It is not given
For goods or gear
But for The Thing.
As a child he had never grasped what Kipling had meant by 'The Thing', and now another Thing eluded him . . .
There was an insistent buzzing in his ear which he couldn't place. It refused to stop, and Faith's hair was tickling his face and Faith herself was stirring in his arms.
It was morning and the buzzing came from beyond Faith, from the pale green space age telephone beside the bed. As he reached over her she wound her arms round him sleepily. He knocked the receiver off its stand, fumbled for it and dragged it towards him by its coiled cable.
He groaned into it.
'Dr Audley–London call for you–putting you through now!'
Audley squinted at his watch. Seven-thirty and trouble: only trouble telephoned before nine o'clock.
'David? Are you there, Dr Audley?'
dummy4
Audley admitted that he was, unwillingly.
'Stocker here, David. Sorry to rouse you early again. Have you got any closer to those boxes?'
Whatever made Stocker telephone him it wasn't to inquire after the progress of the treasure hunt. Not this early, anyway. He rubbed his chin, reminding himself unhappily that he'd have to get a razor from somewhere.
'To hell with the boxes! What's happened?'
Stocker laughed. His ability to exude good humour at this time of the morning was irritating. In fact there was a lot about Stocker that was potentially irritating, most of all that he probably knew better than Audley what was going on, and not least that he had probably never really expected the boxes to turn up.
'You're not even close to them, are you?'
'Not within a mile.'
'Well, you'd better pack things in and come on back to London.
Our friend Panin has put his schedule forward a day — he's flying in this morning instead of tomorrow.'
Somehow it didn't come as a surprise. He had been driven by events from the start and every time he had started to settle down to work Panin had popped up inconveniently to put him off balance. He had stopped his dig in Colchis to begin the whole mystery. Then he'd appeared in East Berlin. Then he'd announced his intention to come to England. And now he'd set them all by the ears by putting forward his arrival. If he'd deliberately set out to dislocate things he couldn't have phased his movements better.
dummy4
Audley lowered the phone on to his chest in a moment of perfect stillness, blotting out the insistent voice at the other end. What a donkey he'd been! What a complete donkey –hobbled and blinkered, led and driven, with an occasional carrot to keep him happy and the odd smack across the rump to keep him moving!
If Panin had deliberately set out to dislocate things, he couldn't have phased his movements better! The plain fact was that they'd known too much about Panin from the start, not too little.
He looked down at the angry phone in his hand, fresh and untested implications crowding into his mind.
Time now for his
He lifted up the phone again: 'I can't possibly come to London today.'
'What? Where have you been?'
'I was disturbed. I said I can't possibly come to London today.'
'You're due to meet Panin at London Airport at 11. You've got to come!'
'You meet him. Send him on down here–he knows the way.'
'And what exactly will you be doing?'
'Well, for one thing I'll be busy finding Schliemann's treasure.
That's the whole object of this operation, after all, isn't it?'
'But you said you weren't even close to it,' Stocker sounded a little testy now.
'Not within a mile of it–but maybe within two miles. Maybe only a dummy4
mile and a half! Don't you worry, Stocker. I'll find your boxes. It's just a matter of a little time and trouble now.'
Stocker didn't answer this time.
'And for another thing—' Audley looked down at Faith, who was now wide awake and regarding him with proprietorial satisfaction
'—I've just got engaged to be married, and I've got a bit of private life to attend to.'
There was another short silence. Richardson hadn't reported the double bed, obviously.
'Well–congratulations, David,' Stocker finally rallied gamely. 'That does rather alter the situation. But I'm afraid your fiancee will have to take herself off when Panin arrives in Newton Chester–I'm sure he'll want to come and watch operations.'
'Oh, I don't think it will be necessary for her to disappear,' said Audley casually. This was the rabbit punch. 'The whole thing's going to be rather a family affair: it's Miss Steerforth I'm going to marry.'
