never noticed the significance of the tense he had used. So he had been ashamed, for a few chastened and happy moments as he slow-biked up the drive. But not any more.
“That’s better. I know you’re not a bad boy at heart. Now you’re to put it right out of your mind, you hear me? They’ve said no, and that’s to be the end of it. You’re not to pester Simon. You’ll go right home and tell your mother you’re sorry.”
Will I, hell! thought Paddy very succinctly. Aloud he said: “O.K., I’m on my way, Aunt Rachel.” But he took good care not to say where.
She watched him mount his bike with exaggerated solemnity, salute her gravely, and pedal away down the drive again in a caricature of penitence and self-examination. He wasn’t even ashamed of pulling her leg. Practically speaking, she wasn’t in the act at all, she was just a miscalculation on his mother’s part.
And now, since that was the way his mother wanted it, now he
It didn’t take him all day, but it did take him all morning. He’d tried the church in the sands, and the church in the town, and several other places, before he ran Simon to earth at noon in the lounge of the Dragon, snug in a corner between George and Dominic Felse, with three halves of bitter on their table. Paddy hesitated for a moment, somewhat daunted at having to prefer his plea before witnesses; but in the instant when he might have drawn back, Simon turned his head and saw him hovering.
“Hallo, there!” There was no doubting the welcome and pleasure in his face, but wasn’t he, all the same, a shade sombre this morning, a Simon faintly clouded over? Tomorrow was, Paddy reminded himself with a start of surprise and a slight convulsion of an uneasy conscience, a very serious business. “Looking for me? Anything the matter?” They made room for him, all three rearranging their chairs; he was in it now, he couldn’t back out.
“No, nothing. I just wanted—But I’m afraid I’m interrupting you.”
“Not in the least. Oh, I forgot you two hadn’t met before. This is Paddy Rossall, George. Say good-morning to Dominic’s father, Paddy.”
He had got something out of his pursuit, at any rate. He fixed George with large and hungry eyes. Did he look like a detective-inspector? The trick, he supposed, was not to look like one, but at least George Felse would do pretty well. Tall and thin, with a lean, thoughtful face and hair greying at the temples; not bad-looking, in a pleasant, irregular way. Paddy paid his respects almost reverently, and accepted the offer of a ginger ale.
“What did you want to ask me?”
“Well—if it’s all right with you, could I come along and help you to-morrow?” It was out, and in quite a creditable tone, though he had the hardest work in the world not to embroider it with all manner of persuasions and coaxings. His conscience suffered one more convulsive struggle before he suppressed it. If he hadn’t confessed that his parents had already forbidden it, still he hadn’t told any lies. It was a matter of his adult honour, by this time, not to admit defeat.
Simon sat looking at him for a few moments with an unreadable face, almost as though his mind had wandered away to ponder other and less pleasant subjects. “It’s like this, Paddy,” he said at last, almost abruptly. “I can’t very well say yes to you, in fairness, because I’ve just said no to Dominic here. There are good reasons, you know. Space is short inside there. And then, this isn’t an entertainment, you see, it’s a bit of serious research. It wouldn’t be the thing to turn it into a spectacle. The witnesses are necessary for the record, not for their own satisfaction.”
In the few seconds of silence George and Dominic exchanged a brief, significant glance over Paddy’s averted head. The boy studied his ginger ale as though the secret of the universe lay quivering somewhere in the globule of amber light suspended in it. His face was a little too still to be quite convincing, though the air of commonsense acceptance with which he finally looked up could be counted a success.
“Well, that all makes sense. O.K., then, that’s it. You didn’t mind my asking, though?”
“Paddy, in other circumstances I don’t know a fellow anywhere I’d rather have to help me.”
“Thanks! I’ll remember that. I suppose I’d better be getting back to lunch, then. You won’t be coming?”
“No, I’m lunching here. I told your mother this morning.”
“Well, thanks for the drink.” He tilted the empty glass and slanted a quick smile up at George. “Good thing it was only ginger ale.” He rose, his face still a little wry with swallowing his disappointment.
“Why, in particular?” asked Simon curiously.
The boy divided a bright, questioning glance between them. “Didn’t you really know? You’ve got a real, live detective-inspector sitting right beside you, watching your every move. Mr. Felse would have pinched you in a flash if you’d stood me a shandy.” He waved a hand, not ungallantly. “Good-bye!” He was gone.
“Well, I’m damned!” said Simon, blankly staring. “Are you really?”
George admitted it. “But I don’t know how Paddy found out.”
“I told him,” said Dominic, a little pink with embarrassment at seeming still, at his mature age, to be boasting about his father’s profession. “When he walked back half-way here with me yesterday, after tea at the farm. We hadn’t exactly got off on the right foot with each other, I was rather casting about for acceptable lures. There was Simon—” He smiled rather self-consciously across the table at the great man. “Anyone who knows your Harappa articles almost by heart is practically in with Paddy. And the next bid seemed to be you, Dad. He was duly impressed.”
“There’s still a bit of Paddy left in me,” owned Simon. “
“Thanks,” said George, “we should like to, very much, if Miss Rachel has no objection to being invaded.”
“Miss Rachel loves it. Surround her with personable young men, and she’s in her element.” He smiled at Dominic, presenting him gratis with this bouquet. “I’m sorry I made such shameless use of you just now. Thanks for taking it so neatly. It helped him to accept it, and frankly, I don’t think it’s going to be much of a show for kids, and I’d rather keep him out of it.”
