‘Never,’ I replied. ‘He certainly isn’t a neighbour of mine. Was he English?’

‘I thought so. Did you expect him not to be English?’

I said I wasn’t answering any of his innocent questions, that he was, after all, an Officer of the Court, and that I didn’t wish to involve him.

‘Tell me this much,’ he said. ‘Have you been abroad in the employ of our government?’

‘No, on my own business. But I have to disappear.’

‘You shouldn’t think of the police as tactless,’ he reminded me gently. ‘A man in your position is protected without question. You’ve been abroad so much that I don’t think you have ever realized the power of your name. You’re automatically trusted, you see.’

I told him that I knew as much of my own people as he did—perhaps more, since I had been an exile long enough to see them from the outside. But I had to vanish. There was a risk that I might be disgraced.

A nasty word, that. I am not disgraced, and I will not feel it.

‘Can I vanish? Financially, I mean?’ I asked him. ‘You have my power of attorney and you know more of my affairs than I do myself. Can you go on handling my estate if I am never heard of again?’

‘So long as I know you are alive.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘A postcard this time next year will do.’

‘X marks my window, and this is a palm tree?’

‘Quite sufficient if in your own handwriting. You needn’t even sign it.’

‘Mightn’t you be asked for proof?’ I enquired.

‘No. If I say you are alive, why the devil should it ever be questioned? But don’t leave me without a postcard from time to time. You mustn’t put me in the position of maintaining what might be a lie.’

I told him that if he ever got one postcard, he’d probably get a lot more; it was my ever living to write the first that was doubtful.

He blew up and told me I was absurd. He mingled abuse with affection in a way I hadn’t heard since my father died. I didn’t think he would take my disappearance so hard; I suppose he is as fond of me, after all, as I am of him, and that’s saying a lot. He begged me again to let him talk to the police. I had no idea, he insisted, of the number and the subtle beauty of the strings that could be pulled.

I could only say I was awfully sorry, and after a silence I told him I wanted five thousand pounds in cash.

He produced my deed box and accounts. I had a balance of three thousand at the bank; he wrote his own cheque for the other two. That was like him—no nonsense about waiting for sales of stock or arranging an overdraft.

‘Shall we go out and lunch while the boy is at the Bank?’ he suggested.

‘I think I’ll leave here only once,’ I said.

‘You might be watched? Well, we’ll soon settle that.’

He sent for Peale, a grey little man in a grey little suit whom I had only seen emptying the waste-paper baskets or fetching cups of tea.

‘Anybody taking an interest in us, Peale?’

‘There is a person in the gardens between Remnant Street and here feeding the birds. He is not very successful with them, sir’—Peale permitted himself a dry chuckle—‘in spite of the fact that he has been there for the past week during office hours. And I understand from Pruce & Fothergill that there are two other persons in Newman’s Row. One of them is waiting for a lady to come out of their offices—a matrimonial case, I believe. The other is not known to us, and was observed to be in communication with the pigeon-man, sir, as soon as this gentleman emerged from his taxi.’

Saul thanked him, and sent him out to fetch us some beer and a cold bird.

I asked where he watched from, having a vague picture of Peale hanging over the parapet of the roof when he had nothing better to do.

‘Good God, he doesn’t watch!’ exclaimed Saul, as if I had suggested a major impropriety. ‘He just knows all the private detectives who are likely to be hanging around Lincoln’s Inn Fields—on very good terms with them, I believe. They have to have a drink occasionally, and then they ask Peale or his counterpart in some other firm to keep his eyes open. When they see anyone who is not a member of the Trades Union, so to speak, they all know it.’

Peale came back with the lunch, and a packet of information straight from the counter of the saloon bar. The bird-man had been showing great interest in our windows and had twice telephoned. The chap in Newman’s Row had hailed my taxi as it drove away. He would be able to trace me back to Harley Street and to the clothes shop, where, by a little adroit questioning, he could make an excuse to see the suit I discarded; my identification would be complete. It didn’t much matter, since the watchers already had a strong suspicion that I was their man.

Peale couldn’t tell us whether another watcher had been posted in Newman’s Row or whether the other exits from Lincoln’s Inn Fields were watched. I was certain that they were, and complained to Saul that all respectable firms of solicitors (who deal with far more scabrous affairs than the crooked) should have a back door. He replied that they weren’t such fools as they looked, and that Peale could take me into Lincoln’s Inn or the Law Courts and lose me completely.

Perhaps I should have trusted them; but I felt that, while their tricks might be good enough to lose a single private detective, I shouldn’t be allowed to escape so easily. I decided to throw off the hunt in my own way.

When I kept my gloves on to eat, Saul forgot his official discretion and became an anxious friend. I think he suspected what had happened to me, though not why it had happened. I had to beg him to leave the whole subject alone.

After lunch, I signed a number of documents to tidy up loose ends, and we blocked out a plan I had often discussed with him of forming a sort of Tenants’ Co-operative Society. Since I never make a penny out of the land, I thought they might as well pay rent to themselves, do their own repairs, and advance their own loans, with the right to purchase their own land by instalments at a price fixed by the committee. I hope it works. At any rate Saul and my land agent will keep them from quarrelling among themselves. I have no other dependants.

Then I told him something of the fisherman, and passed on the address that he had given me; we arranged for an income to be paid where it would do the most good—a discreet trust that couldn’t conceivably be traced to me. It appeared to come from the estate of a recently defunct old lady who had left the bulk of her money to an institution for inoculating parrots against psittacosis, and the rest to any charitable object that Saul, as sole trustee, might direct.

There was nothing further to be done but arrange my cash in a body belt, and say good-bye. I asked him, if at any time a coroner sat on my body and brought in a verdict of suicide, not to believe it, but to make no attempt to reopen the case.

Peale walked with me across the square and into Kings-way by Gate Street. I observed that we were followed by a tall, inoffensive fellow in a dirty mackintosh and shabby felt hat, who was the bird-man. He looked the part. We also caught sight of a cheerful military man in Remnant Street, wearing a coat cut for riding and trousers narrower than were fashionable, whom Peale at once recognized as Major Quive-Smith. So I knew two at least whom I must throw off my track.

We parted at Holborn underground station, and I took a shilling ticket with which I could travel to the remotest end of London. The bird-man had got ahead of me. I passed him on the level of the Central London, and went down the escalator to the west-bound Piccadilly Tube. Ten seconds after I reached the platform, Major Quive-Smith also appeared upon it. He was gazing at the advertisements and grinning at the comic ones, as if he hadn’t been in London for a year.

I pretended I had forgotten something, and shot out of the exit, up the stairs and down a corridor to the north-bound platform. No train was in. Even if there had been a train, the Major was too close behind for me to catch it and leave him standing.