accepted a cigarette and sat down.
‘Get any results to speak of?’
‘Oh, hardly. Not what you’d call results. I’ve sent in my report. All a lot of talky-talky as usual. How’s Lazenby?’
‘Oh, a nuisance as he always is. He’ll never change,’ said Chetwynd.
‘No, that would seem too much to hope for. I haven’t served on anything with Bascombe before. He can be quite fun when he likes.’
‘Can he? I don’t know him very well. Yes. I suppose he can.’
‘Well, well, well. No other news, I suppose?’
‘No, nothing. Nothing I think that would interest you.’
‘You didn’t mention in your letter quite why you wanted to see me.’
‘Oh, just to go over a few things, that’s all. You know, in case you’d brought any special dope home with you. Anything we ought to be prepared for, you know. Questions in the House. Anything like that.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Came home by air, didn’t you? Had a bit of trouble, I gather.’
Stafford Nye put on the face he had been determined to put on beforehand. It was slightly rueful, with a faint tinge of annoyance.
‘Oh, so you heard about that, did you?’ he said. ‘Silly business.’
‘Yes. Yes, must have been.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Stafford Nye, ‘how things always get into the press. There was a paragraph in the stop press this morning.’
‘You’d rather they wouldn’t have, I suppose?’
‘Well, makes me look a bit of an ass, doesn’t it?’ said Stafford Nye. ‘Got to admit it. At my age too!’
‘What happened exactly? I wondered if the report in the paper had been exaggerating.’
‘Well, I suppose they made the most of it, that’s all. You know what these journeys are. Damn boring. There was fog at Geneva so they had to re-route the plane. Then there was two hours’ delay at Frankfurt.’
‘Is that when it happened?’
‘Yes. One’s bored stiff in these airports. Planes coming, planes going. Tannoy going full steam ahead. Flight 302 leaving for Hong Kong, Flight 109 going to Ireland. This, that and the other. People getting up, people leaving. And you just sit there yawning.’
‘What happened exactly?’ said Chetwynd.
‘Well, I’d got a drink in front of me, Pilsner as a matter of fact, then I thought I’d got to get something else to read. I’d read everything I’d got with me so I went over to the counter and bought some wretched paperback or other. Detective story, I think it was, and I bought a woolly animal for one of my nieces. Then I came back, finished my drink, opened my paperback and then I went to sleep.’
‘Yes, I see. You went to sleep.’
‘Well, a very natural thing to do, isn’t it? I suppose they called my flight but if they did I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear it apparently for the best of reasons. I’m capable of going to sleep in an airport any time but I’m also capable of hearing an announcement that concerns me. This time I didn’t. When I woke up, or came to, however you like to put it, I was having a bit of medical attention. Somebody apparently had dropped a Mickey Finn or something or other in my drink. Must have done it when I was away getting the paperback.’
‘Rather an extraordinary things to happen, wasn’t it?’ said Chetwynd.
‘Well, it’s never happened to me before,’ said Stafford Nye. ‘I hope it never will again. It makes you feel an awful fool, you know. Besides having a hangover. There was a doctor and some nurse creature, or something. Anyway, there was no great harm done apparently. My wallet had been pinched with some money in it and my passport. It was awkward of course. Fortunately, I hadn’t got much money. My travellers’ cheques were in an inner pocket. There always has to be a bit of red tape and all that if you lose your passport. Anyway, I had letters and things and identification was not difficult. And in due course things were squared up and I resumed my flight.’
‘Still, very annoying for you,’ said Chetwynd. ‘A person of your status, I mean.’ His tone was disapproving.
‘Yes,’ said Stafford Nye. ‘It doesn’t show me in a very good light, does it? I mean, not as bright as a fellow of my—er—status ought to be.’ The idea seemed to amuse him.
‘Does this often happen, did you find out?’
‘I don’t think it’s a matter of general occurrence. It could be. I suppose any person with a pick-pocket trend could notice a fellow asleep and slip a hand into a pocket, and if he’s accomplished in his profession, get hold of a wallet or a pocket-book or something like that, and hope for some luck.’
‘Pretty awkward to lose a passport.’
‘Yes, I shall have to put in for another one now. Make a lot of explanations, I suppose. As I say, the whole thing’s a damn silly business. And let’s face it, Chetwynd, it doesn’t show me in a very favourable light, does it?’
‘Oh, not your fault, my dear boy, not your fault. It could happen to anybody, anybody at all.’
‘Very nice of you to say so,’ said Stafford Nye, smiling at him agreeably. ‘Teach me a sharp lesson, won’t it?’
‘You don’t think anyone wanted your passport specially?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Stafford Nye. ‘Why should they want my passport? Unless it was a matter of someone who wished to annoy me and that hardly seems likely. Or somebody who took a fancy to my passport photo—and that seems even less likely!’
‘Did you see anyone you knew at this—where did you say you were—Frankfurt?’
‘No, no. Nobody at all.’
‘Talk to anyone?’
‘Not particularly. Said something to a nice fat woman who’d got a small child she was trying to amuse. Came from Wigan, I think. Going to Australia. Don’t remember anybody else.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘There was some woman or other who wanted to know what she did if she wanted to study archaeology in Egypt. Said I didn’t know anything about that. I told her she’d better go and ask the British Museum. And I had a word or two with a man who I think was an anti-vivisectionist. Very passionate about it.’
‘One always feels,’ said Chetwynd, ‘that there might be something behind things like this.’
‘Things like what?’
‘Well, things like what happened to you.’
‘I don’t see what can be behind this,’ said Sir Stafford.
