I wandered back over to that red-faced fellow, who muttered, 'I'm writing up my northern experiences just now. Should be done in a minute, and we can get off. I've been speaking by telephone to your ex-governor, Crystal... I'm making him Man of the Month in 'Notes by Rocket'.'
'He'll like that,' I said. 'Will you be talking about the Peters business? I thought you didn't mean to?'
'No fear,' said Bowman, now looking up from his page. 'As far as that's concerned, I'll just put that Stationmaster Crystal's capable of dealing with the many strange eventualities that have come to hand, or some rubbish of that sort.'
'Will it make a long article?
'A hundred words,' said Bowman with a shrug.
'A hundred words?' I said. 'That's heaps.'
But when I thought on, I knew it couldn't be.
'How many words are in a book?' I said, and the man called Fawcett looked at me strangely. But Bowman had his head down again, writing away like mad. Beside him, a man sat typing at one of the low desks. He was faster even than Lydia, and much louder. It was like a train smash every time he returned the carriage to the starting position. But Bowman didn't seem to hear him.
I watched him write on, until he caught up some papers and walked quickly into the editor's greenhouse. He consulted there, and I wondered whether he needed to show the editor everything he set down, just as I did with Shillito. I walked over to the window, and looked down. The wet snow on the ground contained all the greyness of the day. A man was walking along Bouverie Street. He was heavy set, but there was no fat on him; he was a wide block of muscle.
He wore a wide brown tweed coat, and tweed trousers tucked into thick yellow socks.
Chapter Twenty
He wore a sporting cap like Bowman's, but it suited him better. He looked like a rambler, out of place in Fleet Street, or a rough sort of motorist suddenly deprived of his motor car. He was not quite bearded, but wore white sideburns that became a moustache, flowing over the top of his mouth like a snowdrift. He carried his head tilted backwards, as though taking exception to everything he saw.
I looked towards the editor's cubby-hole. Bowman was stepping out of it, papers in hand.
I indicated to him that he should join me at the window, and we glanced down at the man standing in the dirty snow. Bowman stepped back from the window and said, 'Christ, it's him.' He then returned to the window, and began wrestling with the catch, making to open it, at which the man in the street looked up. He turned in the street, somehow like a man trying to make up his mind about something.
'What are you doing?' I said. 'He'll see you.'
The man writing nearest to us was looking up:
'It's cold enough just as it is, old chap,' he said to Bowman - who now let the catch alone and stepped back again, saying, 'I only meant to call down to him and ask what he meant by skulking about in Wimbledon at all hours.'
The man in the street then turned smartly and began walking north with boots turned outwards, heading back towards Fleet Street.
'He's going back ...'
Bowman was moving towards his desk, just as though he meant to start writing again.
'Let's get on his rear,' I said.
'What's that?' said Bowman, with a strange look on his face.
'We must follow him,' I said.
Somebody in the office cried out, 'Copy!'
Bowman stared at me with his mouth open.
'He's only going to Wimbledon,' he said. 'He'll take up station outside my house again.'
'It makes no odds,' I said. I had my topcoat in my hand, and the office was waking up to the agitation in our voices; I was through the door and down the stone stairs in an instant. In Bouverie Street, I looked north towards Fleet Street. The man had made the junction, where he wheeled his wide body to the left. I followed him, as snowflakes fell in the darkening sky - and it was something dangerous now, like the first flaking of a ceiling.
I stood at the junction with Fleet Street. Bowman was coming up - a lonely man struggling to join the crowds. I shouted 'Run!' and he did his best, but I thought his hot head would explode.
I pointed left so that he would know the way, and set off directly. I was fifty yards behind the man, keeping him in sight without difficulty. Most people on Fleet Street wore plain black and were thin; but this man was a tweed-coated cube. He never once looked back, and did not seem in any hurry. He walked with the swinging step of the outdoorsman. Where was he heading? I tried to put up in my mind the Underground map. Was he heading for a station that could take him to Wimbledon? I hoped not, for I knew about his Wimbledon connection, and I did not want to go there. I did not like the place: high, thin red houses like guardsmen in a row - a fucking prison of a place. No, this one would surely be making somehow for the ironlands of Yorkshire.
I looked behind. Still Bowman came on, though with a few pavement collisions on the way. I struck the billboard again: 'Doctor Killed and Eaten by Natives of Nigeria'. The man ahead had not given it a glance, but kept his great head tilted upwards, as though to receive the refreshment of the snow.
Gaslit advertisements flashed as we came towards the Strand; a huge church stood in the road, blocking traffic. I did not remember it being there in my Waterloo days. My eyes flickered back towards the path ahead, and the man had gone.
Bowman came panting up beside me.
'Lost the bastard,' I said, but Bowman was shaking his head, gasping out a word I couldn't hear and pointing directly left, to one of the theatres. No, it was a new Underground station - Aldwych - that he was indicating. We walked into the booking hall followed by a blow of snow. All the signs in the place showed arrows, but which one to follow?
The man was in the lift looking out - one of half a dozen occupants. The attendant drew the steel mesh across, and down they all went.
My eyes moved right: there were two lifts and the second was ready to go. The attendant had the mesh dragged half across, but I stopped him and pushed my way in, dragging Bowman behind.
'Ticket,' said the liftman in a sour voice.
As we went down, I held up my warrant card - he might make of it what he liked. Bowman he ignored.
'Did this fellow ever get a good look at you?' I said.
'I don't believe so,' said Bowman. 'I had my comforter up and cap down every time I saw him - at first just on account of the weather, later on by design.'
The doors clashed open at the bottom, and I was out of that lift like a rat out of a drainpipe, with Bowman panting along behind. The sight of the man in tweed slowed us, though. He was only ten feet ahead in the passageway, walking slowly, checking the people behind him like the church in Fleet Street. He certainly seemed to have no notion that he might have been followed, for he'd never once turned about. He was gazing up at a swinging sign that hung before the point at which the passageway split into two. The sign was an electrically lit glass box, and it showed two hands, each with a pointing finger. One was marked 'North', the other 'South'. He slowed further, approaching it. He did not know London, and that was because he came from the ironlands of the Cleveland Hills. Or was it simply that he hadn't decided where to go?
He hadn't quite stopped by the time he made his decision. He chose the northern passageway, and we followed at a distance of twenty feet. You couldn't get to Wimbledon this way.
There were perhaps fifty people in between the man and Bowman and me as we all lined up on the platform. The adverts on the tunnel wall were for Lipton's tea, but, looking sidelong, I saw that the man was looking above them all, gazing at the tunnel roof.
The train came in, and we boarded the carriage behind the one into which the man stepped, but we could
