanding . . .”
Dan McGrath listened, the two of them smoking his cigarettes, standing together on the curb in front of Number 4 Godolphin Square, four storeys beneath the stone coping overhead. When he finally came in, Mason the night porter opened the iron grille into the lift, and dropped both arms to his sides in impotent frustration as Miss Myrtle Grimstead came trippingly toward them.
“Oh, Mr. McGrath, I can’t think what you’ll say.” Miss Grimstead was at her most ingratiating worst. “I was so sure one of my people was going on holiday. He’s looked so very seedy lately I’d quite got it into my head he’d be off to the sea for a bit of rest and fresh air.” Her bright toothy smile remained bright, but there was a calculating flicker in her eye that Dan McGrath could hardly miss. “Of course, there may be some mistake. He tells me he’s a friend of yours . . .”
“Who—” Dan McGrath caught himself quickly. “Oh, the little—Mr. Pinkerton. Sure, he’s my pal. Known him for years.” He smiled at Miss Grimstead with easy assurance. In the face of her disparaging skepticism he would have claimed Mr. Pinkerton as brother in arms or in nature. “If it’s his room you were going to give me, skip it. Any place suits me so long as it’s got a bunk in it.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. McGrath.” Miss Grimstead covered her disappointment with a shake of her bright curls. “That is kind of you. You mustn’t think I was trying to inconvenience dear Mr. Pinkerton. He’s such a sweet old thing, so shy and so anxious never to make any trouble. Well, good night, Mr. McGrath. We do like people to be as comfortable as possible, especially the Americans. Poor England . . .”
“Don’t worry about me, Miss Grimstead. Good night.”
The porter stood aside for him to come into the lift.
“Not tryin’ to inconvenience ’im, not ’er she ain’t. Not always tryin’ to get ’im out because ’e’s a poor connection of the owner and likely to peach on ’er, she ain’t, poor little blighter.”
He stopped the car. “ ’Ere you are, sir.”
It was a small airless cupboard at the end of the transverse hall opposite Mr. Pinkerton, ventilated by a pull-up oblong of glass set in the sloping roof. It had a bed and washstand with crockery basin and tall blue hot water jug, a chair, and a small table with a lamp on it, attached by a long cord to the single drop light from the ceiling. From Mr. Pinkerton’s room probably, Dan McGrath thought with a smile.
“It ain’t much,” Mason said. “Mr. Pinkerton’s opposite, next the bath and w. c. You share it with ’im—’im and the chef when ’e sleeps in. Chef’s got the best room. Got to mind ’im, sir.” He touched his temple significantly. “She’d not ask ’im to move out, not ’er, and ’im not sleeping in more than ’alf the time. Kid gloves is what she ’andles ’im with, ’im and the valet.”
Dan glanced along the hall at Mr. Pinkerton’s closed door. “This suits me dandy,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’ve made a lot of trouble.” He took a pound note out of his pocket and handed it to Mason. “Good night.”
He closed the door, tossed his hat and raincoat on the chair and went over to feel the bed. It was okay. For a moment he had an impulse to drop into it and sleep through the rest of his first night in London. There was no reason why he shouldn’t. Twenty-four hours from home in one sense, a lifetime in another, he had reached the first step to his goal more quickly by far than he had hoped when he stepped onto the plane, infinitely more quickly than he had despairingly thought as he stood in front of the ruined house that was the only tangible thread he had to lead him back to her. He hadn’t even known her name then, much less how to go about finding her, if she was still alive. Standing in front of the blasted remains of the house she’d lived in, the sudden agony of emptiness that hit him squarely in the pit of the stomach had been almost intolerable. Then the little guy had showed up. Showed up, and almost got kicked out of his room for his pains.
Dan McGrath glanced at his watch. It was almost nine o’clock—not too late, he guessed, to drop in on an old friend. He reached into his pocket to get a cigarette and pulled out a sheet of paper. It was a telegram from his father, delivered to him when the plane landed. He opened it and read it again.
LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP. BUT IF YOU DECIDE TO LEAP ALL OUR BEST WISHES AND LOVE. DAD.
Something smarted sharply along his upper eyelids for an instant. He knew they’d hoped he’d marry the girl next door, and he would have, probably, if it hadn’t been for that night six years ago on the steps of the Underground. It was a long time for an image to hold, the image of a face white and tense at first, in the dreary darkness, crowded with people coming home from work, reeking with antiseptics and the heavy acrid odor of cordite and the pungent smell of human fear. With his arm around her he could feel the bursting beat of her heart, pounding through her blue coat under his hand—just a kid, scared out of her wits. It was a long time to hold the image of the dismayed widening of her blue-black eyes as she realized she was clinging to him and that he had his arm around her, and her sudden crystal peal of laughter when she let go and he did not. He remembered her voice and the warmth of her slight body as they sat close together until the all-clear sounded, the curly tendrils of her clean-smelling hair tickling his flushed cheek. And stumbling home with her after it was all over, to Number 22 Godolphin Square.
It was a long time to hold the image of love that was in his heart that night. There had been times when he thought he had lost it, and times when he no longer believed in its validity as anything but an adolescent dream. It was his twentieth brithday, that night, and he’d come to London from camp to celebrate, and found himself alone and homesick, homesick as hell. It was easy to say that was the reason he thought he’d fallen in love. And he could be all wet, of course. Six years was a long-time period. It was cockeyed to remember a kid’s conversation for six years. About her father, for instance. Her father had gone away, but some day he’d come back. She didn’t remember him, or wasn’t sure; she might only remember her mother telling her about him. But she was sure he’d come back to them—or, if he didn’t, she would go and find him when the war was over. And that night, he was going
