Twenty-seven

COLIN LAMB’S NARRATIVE

I“You don’t seem to have got much out of that Ramsay woman?” com-plained Colonel Beck.

“There wasn’t much to get.”

“Sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“She’s not an active party?”

“No.”

Beck gave me a searching glance.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“You hoped for more?”

“It doesn’t fill the gap.”

“Well—we’ll have to look elsewhere … give up crescents—eh?”

“Yes.”

“You’re very monosyllabic. Got a hangover?”

“I’m no good at this job,” I said slowly.

“Want me to pat you on the head and say ‘There, there?’”

In spite of myself I laughed.

“That’s better,” said Beck. “Now then, what’s it all about? Girl trouble, Isuppose.”

I shook my head. “It’s been coming on for some time.”

“As a matter of fact I’ve noticed it,” said Beck unexpectedly. “The world’sin a confusing state nowadays. The issues aren’t clear as they used to be.

When discouragement sets in, it’s like dry rot. Whacking great mushroomsbursting through the walls! If that’s so, your usefulness to us is over.

You’ve done some first-class work, boy. Be content with that. Go back tothose damned seaweeds of yours.”

He paused and said: “You really like the beastly things, don’t you?”

“I find the whole subject passionately interesting.”

“I should find it repulsive. Splendid variation in nature, isn’t there?

Tastes, I mean. How’s that patent murder of yours? I bet you the girl didit.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.

Beck shook his finger at me in an admonitory and avuncular manner.

“What I say to you is: ‘Be prepared.’ And I don’t mean it in the Boy Scoutsense.”

I walked down Charing Cross Road deep in thought.

At the tube station I bought a paper.

I read that a woman, supposed to have collapsed in the rush hour at Vic-toria Station yesterday, had been taken to hospital. On arrival there shewas found to have been stabbed. She had died without recovering con-sciousness.

Her name was Mrs. Merlina Rival.