'All right, Jagger,' said Leonard. 'Out of sight now.'
With more groans, Jagger laboriously lowered himself to the floor behind the front seats, Leonard turned into the hospital drive and stopped again. Hunter, very pale, got out and hurried into the lodge. The thickset blue-suited man confronted him.
'What can I do for you, sir? Oh, it's Captain Hunter, isn't it?'
'Yes. I want to see Dr. Best rather urgently. Is he free?'
'I don't know about that, sir.'
'But he always keeps this time open for people who want to talk to him.'
'Well, he may have someone with him already, you see.'
'I don't mind waiting. Could you telephone him and find out?'
'I could. Who's that in the car with you?'
'Just a friend who drove me over.'
'Mm. Wait a minute.'
Keeping his eyes on Hunter, the man went to a wall telephone and cranked its handle. After a minute he spoke.
'Johnson here, doctor, speaking from the lodge. I've got that Captain Hunter here, with a friend of his, he says. Wants to have a word with you… All right, doctor.'
He rang off and turned to Hunter.
'You can go up,' he said grudgingly.
Hunter left without a word, grateful for not having had to use an alternative part of the plan whereby, should Best have refused to see him, he was to have seized the telephone off Johnson, done a bit of-almost certainly ineffective-pleading, and pretended to Johnson that he had been granted an interview after all.
'Okay?' Leonard asked him when he was back in the car.
'No trouble. He'll see us.'
Leonard nodded sharply once and let in the clutch. Viewed sidelong, his face looked tense and determined enough, with tightened mouth and the familiar trickle of sweat from under the khaki cap, but about the eye visible to Hunter there was something exultant, ardent, even awe-struck, such as might be seen (it occurred to Hunter) in a devout youth off to his first communion, or an elderly sexual deviate approaching the arena where every detail of his hitherto impracticable perversion had finally been marshaled. Hunter hoped that nothing would happen to spoil Leonard's imminent triumph.
At the edge of the car-park a man was on one knee doing something very trifling to a rose-bush. His posture was stylized, as if conservatively adapted from an illustration in a military textbook. As prearranged, it was his part to fetch the rifle from outside Best's room and get it into the car.
'You've got two minutes,' muttered Leonard as he and Hunter went by. Jagger was to stay in the car-though he had been given permission to resume his seat, provided he kept out of sight-and act as a mobile reserve.
Crossing the hall of the staff block, Leonard kept his eyes straight in front of him, but Hunter could not resist a glance over at the hallstand where, almost hidden by raincoats and the bulky golf-bag in rust-colored canvas, the NHW-17 stood on end in its webbing cover.
Leonard knocked at a door.
'Come in, come in, come in,' called a loud and hearty voice.
They entered and Dr. Best rose to greet them.
Hunter thought he had never seen the doctor in such good spirits. His blue eyes were wider and brighter than ever before, and his smile showed an unprecedented number of black-edged teeth. The bandage round his bald head was neat enough, and set sufficiently askew to seem raffish or exotic rather than a sign of physical injury. He shook hands warmly with Hunter, at the same time holding out his left hand towards Leonard in the manner of some celebrated or ambitious actor. After a moment's hesitation Leonard reached awkwardly across his body and shook the hand.
What Leonard, perhaps typically, had not foreseen, or at any rate had not mentioned to Hunter as a possibility to be reckoned with, was the presence of Dr. Minshull, who had also risen to his feet, if he had not been on them all along, and who now stood gazing over the heads of the new arrivals. He and Best were at either side of the dining-table, which was bare apart from a half-full decanter, two glasses, a brass hand-bell, and a printed document with handwritten insertions.
'Sit down, my dear fellows, sit down, sit down,' cried Dr. Best. 'I hope you'll join us for coffee and brandy.'
In the absence of any lead from Leonard, Hunter did as he was told. He found himself in a very low armchair padded in yellow satin. Before he had done more than begin looking round the room, which he had passed through several times before now on his way to the adjacent consulting-room, Dr. Best rang his hand- bell.
'Actually I can offer you a very nice Oporto-bottled Constantino 1935 which came my way recently,' he said, 'though do please take brandy if you prefer it.'
'I'd like some brandy, please,' said Hunter mechanically. He realized without much precision that, however free of Best he might have felt over the last weeks, returning to Best's home ground re-awoke in him certain feelings of being trapped. They seemed reinforced by his present nearness to the floor. The smell of lilies was almost overpowering.
'Hine, Martell or Courvoisier?'
