The match at last was perfect, the teeth of one slowly aligned with the teeth of another.
A pull and they were zipped.
Though the waiting had seemed an eternity of eternities when it was filled with failure, with fading waves of weakness, with feeble groping and lonely impotence, the match once made cancelled it all. Would cancel it all. Would undo what had been so disastrously done.
Who thought that? It did not matter, the match was made, the match was perfect.
Michael gazed out of the window across the well-manicured Chelsea street and did not care whether what he saw were slimy things with legs or whether they were all Mr A. K. Ross. What mattered was what they had stolen and what they would be compelled to return. Ross now lay in the past. What he was now concerned with lay still further in it.
His large soft cowlike eyes returned to the last few lines of 'Kubla Khan', which he had just been reading. The match was made, the zip was pulled.
He closed the book and put it in his pocket.
His path back now was clear. He knew what he must do. It only remained to do a little shopping and then do it.
CHAPTER 22
'You? Wanted for murder? Richard what are you talking about?'
The telephone wavered in Richard's hand. He was holding it about half an inch away from his ear anyway because it seemed that somebody had dipped the earpiece in some chow mein recently, but that wasn't so bad. This was a public telephone so it was clearly an oversight that it was working at all. But Richard was beginning to feel as if the whole world had shifted about half an inch away from him, like someone in a deodorant commercial.
'Gordon,' said Richard, hesitantly, 'Gordon's been murdered -hasn't he?'
Susan paused before she answered.
'Yes, Richard,' she said in a distressed voice, 'but no one thinks you did it. They want to question you of course, but -'
'So there are no police with you now?'
'No, Richard,' insisted Susan, 'Look, why don't you come here?'
'And they're not out searching for me?'
'No! Where on earth did you get the idea that you were wanted for -that they thought you had done it?'
'Er - well, this friend of mine told me.'
'Who?'
'Well, his name is Dirk Gently.'
'You've never mentioned him. Who is he? Did he say anything else?'
'He hypnotised me and, er, made me jump in the canal, and, er, well, that was it really -'
There was a terribly long pause at the other end.
'Richard,' said Susan at last with the sort of calmness that comes over people when they realise that however bad things may seem to be, there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't simply get worse and worse, 'come over here. I was going to say I need to see you, but I think you need to see me.'
'I should probably go to the police.'
'Go to the police later. Richard, please. A few hours won't make any difference. I… I can hardly even think. Richard, it's so awful. It would just help if you were here. Where are you?'
'OK,' said Richard, 'I'll be with you in about twenty minutes.'
'Shall I leave the window open or would you like to try the door?' she said with a sniff.
CHAPTER 23
'No, please,' said Dirk, restraining Miss Pearce's hand from opening a letter from the Inland Revenue, 'there are wilder skies than these.'
He had emerged from a spell of tense brooding in his darkened office and there was an air of excited concentration about him. It had taken his actual signature on an actual salary cheque to persuade Miss Pearce to forgive him for the latest unwarrantable extravagance with which he had returned to the office and he felt that just to sit there blatantly opening letters from the taxman was to take his magnanimous gesture in entirely the wrong spirit.
She put the envelope aside.
'Come!' he said. 'I have something I wish you to see. I shall observe your reactions with the very greatest of interest.'
He bustled back into his own office and sat at his desk.
She followed him in patiently and sat opposite, pointedly ignoring the new unwarrantable extravagance sitting on the desk.
The flashy brass plaque for the door had stirred her up pretty badly but the silly phone with big red push buttons she regarded as being beneath contempt. And she certainly wasn't going to do anything rash like smile until she knew for certain that the cheque wouldn't bounce.
The last time he signed a cheque for her he cancelled it before the end of the day, to prevent it, as he explained, 'falling into the wrong hands'. The wrong hands presumably, being those of her bank manager.
He thrust a piece of paper across the desk.
She picked it up and looked at it. Then she turned it round and looked at it again. She looked at the other side and then she put it down.
'Well?' demanded Dirk. 'What do you make of it? Tell me!'
Miss Pearce sighed.
'It's a lot of meaningless squiggles done in blue felt tip on a piece of typing paper,' she said. 'It looks like you did them yourself.'
'No!' barked Dirk, 'Well, yes,' he admitted, 'but only because I believe that it is the answer to the problem!'
'What problem?'
'The problem,' insisted Dirk, slapping the table, 'of the conjuring trick! I told you!'
'Yes, Mr Gently, several times. I think it was just a conjuring trick. You see them on the telly.'
'With this difference - that this one was completely impossible!'
'Couldn't have been impossible or he wouldn't have done it. Stands to reason.'
'Exactly!' said Dirk excitedly. 'Exactly! Miss Pearce, you are a lady of rare perception and insight.'
'Thank you, sir, can I go now?'
'Wait! I haven't finished yet! Not by a long way, not by a bucketful! You have demonstrated to me the depth of your perception and insight, allow me to demonstrate mine!'
Miss Pearce slumped patiently in her seat.
'I think,' said Dirk, 'you will be impressed. Consider this. An intractable problem. In trying to find the solution to it I was going round and round in little circles in my mind, over and over the same maddening things.
