'So I read on the programme,' I said.
That's my car outside, that Black Hawk Stutz.'
'Come along, you chaps,' called Toliver from behind us. 'Move along there. Can't stand milk in coffee — ruins the whole flavour. You might just as well have instant if you're going to put that stuff in it.'
'I know you're interested in motors,' said Dawlish. On the far side of the room I heard the strident voice of the history professor proclaiming how much he liked cowboy films.
'He's going to play the Mozart A Major in a minute,' said Dawlish.
'I know,' I said, 'and I quite like that.'
Well then…'
'It better have a heater.'
'Our friend wants to look at the motor,' he told Ferdy, who nodded silently and looked around to see if his wife Teresa was likely to see us abandon their protege.
'He's had more practice with the Mozart,' said Ferdy'.
'It's a thirsty beast,' said Dawlish. 'Seven or eight miles to a gallon is good going.'
'Where are you going?' said Marjorie.
To see my motor,' said Dawlish, 'Overhead camshaft: eight cylinders. Do come, but put a coat on. They tell me it's, beginning to snow.'
'No, thank you,' said Marjorie. 'Don't be long.'
'Sensible girl, that,' said Dawlish. 'You're a lucky man.'
I wondered what climatic conditions he'd have invented had she accepted his invitation. 'Yes, I am,' I said.
Dawlish put on his spectacles and looked at the instruments. He said, 'Black Hawk Stutz, nineteen twenty- eight.' He started the engine and so got the primitive heater to work. 'Straight eight: overhead camshaft. She'll go, I'll tell you that.' He struggled to open the ash tray. Then he inhaled on his cigar so that his rubicund face loomed out of the darkness. He smiled. 'Real hydraulic brakes — literally hydraulic, I mean. You fill them up with water.'
'What's all this about?'
'A chat,' he said. 'Just a chat.'
He turned in order to tighten the already firmly closed window. I smiled to myself, knowing that Dawlish always liked to have a sheet of glass between himself and even the remotest chance of a parabolic microphone. The moon came out to help him find the handle. By its light I saw a movement in a grey Austin 2200 parked under the lime trees. 'Don't fret,' said Dawlish, 'a couple of my chaps.' A finger of cloud held the moon aloft and then closed upon it like a conjurer's dirty glove upon a white billiards ball.
'What are they here for?' I asked. He didn't answer before switching on the car radio as another precaution against eavesdroppers. It was some inane request programme. There was a babble of names and addresses.
'Things have changed a lot since the old days, Pat.' He smiled. 'It is Pat, isn't it? Pat Armstrong, it's a good name. Did you ever consider Louis to go with, it?'
'Very droll,' I said.
'New name, new job, the past gone forever. You're happy and I'm glad it all went so well. You deserved that. You deserved more than that, in fact, it was the least we could have done.' A fleck of snow hit the windscreen. It was big, and when the moonlight caught it it shone like a crystal. Dawlish put a finger out to touch the snowflake as if the glass was not there. 'But you can't wipe the slate clean. You can't forget half your life. You can't erase it and pretend it never happened.'
'No?' I said. 'Well, I was doing all right until this evening.'
I sniffed his cigar smoke enviously but I'd held out for about six weeks and I'd be damned if it was Dawlish who'd make me weaken my resolve. I said, 'Was this all arranged? Us both being invited tonight?'
He didn't answer. Music began cm the radio. We watched the snowflake as the heat from his fingertip melted it. It slid down the glass in a dribble of water. But already another snowflake had taken its place, and another, and another after that.
'And anyway there's Marjorie,' I said.
'And what a beautiful girl she is. But good grief, I wouldn't think of asking you to get mixed up in the rough and tumble side of it.'
'There was a time when you pretended that there was no rough and tumble side of it.'
'A long time ago. Regrettably, the rough parts have become much rougher since then.' He didn't elaborate on the tumbles.
'It's not just that,' I said. I paused. No point in hurting the old boy's feelings but already he had me on the defensive. 'It's simply that I don't want to become part of a big organization again. Especially not a government department. I don't want to be just another pawn.'
'Being a pawn', said Dawlish, 'is just a state of mind.'
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and produced a small multi-bladed device that I'd seen him use for everything from picking a despatch box lock to reaming his pipe. Now he used the pin of it to probe the vitals of his cigar. He puffed at it and nodded approval. He looked at the cigar as he began to talk. 'I remember this boy-young man perhaps I should say — phoning me one night… This is a long time ago now… public call box… he said there'd been an accident. I asked if he wanted an ambulance, and he said it was worse than that…' Dawlish puffed
'Yes, I know what you told him.'
'I told him to do nothing, stay where he was until a car came for him… He was whisked away… a holiday in the country, and the whole business never got into the papers, never went into the police files… never even went on record with us.'
'That bastard was trying to kill me.'
'It's the sort of thing the department can do.' He gave the cigar a final adjustment and then admired it again, as proud as some old ferry-boat engineer putting an oily rag over nn ancient turbine.
'And I admire the way you've done it all,' said Dawlish. 'Not a whisper anywhere. If I went back into that house and told Foxwell — one of your closest friends — to say nothing of your good lady, that you used to work in the department, they'd laugh at me.'
I said nothing. It was typical of the sort of moronic compliment that they all exchanged at the Christmas party, just before that stage of inebriation when the cipher girls get chased round the locked filing cabinets.
'It's not a
'We'll need you for the Mason business, though,' he said.
'You'll have to come and get me,' I said. From the radio came the voice of Frank Sinatra, change partners and dance with me.
'Just an hour or so for the official inquiry. After all, it was you and Foxwell they were impersonating.'
'While we were away?'
'Stupid, wasn't it? They should have chosen someone more remote, one of the radio-room clerks, perhaps.'
'But it nearly came off,' I was fishing for information and he knew it.
'It did indeed. It seemed so genuine. Your old flat, your address in the phone book and one of them even looking a bit like you.' He puffed smoke. 'Ninety thousand pounds they would have collected. Well worth the money spent on those retouched photos. Beautifully done, those photos, eh?' He gave the cigar another adjustment and then held it up for us both to look at it.
'For what?
'Oh not just the A.S.W. Task Force procedures. A whole lot of stuff — radio fuse diagrams, the latest sins modifications, lab reports from Lockheed. A rag-bag of stuff. But no one would have paid that sort of money for it if they hadn't set up all the pantomime of it coming from you and Foxwell.'
'Very flattering.'
Dawlish shook his head. There's a lot of dust still in the air. I was hoping to soft-soap your Colonel this evening but I judged it not opportune. He'll be angry, of course.' He tapped the polished wooden dashboard. 'They
