'We haven't got a constable who can pass for an M.P.'
Drummond pulled a very small face. 'No, but I could. I'll go myself.'
And for eight nights Micah Drummond slipped into the House of Commons strangers' gallery and sat there until the House rose, then mixed with the members as they left, talking for a few minutes with the one or two he knew. Then he turned and left, walking up past the great statue of Boadicea and onto Westminster Bridge. Twice he bought violets from Maisie Willis, and once a hot pie from the vendor on the Embankment, but he saw no one with primroses, and no one approached him.
On the ninth evening, discouraged and tired, he was turning up his coat collar against a chilly wind and wraiths of fog coming off the river, when Garnet Royce came up to him.
'Good evening, Mr. Drummond.'
'Oh, er, good evening, Sir Garnet.'
Royce's face was tense. The lamplight gleamed on his high forehead and reflected the pale brilliance of his eyes.
'I know what you're doing, Mr. Drummond,' he said very quietly.' 'And that it is not succeeding.'' He swallowed, his breath uneven, but he was a man used to being in command, of himself and of others. 'And you won't succeed-not this way. I offered to help you before, and I meant it. Let me walk back across the bridge. If this lunatic means to strike again, I am a legitimate target: a real M.P.. . .' He faltered for a moment, then he cleared his throat and made a fierce effort to speak without a quaver. 'A real M.P. who lives south of the river, and who could reasonably go home on foot on a fine night.''
Drummond hesitated. All the risks swam before his eyes: his own guilt if anything were to happen to Royce, the charges that would be leveled against him. He winced as he thought how easily he could be accused of cowardice. And yet eight
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nights he had left the Palace of Westminster and walked alone across the bridge, and he'd achieved nothing. What Royce said was true: the cutthroat may well be insane, but she-or he-was not easily duped.
He knew Royce was afraid; he could see it in his eyes, in the fierce stare, in the nervous line of his mouth and the rigid way he held himself, seeming oblivious of the chill breeze and the clamor of other people busy less than twenty feet away, and yet for him they might have been geese on a lawn or pigeons in Trafalger Square.
'You are a brave man, Sir Garnet,' he said honestly. 'I accept your offer. I wish we could do it without you, but it seems we cannot.' He saw Royce's chin rise a little higher, and the muscles in his throat tighten. The die was cast. 'We shall be within a few yards of you all the time-cabbies, street vendors, drunks. I give you my word, we shall not allow you to be hurt.' Please God he could keep it!
He told Pitt the following morning, sitting in his office by a roaring fire. The sight of its flames leaping up the chimney and the flicker and crackle of it seemed like an island of safety, a living companion as he thought of the night on the bridge. He had still had to cross it after speaking to Royce, still setting out at a measured pace into the gloom between the lamps, his footsteps falling dully on the wet pavement, veils of mist rising from the dark sheet of the water below, lights and voices from the bank distorted, far away.
Pitt was staring at him.
'Is there any other way?' Drummond asked helplessly. 'We've got to stop her!'
'I know,' Pitt agreed. 'And if there's another way, I don't know what it is.'
'I'll be there,' Drummond added. 'I can pretend to be a drunk coming home from the opera-'
'No!-sir!' Pitt was firm; at another time, with another man it would have been considered rudeness. 'Sir, if we
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need Royce, then it is because the cutthroat knows you are not an M.P. For this to succeed Royce has to appear vulnerable, a victim alone, not a police decoy. You can't come any nearer than the Victoria Embankment. We'll have three constables at the far end, so he cannot escape that way, and we'll speak to the River Police so he doesn't get over the bridge and down to the water-though God knows how he'd do that. We'll have two constables dressed as street vendors at the House end, and I'll drive a cab across when Royce actually goes. If I stay a bit behind I can
