right chap?”
There was a roar from the courtroom gallery. And then an English cheer. Gupta stared at him. The message was hatred. Florry stared back.
Benny Lal now sat three places down the table, in a blue coat. He was trying, under what must have been instruction from his lawyer, not to smile. Florry’s eyes linked with his in an odd second and beheld, behind the gaze, exactly nothing.
Benny Lal smiled at him.
Three weeks after the murder of U Bat, Benny Lal was to be hanged.
Florry found himself standing in a small group of officials in the muddy parade ground of the prison. It was the sort of thing one could not avoid. The day was hot and gassy and he could feel his tunic clinging to his skin and the prickles of sweat in his hairline under his sun helmet. The prison building, an old hulk of a place that had once been a fort, loomed above them. The latrines were hard by and the stench hung in the air.
“Ever seen a hanging, Mr. Florry?” asked Mr. Gupta, with his bright smile. The lawyer had also come to watch the event.
“No. Isn’t the sort of thing a chap goes to every day.”
“Oh, here he comes,” Mr. Gupta suddenly chirped. “Look, assistant superintendent. The treacherous, the cunning, the despicable villain, Benny Lal, off to meet his just desserts.”
Benny, in the center of a small troop of guards, had emerged in handcuffs from the building. He walked, at an unhurried pace, toward the gallows.
Benny Lal grinned and Florry looked away.
“Certainly cheery about it, isn’t he?” observed Mr. Gupta.
“Well, you’re a cold-blooded fellow,” said Florry with more emotion than he’d intended to show. “He was your client and now he’s going to meet his maker.”
“The British Empire was his maker, assistant superintendent, just as it is his destroyer.”
Florry watched now as the little man climbed the ladder to the platform.
“Mr. Florry, perhaps some day you’ll write a poem about all this. Think of the colorful literary details. the stench, the hot sun, these officials, the ever-obedient Benny Lal ? and your own ambivalences.” He smiled wickedly.
“And you, Mr. Gupta.”
“Oh, surely I am too insignificant for poetry,” said Mr. Gupta.
The executioner had placed the hood on Benny Lal. He struggled with the noose and Florry could see Benny lower his head cooperatively to make it easier on the chap.
“Benny Lal, you stand convicted on the capital crime of murder under the Crown’s law,” shouted the warden, in accordance with the ceremony. “What say you in these last moments?”
Benny, hooded, was silent. Then he began to cry. “Please, sirs. Please, sirs.”
The Hindu, his scrawny bound body taut under the frame of the gallows, the cords of his neck standing out in vivid relief, continued to sob.
“Please, sirs. Sirs, I beg you. Sirs, I?”
With a snap, the trap sprang, and Benny Lal hurtled through the opening, disappearing into silence.
“Tally-ho, Benny,” said Gupta.
Florry swore, watching the slow pendulum of the rope, tense with the terrible weight of the dead man, that he would never again work for the Empire.
It was a promise, however, he would not be permitted to keep.
Part I
ROBERT
1
LONDON, LATE FALL OF 1936
Mr. Vane and major Holly-Browning found a parking space on Woburn Place at Russell Square, just across from the Russell Hotel. Mr. Vane, who drove the Morris with a delicacy that was almost fussiness, pulled into the gap with some grunting and huffing. He was not a physically graceful man or a strong one, and mechanical tasks came to him with some difficulty. He removed the ignition key and placed it in his vest pocket. Neither man made a move to leave the auto. They simply sat in the little car, two drab men of the commercial class, perhaps, travelers, little clerks, barristers’ assistants.
It was a bright blue morning in Bloomsbury, a fabulous morning. In the elms of the square, whose dense leaves had begun to turn russet with the coming of colder weather, squirrels chattered and scrambled; squads of ugly, bumbling old pigeons gathered on the lawn. Some even perched upon the earl of Bedford’s copper shoulders at the corner of the park. The chrysanthemums in the beds alongside the walks had not yet perished, though they would within the fortnight.
“He’s late, of course,” said Vane, examining his pocket watch.
“Give him time, Vane,” said Major Holly-Browning. “This is a big day in his life, and the chap’s sure to be nervous.
Major Holly-Browning was in his fifties, ten years older than Mr. Vane, and wore a vague mustache, a voluminous mackintosh despite the clear skies, and a bowler. On closer examination, he didn’t look commercial at all but rather military. He had the look of a passed-over officer, with a grayness to the skin, a certain bleakness to the eyes, and a certain formality to his carriage. He looked like the man who hadn’t quite managed the proper friends in the regiment and was therefore doomed to a succession of grim assignments in the outposts of the Empire, far from the parades, the swirling social life, the intrigues of home duty.
In fact, the major was head of Section V, MI-6, that is, the counterespionage section of the Secret Intelligence Service; he was, in the lexicon of the trade, V (a); Mr. Vane, his number two, was V (b). There was no V (c); they were the entire division. The major took a deep breath inside the little car. One of his headaches was starting up. He touched his temple.
“Tired, sir?”
“Exhausted, Vane. Haven’t slept in weeks.”
“You must go home more often, sir. You can’t expect to remain in the proper health living as you do, those long nights in the office.”
The major sighed. Vane could be an awful prig.
“I suppose you are right, Vane.”
“He is now seven minutes late.”
“He will be here. The bait is far too tempting for him not to swallow.”
“Yessir.”
They sat again in silence.
“
“Don’t stare, Vane.”
The major waited calmly and at long last the object of his well-controlled curiosity appeared. The fellow’d gotten off at the Russell Square tube station, as they’d expected, and come up Bernard Street. He waited patiently for the walk signal, then crossed to their side of the street and ambled by a few feet beyond them: it was the tall, diffident figure of a Mr. Robert Florry.
“The great Julian’s ex-chum. Not an impressive man, is he?” observed the major, who for all his efforts in the matter had not before this second laid eyes upon the man.
“Nobody has ever been greatly impressed with Mr. Florry,” said Mr. Vane, the Florry expert. “Whatever can such a Robin Goodfellow of Society as the great Julian Raines have seen in him?”
