obtained from his grandmother, infinitely superior to any which had appeared in the public press. Selena asked him to write it out for her. Watching him engaged on this task and listening to his lecture on the importance of accurate measurement, we forgot for several minutes to take any notice of what was happening in the antique shop.
When we next looked the Major was holding a gun.
Julia is no doubt right in attributing Ragwort’s unconquered virtue to the expression of aloof disapproval which he adopts when confronted with anything in the nature of a proposition. It is also true, however, that he can run extremely fast: on Sundays during the cricket season he is in great demand in his native Sussex village on account of his speed between the wickets. While Selena and I were still waiting impatiently at the kerbside for a safe passage through the traffic, Ragwort, with no worse mischief than might befall his immortal soul from the curses of a startled lorry driver, was across.
Selena’s impatience was, I confess, rather greater than my own. Little as I liked the prospect of the evening newspaper containing the headline “Barristers Shot in Fulham Fracas,” I did not think it would be improved by the insertion of the words “and Oxford Don.” This seemed to me precisely the sort of moment at which the proper course is to summon a constable. Unfortunately, there was none at hand; and Ragwort and Selena, with the impetuous enthusiasm of youth, seemed unlikely to wait until one arrived. I could not, I felt, with any semblance of decorum, remain on one side of the New King’s Road while the junior members of 62 New Square struggled with an armed maniac on the other.
For a few moments our view of the antique shop was obscured by the passage of an articulated lorry. When we could again see the interior, the scene had changed dramatically: it was now Cantrip who was holding the gun. I perceived that I must have wronged him in doubting his skill at karate. With a movement of amazing swiftness, he had disarmed the Major and would now lead him forth into the New King’s Road; and would keep him covered while Ragwort, now standing slightly disconcerted outside the shop, summoned assistance from the appropriate authorities.
Nothing of the sort occurred. After a few moments, Cantrip put down the gun. He turned so that his back was towards us. Ragwort continued to stand outside, apparently lost in admiration of the umbrella-stand. A driver who had slowed down to let Selena and myself cross the road banged impatiently on his horn: we waved apologetically and stepped back from the kerbside — there no longer seemed any point in crossing.
What one so much admires in Selena is her instinct for what the moment requires: she went straight to the bar and came back with three large Scotches.
Ragwort, returning to us at a more prudent pace than he had left, was unable to explain the incident. Cantrip, it seemed, observing his presence, had turned away from the window, put his hands behind his back and pointed both thumbs upwards: this had been construed by Ragwort as meaning that all was well. He had then spread his palms and made a pushing gesture: Ragwort had taken this to indicate a desire to continue undisturbed his
We continued to watch the window of the antique shop. Cantrip and the Major had both sat down again and were engaged in apparently amiable conversation. We saw the Major open another bottle.
After two hours or so Cantrip came out. He turned left as arranged. His step, I thought, was rather less brisk than usual. We waited, as we had promised, for two minutes to make sure that he was not being followed. Satisfied that he was not, we rose and went back to the car. Cantrip was leaning wearily against it, pitifully pale, poor boy.
“Cantrip,” said Selena, “are you all right?”
“No,” said Cantrip, “actually, I think I’m dying. But if we can go and have some coffee at Ragwort’s, I suppose I’ll probably survive.”
I was at a loss to account for the poor boy’s condition. He had drunk, certainly, a rather large quantity of whisky, unaccompanied by any solid food; but I would not have thought, on the basis of my knowledge of him, that this alone would have had so marked an effect. The incident which had alarmed us had apparently left him unmoved, and the rest of his interview with the Major had seemed to pass off peacefully enough; yet we saw that it had left him exhausted in mind and body.
“Cantrip,” said Selena, “what was all that business with the gun?”
“What gun?” said Cantrip.
I reminded him gently — for he seemed to be suffering from some kind of amnesia — that at an early stage in the interview the Major had evidently been threatening him with a firearm.
“Oh,” said Cantrip, “that wasn’t a gun exactly. That was a Baker flintlock rifle — one of the ones they issued to the Corps of Riflemen in 1800. Jolly interesting — I saw it hanging on the wall and asked if I could have a look at it. I say, you didn’t really think he was threatening to shoot me with it, did you?”
“Yes,” said Selena. “Anxiety was entertained.”
“Oh, come off it,” said Cantrip. “You’d have to be a complete lunatic to try and shoot anyone with a flintlock rifle in this day and age.”
“We didn’t know that, Cantrip,” said Selena. “Oh,” said Cantrip. “Frightfully sorry.”
“Did you manage,” I asked, “to tell him about the picture?”
“Oh yes,” said Cantrip. “I told him all about my Uncle Hereward being frightfully keen on forgeries and things and specially this February chap. “Fabbro,” I said.
“Right,” said Cantrip. “Well, I told him all about that and about that painting that got stolen in Verona. And he’s promised to ask around a bit among one or two pals of his — mum’s the word, he said, no names, no pack drill — to see if he can find out anything about it. And if he does, he’ll let me know about it right away, so that I can tell my Uncle Hereward and get in good with him. Oh yes, that bit all went all right — I got it all in quite quickly, actually.”
“In that case,” asked Ragwort, “what were you talking about for the remaining two hours?”
“Women,” said Cantrip.
“Cantrip,” said Selena, “if you’re going to tell me that while we were sitting outside that beastly pub eating beastly sausage rolls and worrying about whether the Major was going to try to shoot you, you were simply engaged in an exchange of schoolboy scurrilities—” but the look of exhaustion returning to Cantrip’s eyes silenced her reproaches.
“Was it really only two hours?” he said. “It seemed longer than that. Much longer. Much, much longer. The Major’s known a lot of women. English women, Italian women, Arab women, Serbo-Croatian women. The right sort of women, the wrong sort of women. Women who would, women who wouldn’t, women who might have. He told me about them all. Are you sure it was only two hours?”
“Couldn’t you make him stop?” said Ragwort.
“No,” said Cantrip.
“Why did you let him start?” said Selena.
“Well,” said Cantrip, “I thought if I got him talking about women he’d be bound to say something about Julia sooner or later. After all, it’s only a week since he asked her to marry him.”
“And did he?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Cantrip. “In the end, he did. Not by name — but he said he’d had an unhappy experience very recently when he thought he’d found the right woman at last and she turned out to be the wrong sort. Frightfully brainy girl, he said, who’d been to Oxford, so she could run rings round a simple soldier like him. She had him completely fooled, he said, and he only found out in the nick of time that she was a wrong ’un.”
“Really,” said Selena, “what frightful cheek. For a man who makes his living from selling stolen antiques to refer in those terms to a member of Lincoln’s Inn—”
“Yes, that’s what I thought,” said Cantrip. “Anyway, I asked him how he’d found out about her being the wrong sort and he clammed up on me and said it was too painful to talk about. Well, I thought that was pretty suspicious, because up till then he’d been as unclamlike as you could get. So what I reckon is that he thought if he talked any more about it he’d give himself away — I mean, about having found out about Julia and the chap from the Revenue and done the chap in in a frenzy of jealous passion, like I’ve always said he did.”
“I hope,” I said, “that you have told him how to get in touch with you if he finds out anything about the painting?”
“Yes, I gave him my phone number in Chambers. So the next time he wants to tell someone about some Outer Mongolian woman of the wrong sort who wouldn’t, I suppose he’ll ring me up.”
“I suspect,” I said, “that you may hear from him very soon. But I don’t think,” I added, seeing the hunted look
