appeared to have been voided completely. He concentrated on the entrance hall once more.
Five minutes went by. Mr Hive had settled into a sort of sentry-go in the centre of the floor. Purbright guessed that he was clashing his foot at the turn in an effort to advertise his presence.
Suddenly he saw him stop and face half-left. Someone had come into the hall from the farther end.
The inspector watched intently. Hive was being approached, but by whom it was not yet possible to make out. It certainly did not look like Booker...No, it was a boy. Hive leaned and listened. The boy pointed the way he had come. Hive nodded. The boy went away again, swinging one arm round and round and giving a skip every now and then. As soon as the boy disappeared, Hive turned to face in Purbright’s direction and delivered himself of a great pantomimic shrug. Then he began to walk backwards, jerking his thumb like a hitch-hiker.
Purbright judged from this performance that his guess about one of the interview rooms had been proved awry. Booker had had a different idea.
The inspector broke cover, crossed the road, and cautiously approached the glass doors. He shouldered one open and slipped inside the hall. Of Hive there now was no sign.
Keeping close to the wall on his left, he made his way towards the double doors near which he had last seen the gesticulating Hive. From somewhere beyond them came shouting, faint but unmistakeably boisterous, punctuated by sounds of human collision. Boys, thought Purbright. There were still boys in the building.
Carefully he pushed one of the doors far enough back to enable him to peer up and down the corridor on to which it opened. To his left, the corridor was lined with long glass windows of classrooms. Their partitions, too, were of glass, giving an uninterrupted view to the end of the block. Every room was empty save one in which two aproned women were sweeping the floor.
The right-hand section of corridor was shorter. It went past another empty classroom and then opened into a lobby. Purbright saw beams set with numbered pegs. The noises were louder now. They came from the other side of the lobby. Purbright walked towards it. He could smell the sweat of young males.
As he entered the lobby, there tumbled into it through a doorway on the left three boys locked in a puppy-like tussle. They saw him, stopped yelling at one another, and disentangled.
“I wonder,” the inspector said, “if you could tell me where I am likely to find Mr Booker.”
The nearest boy tugged at his ravaged clothing and recovered his breath. He looked eager to help. “He might be still in the gym, sir.”
“Shall I go and see, sir?”
“Sir—I’ll go, sir!”
Purbright raised a dissuading hand. “No, I only want to know where he is. I can find him if you’ll tell me which way to go.”
There began a competitive babel of instruction. It was quelled partly by Purbright himself, partly by the arrival of an older boy whom he assumed to be a prefect. To him, the inspector put his question again.
“He’s been taking an after-school coaching session, sir, but I think another gentleman is with him at the moment.”
“That’s all right. It’s a friend of mine. They’re expecting me.”
“Well, you just go through here, sir, and along that passage. The gym’s at the end of it.”
Purbright thanked his helpers and crossed the lobby, hoping that helpfulness would not send any of them in pursuit; eavesdropping was distasteful enough without its being witnessed by small boys.
Fortunately, the passage curved sufficiently for its further half to be out of sight from the lobby. Another feature that Purbright noted with satisfaction was the small observation window in the door of the gymnasium ahead.
He reached the door and listened. He could hear nothing but the noise from the changing-room behind him. Warily, he peeped through the window. Bringing his eye close to the glass, he angled his head to command a view of one half of the room, then of the other.
The gymnasium was empty.
Purbright went in.
It would not be quite true to say that he felt alarmed. By now, his was the sort of apprehension that is temporarily relieved by each postponement of discovery. But he knew that even in this many-doored building he would reach in the end some place whose entrance and exit were one. That was when mere unease might be turned on the instant to dismay.
He glanced about him. Wall bars, hanging beams, a vaulting horse docile in one corner, a stack of long benches varnished to the colour of maple syrup, rolled up mats, looped ropes and captive rings, windows high out of harm’s way...
And—of course—a door.
This one was in the centre of the opposite wall, recessed between two sets of wall bars. It was painted battleship grey.
Very gently, Purbright turned its bright brass handle and leaned a little of his weight against it. The door was locked.
Still leaning, he pressed his ear to the wood.
Nothing. No voices, certainly.
He kept listening, puzzled by a silence that had something curiously vibrant about it, as if it had only just succeeded an explosion or a collapse. It was more like a long extended echo, sinister yet of unidentifiable origin. And surely there was a sound there, too..liqueous, lapping...
Water.
