‘Yes, I think he was. Somebody’s been looking for something. All very nice and tidily arranged again. Not the way I left it. All right, he was looking for something. What was he looking for?’
‘I’m not sure myself,’ said Horsham, slowly. ‘I wish I was. There’s something going on—somewhere. There are bits of it sticking out, you know, like a badly done up parcel. You get a peep here and a peep there. One moment you think it’s going on at the Bayreuth Festival and the next minute you think it’s tucking out of a South American estancia and then you get a bit of a lead in the USA. There’s a lot of nasty business going on in different places, working up to something. Maybe politics, maybe something quite different from politics. It’s probably money.’ He added: ‘You know Mr Robinson, don’t you? Or rather Mr Robinson knows you, I think he said.’
‘Robinson?’ Sir Stafford Nye considered. ‘Robinson. Nice English name.’ He looked across to Horsham. ‘Large, yellow face?’ he said. ‘Fat? Finger in financial pies generally?’ He asked: ‘Is he, too, on the side of the angels—is that what you’re telling me?’
‘I don’t know about angels,’ said Henry Horsham. ‘He’s pulled us out of a hole in this country more than once. People like Mr Chetwynd don’t go for him much. Think he’s too expensive, I suppose. Inclined to be a mean man, Mr Chetwynd. A great one for making enemies in the wrong place.’
‘One used to say “Poor but honest”,’ said Sir Stafford Nye thoughtfully. ‘I take it that you would put it differently. You would describe our Mr Robinson as expensive but honest. Or shall we put it, honest but expensive.’ He sighed. ‘I wish you could tell me what all this is about,’ he said plaintively. ‘Here I seem to be mixed up in something and no idea what it is.’ He looked at Henry Horsham hopefully, but Horsham shook his head.
‘None of us knows. Not exactly,’ he said.
‘What am I supposed to have got hidden here that someone comes fiddling and looking for?’
‘Frankly, I haven’t the least idea, Sir Stafford.’
‘Well, that’s a pity because I haven’t either.’
‘As far as you know you haven’t got anything. Nobody gave you anything to keep, to take anywhere, to look after?’
‘Nothing whatsoever. If you mean Mary Ann, she said she wanted her life saved, that’s all.’
‘And unless there’s a paragraph in the evening papers, you have saved her life.’
‘It seems rather the end of the chapter, doesn’t it? A pity. My curiosity is rising. I find I want to know very much what’s going to happen next. All you people seem very pessimistic.’
‘Frankly, we are. Things are going badly in this country. Can you wonder?’
‘I know what you mean. I sometimes wonder myself—’
‘Do you mind if I tell you something, old man?’ said Eric Pugh.
Sir Stafford Nye looked at him. He had known Eric Pugh for a good many years. They had not been close friends. Old Eric, or so Sir Stafford thought, was rather a boring friend. He was, on the other hand, faithful. And he was the type of man who, though not amusing, had a knack of knowing things. People said things to him and he remembered what they said and stored them up. Sometimes he could push out a useful bit of information.
‘Come back from that Malay Conference, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Sir Stafford.
‘Anything particular turn up there?’
‘Just the usual,’ said Sir Stafford.
‘Oh. I wondered if something had—well, you know what I mean. Anything had occurred to put the cat among the pigeons.’
‘What, at the Conference? No, just painfully predictable. Everyone said just what you thought they’d say only they said it unfortunately at rather greater length than you could have imagined possible. I don’t know why I go on these things.’
Eric Pugh made a rather tedious remark or two as to what the Chinese were really up to.
‘I don’t think they’re really up to anything,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘All the usual rumours, you know, about the diseases poor old Mao has got and who’s intriguing against him and why.’
‘And what about the Arab-Israeli business?’
‘That’s proceeding according to plan also. Their plan, that is to say. And anyway, what’s that got to do with Malaya?’
‘Well, I didn’t really mean so much Malaya.’
‘You’re looking rather like the Mock Turtle,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘“Soup of the evening, beautiful soup.” Wherefore this gloom?’
‘Well, I just wondered if you’d—you’ll forgive me, won’t you?—I mean you haven’t done anything to blot your copybook, have you, in any way?’
‘Me?’ said Sir Stafford, looking highly surprised.
‘Well, you know what you’re like, Staff. You like giving people a jolt sometimes, don’t you?’
‘I have behaved impeccably of late,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘What have you been hearing about me?’
‘I hear there was some trouble about something that happened in a plane on your way home.’
‘Oh?’ Who did you hear that from?’
‘Well, you know, I saw old Cartison.’
‘Terrible old bore. Always imagining things that haven’t happened.’
‘Yes, I know. I know he is like that. But he was just saying that somebody or other—Winterton, at least—seemed to think you’d been up to something.’
‘Up to something? I wish I had,’ said Sir Stafford Nye.
‘There’s some espionage racket going on somewhere and he got a bit worried about certain people.’
‘What do they think I am—another Philby, something of that kind?’
‘You know you’re very unwise sometimes in the things you say, the things you make jokes about.’
‘It’s very hard to resist sometimes,’ his friend told him. ‘All these politicians and diplomats and the rest of them. They’re so bloody solemn. You’d like to give them a bit of a stir up now and again.’
‘Your sense of fun is very distorted, my boy. It really is. I worry about you sometimes. They wanted to ask you some questions about something that happened on the flight back and they seem to think that you didn’t, well—that perhaps you didn’t exactly speak the truth about it all.’
‘Ah, that’s what they think, is it? Interesting. I think I must work that up a bit.’
‘Now don’t do anything rash.’
‘I must have my moments of fun sometimes.’
‘Look here, old fellow, you don’t want to go and ruin your career just by indulging your sense of humour.’
‘I am quickly coming to the conclusion that there is nothing so boring as having a career.’
‘I know, I know. You are always inclined to take that point of view, and you haven’t got on as far as you ought to have, you know. You were in the running for Vienna at one time. I don’t like to see you muck up things.’