A Perfect Spy

“Well, sir, it seems that your old school friend Mr. Magnus Pym has disappeared. They’re looking into everyone who might have knowledge of his whereabouts. That will include you naturally.”

Sir Kenneth’s eye lifted to the door.

“Something out there bothering you, sir?” said Brotherhood.

Sir Kenneth rose, went to the door and pulled it open. Brotherhood heard a scuffle of footsteps on the stairs but he was too late to see who it was, though he jostled Sir Kenneth aside in his haste to look.

“Steggie, I want you to go to the Albion ahead of me,” Sir Kenneth called into the well. “Go now. I’ll join you later. I don’t want him hearing this stuff,” he told Brotherhood as he closed the door. “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”

“With his record I don’t blame you,” said Brotherhood. “Mind if I look upstairs now we’re standing?”

“Yes, I damn well do. And don’t lay hands on me again. I don’t fancy you. Got a warrant?”

“No.”

Resuming his chair, Sir Kenneth took a spent matchstick from the pocket of his smoking jacket and set to work on his fingernails with its charred end. “Get a warrant,” he advised. “Get a warrant and I might let you look. Other hand I mightn’t.”

“Is he here?” said Brotherhood.

“Who?”

“Pym.”

“Don’t know. Didn’t hear. Who’s Pym?”

Brotherhood was still standing. He was unnaturally pale, and it took him a moment to steady his voice before he spoke again.

“I’ve got a deal for you,” he said.

Sir Kenneth still did not hear.

“Hand him over to me. You go upstairs. Or you ring him. You do whatever you’ve agreed to do between you. And you hand him over to me. In return I’ll keep your name out of it, and Steggie’s name out of it. The alternative is ‘Baronet M.P. shelters very old friend on the run.’ It’s also a serious possibility that you will be charged as an accomplice. How old is Steggie?”

“Old enough.”

“How old was he when he started here?”

“Look it up. Don’t know.”

“I’m Pym’s friend too. There are worse people than me coming looking for him. Ask him. If he agrees, I agree. I’ll keep your name out of it. Just give him to me and you and Steggie need never hear from him or me again.”

“Sounds to me as though you’ve more to lose than we have,” said Sir Kenneth, surveying the results of his manicure.

“I doubt it.”

“Question of what we’ve all got left, I suppose. Can’t lose what you haven’t got. Can’t miss what you don’t care about. Can’t sell what isn’t yours.”

“Pym can, apparently,” said Brotherhood. “He’s been selling his nation’s secrets by the looks of it.”

Sir Kenneth continued to admire his fingernails. “For money?”

“Probably.”

Sir Kenneth shook his head. “Didn’t care about money. Love was all he cared about. Didn’t know where to find it. Clown really. Tried too hard.”

“Meanwhile he’s wandering around England with a lot of papers that aren’t his to give away, and you and I are supposed to be patriotic Englishmen.”

“Lot of chaps do a lot of things they shouldn’t do. That’s when they need their chums.”

“He wrote to his son about you. Do you know that? Some drivel about a penknife. Does that ring a bell?”

“Matter of fact it does.”

“Who’s Poppy?”

“Never heard of her.”

“Or him?”

“Nice thought, but no.”

“Wentworth?”

“Never been there. Hate the place. What about it?”

“There was a girl called Sabina he apparently got caught up with in Austria. He ever mention her?”

“Not that I remember. Pym got caught up with a lot of girls. Not that it did him much good.”

“He rang you, didn’t he? On Monday night, from a callbox.”

With startling abruptness, Sir Kenneth flung up one arm in pleasure and gave a hoot of merriment. “Pissed out of his skull,” he declared, very loud. “Ossified. Haven’t heard him so pissed since Oxford when six of us put away a case of his father’s port. Pretended some queen from Merton gave it to him, I don’t know why. There weren’t any queens in Merton in those days. Not rich ones. We were all at Trinity.”

* * *

It was after midnight. Back in the confinement of his Shepherd Market flat with the pigeons on the parapet Brotherhood poured himself another vodka and added orange juice from a carton. He had thrown his jacket on the bed, his pocket tape-recorder lay before him on the desk. He was jotting as he listened.

“. . don’t go to Wiltshire a lot as a rule while Parliament’s in session but Sunday was my second wife’s birthday and our boy was down from school so I went and did my stuff and thought I’d stay on for a day or two and see what gives in the constituency. . ”