Operation Pax by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page B

laughed harshly. ‘So your poor friend believed,’ he said. ‘Mind you, there’s an excuse for him. The idea of attacking the girl and then hanging round until somebody appeared – well, it wasn’t too bad, was it? Squire was convinced he had me where he wanted me. And so in I came. Not my own notion, I must confess. Quite a junior colleague’s, as it happens.’
    On the mantelpiece behind Routh’s head, and just below the dirty picture, a clock was ticking softly. At any moment, he realized, it might begin to affect him as had the clock in the bank that morning; it might begin to pound like a hammer inside his head. And if his nerve went he was done for. For certainly the ice on which he was now skating was paper-thin. That he had fooled Squire from the start was a notion that might now take in Squire himself. But could it conceivably take in this other fellow? Only – Routh saw – if it attracted the other fellow. If this egg-headed scientist disliked Squire enough to be willing to see him in a mug’s role, then any cock-and-bull story having that effect might convince him for a while. The thing to do, then, was to make Squire look a perfect fool.
    ‘Poor old Squire! Has he told you about my father in the asylum and my mother gone off to New Zealand? It would have made a cat laugh, the way it all took him in. Thought he was getting a waif and stray to keep under his thumb at some of your dirtiest work here. And all the time he was getting us .’
    The clock was still behaving normally behind him. Squire was flushed and his shoulders had gone even more unnaturally high and square. The other fellow rose from his desk and walked away from it. ‘Haven’t you,’ he asked, ‘taken on rather a dangerous mission? The colleagues you speak of must be uncommonly obliged to you. It’s a pity’ – and with sudden dangerous sweetness the egg-headed man smiled – ‘that they won’t be in a position even to send a wreath.’
    Once more Routh contrived a convincing laugh. ‘If you ask me,’ he said, ‘it’s your friend Squire here that’s about due for a wreath. If he were with our crowd he’d have been taken for a ride long ago. But as for me – well, naturally I’ve taken my precautions.’
    ‘It’s damned nonsense.’ Squire had taken a stride forward. ‘The little rat’s bluffing. He’s simply making fools of us.’
    ‘It may be nonsense. But it’s a sort of nonsense that requires getting to the bottom of.’ Egg-Head turned his eyes slowly on Routh. ‘You have a crowd,’ he said. ‘You have colleagues. You have come here by design. You have taken precautions to ensure your personal safety. If there is any sense in all this, I am quite ready to hear it.’ He turned with a sudden flash of temper upon Squire. ‘And as this whole piece of folly is your responsibility, you had better do so too.’
    ‘I tell you, it’s all–’
    ‘Be quiet and hear the fellow out… Now then, what do you mean by your crowd?’
    ‘I mean a crowd that knows about your crowd. All that science stuff.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the long line of laboratories he had shortly before traversed. ‘We know what it’s about. We know what you’re making. Valuable stuff, I’d call it. We think it needs protection. And that you need protection too.’
    ‘Expensive protection, no doubt?’
    ‘You mayn’t like the bill, I agree. But it’s probably very much in your interest to pay up, all the same.’
    ‘I see.’ The meagre man in the white coat again gave his disturbingly sweet smile. ‘But suppose we are not interested? And suppose we are minded to give these precious colleagues of yours a little practical demonstration that they rather need protection on their own account? If they exist – which is something I am by no means convinced of – we can certainly make you tell us where to find them. We could then return you to them – or return some significant part of you – just as an indication that