Game Without Rules (28 page)

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.

“How can I possibly go?” said Mr. Behrens. “I can’t leave Rasselas. And he’d be too much for you.”

“Put him in a kennel”

“A kennel, indeed. What an idea!”

“Other people put their dogs in kennels when they go abroad.”

“Rasselas isn’t an ordinary dog.”

Every time his name was mentioned, the great golden creature looked at the speakers. During all that time he had shown no signs of restlessness. He had merely been passive. It was as if he was waiting for some event, and content to wait patiently.

“If you won’t go,” said his aunt, “I will. You’re no pleasure to live with at the moment.”

And she packed her bags the very next morning and departed for Rapallo.

Late the following afternoon, Mr. Behrens was sitting in his study contemplating an empty future, when the bell rang. There was a device in the front door through which Mr. Behrens could view his visitors before admitting them. Peering through it, he was astounded to find himself looking into the sagacious face of Mr. Fortescue.