She thought, Will morning never come?
Then, little by little, she became aware of an unpleasant sensation, as if she were being watched, as if someone were in the room. She tried to ignore it, but the sensation grew steadily stronger until she could localize it in the space at the foot of her bed. She looked in that direction but could see nothing, at least in the dim light that filtered in through the drawn curtains at the window. There was a redness in the light that blinked on and off rhythmically, suggesting a neon sign outside somewhere.
She thought, There's no one there. I'm imagining things.
Reginald rolled onto his back and began to snore. His snoring, which ordinarily annoyed her, was now curiously reassuring. She was tempted to awaken him in order to have someone to talk to, someone to drive away the phantoms of her imagination, but she didn't have the heart. Poor Reginald needed his sleep.
She thought, I'm upset over what's happened to Richard, that's all. Thinking of Richard brought a sudden rush of tenderness and concern that surprised her. Why did she feel this way about a man she had known so briefly, had never known well, so long ago? Futile feelings! Even if Richard recovered, nothing would be changed. Richard would have his work-his secret, secret work she could never share or even know about-and she would have Reginald and the children.
She remembered a line from Fitzgerald's «Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.»
«The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.»
Suddenly, from the foot of her bed, a voice whispered her name.
«Zoe?»
She sat bolt upright, peering into the gloom, startled yet not frightened. The bodiless voice had sounded friendly, familiar. She had heard that voice somewhere before.
After a long pause, the voice spoke again, softly. «The tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits.»
She recognized the quote from «Dover Beach.» More important, she recognized the voice.
«Richard?» she called gently.
There was no answer.
She waited a long time, but there was nothing more to hear but the ordinary drone of London's night sounds.
Being careful not to wake Reginald, she slipped out of bed and silently dressed, thinking, I'll go for a walk in the streets. Then the voice will be able to speak to me without disturbing Reginald.
Still she felt no fear. The voice had been Richard's. She was not afraid of Richard. This must have something to do with Richard's secret work. A new kind of radio, perhaps.
She took the room key and let herself out, then walked briskly down the harshly lit hallway to the elevator.
She had seen the Tower Bridge and the Thames and the rumbling lorries full of produce for London's markets. She had seen the drunken ragged derelicts shuffling somnambulistically from doorway to doorway; one had roused himself from his stupor to stare at her, amazed to see a «lady of quality» out alone at night. She had seen the sky grow brighter as dawn approached.
She had not seen Richard Blade, or heard his voice again, nor had she felt his unseen presence as before. The world, to her bitter disappointment, had returned to normal.
The only excitement in her wanderings had been a moment when police cars and fire engines had rushed past her, traveling in the opposite direction and making a dreadful din. She had paid no attention to them.
As she made her way back to her hotel by a circuitous route, she smelled smoke and heard the distant clamor of excited voices, but these things too she ignored.
Until she rounded a corner and saw, two blocks away, her own hotel besieged by firemen, great gouts of oily black smoke belching from its windows.
«My God,» she whispered, and broke into a run.
Panting, wild-haired, she collided with the crowd that had gathered, even at this early hour, to watch the disaster. «Let me through!» she shouted. «My children are in that building!» She fought her way into the mob, pushing aside people who pushed back angrily, cursing and swearing at her. She had almost reached the line of grim-faced policemen who blocked the bystanders' advance when a man appeared ahead of her and called, «Mrs. Smythe-Evans?»
«Yes! Yes! I'm Mrs. Smythe-Evans!»
«You probably don't recognize me but… «
She did recognize him. He was the tall plainclothesman who had been guarding the entrance to the secret project in the Tower of London. She shoved through to him and grabbed him by the arm. «What is it? Tell me!» she cried.
He was pale in the predawn light. «We had your room under routine surveillance, you know. J's orders. And there was a man following you on your walk, though you probably didn't notice.» He was obviously stalling, putting off telling her something. «Well, you see, the fire broke out in your rooms. It was an explosion, like an incendiary bomb. I was in the room across the hall. Barely got out in time myself.»
«What are you saying?» she demanded. «My family? Were they…?»
«I'm sorry, Mrs. Smythe-Evans,» he said miserably. «Your children, your husband, your maid… I don't see how any of them could have escaped alive.»
The wind shifted and a cloud of black smoke engulfed her, acrid, stinging, foul, choking her, blinding her, throwing her into a fit of uncontrollable coughing. She fell against the man, clutched his overcoat sleeves to keep from falling as the tears streamed down her cheeks. He was coughing too, but he managed to keep his balance and hold her up. Policemen were shouting to get back, get back.
The wind shifted again.
She still could not see, but she could speak after a fashion. «Dickie!» she croaked in a hoarse rasping whisper. «Dickie! Dickie!»
Chapter 7
J pressed the rewind button, waited a moment, then pressed first the stop, then the play. For the fifteenth time the cassette player began again. A peculiar animal-like wheeze and snort issued from the loudspeaker.
«Reginald's snore,» J commented.
Lord Leighton nodded abstractedly.
«Our agent is to be commended,» J said. «It took considerable presence of mind to think of snatching that cassette and taking it with him when the building was bursting into flames around him.»
«Yes,» Leighton said, but the little hunchback's mind was obviously elsewhere.
J and Leighton had locked themselves into one of the electronics laboratories near the central KALI unit to discuss the morning's hotel fire and what they should do next. The two men were seated, in the diffused bluish light of the overhead fluorescent tubes, on either side of a black enameled-steel table on which rested the recorder, a delicate machine no bigger than a portable typewriter though it reproduced sound as well as all but the most elaborate stereos.
J went through his usual ceremony of lighting his pipe, the beloved dropstem his doctors assured him would sooner or later kill him, then puffed meditatively as the recorded snore continued. When all was well J could go for weeks without a smoke, but when the tension was too great he always relapsed.
On the tape there was a rustling.
«Reginald's waking up,» J said, exhaling a cloud of pungent blue smoke.
«Yes,» said Leighton.
From the recorder came Reginald's grunt of surprise.
«He must have noticed Mrs. Smythe-Evans was not with him,» J said.
Reginald was grumbling now in a low voice, but J could not make out what he was saying. The bedsprings creaked. There was the pad of bare feet crossing a carpet. A door opened. There was the rustle of clothing.
«He's at the closet, putting on his bathrobe,» said J.
Reginald said distinctly, «Where has that woman gone?» He sounded angry and suspicious.
«Here comes the knock at the door,» J predicted.
On the tape the knock sounded once, twice, three times. «Who can that be?» Reginald muttered. He crossed the room, his footsteps passing close to the hidden microphone. Reginald opened the hall door. J noted that Zoe had left it unlocked.