No man likes to be defrauded, cheated, betrayed. Certainly Cheel didn’t, since it was very much his persuasion that a kindly Providence had intended that, in these matters, the boot should be on the other foot. But if he was to save himself, and to crush his enemies as they deserved to be crushed, he must act at once. He must grab Holme and make it very clear to him, once more, that the first person to go to gaol for forgery would certainly be the man who had signed his dead brother’s cheques. It was inconceivable that Sebastian could successfully sustain the role of Gregory through a criminal trial. Cheel, therefore, could still sink him. And that – it must be made very clear to him – was precisely what Cheel would do if he, Sebastian, didn’t quit the enemy’s camp at once.
‘Now look!’ Cheel, steeled for action, had sprung to his feet. ‘Sebastian Holme’s
alive
. And I’ve got him – see? And he works to my plan, and to my orders. I agree that you are all in on this now. But it will be on my terms. And now you can sit tight, while I go and fetch him. And don’t think he won’t be Sebastian. Don’t kid yourselves he’ll be screaming he’s Gregory. He won’t. Not when I’ve shown him where he gets off. And where
you
get off, you rotten lot!’
Cheel turned towards the door. He had reached it when he heard, behind him, what could only be the suppressed laughter of three people. He turned on them in fury.
‘I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you!’ he screamed. And he rushed from the room.
He drove faster than he had ever driven through London before. He had an obscure but strong persuasion that time was now somehow the crux of the whole matter; that this hour was an eleventh hour; that with every minute that went by there was increasing danger that any remaining command of the situation would slip from his grasp. Every now and then he felt a swimming sensation in his head – and when he did so he made a further savage jab at the accelerator. But the car, of course, refused to misbehave. It pretty well ignored him – much as an experienced pony might ignore an excited child behind him in a governess car. Presently it simply came to a halt before his old quarters. Even in his present state of perturbation, he found himself struck by the extremely dismal state into which the place had fallen, To have to live again in the departed citizen’s disgraced dwelling was unthinkable. He just wouldn’t survive it. But might he not be reduced even to this if his enemies got the better of him? Spurred to frantic energy by this thought, he went upstairs as if a fearful fiend were loping along behind him.
The door of the attic was ajar, and this he knew to be ominous. He pushed inside. As on a former unpropitious occasion, the room was empty. And not only was Sebastian Holme not in evidence. There was no trace of any of his possessions. What of his own property Cheel had left behind him – and it was quite a lot, one way and another – was scattered about as it always had been. But Holme’s new clothes weren’t in the cupboard, nor were his old ones either. He had vanished without leaving behind him so much as an empty packet of cigarette papers. It was as if he had never been.
It was as if he had never been!
Confronting this fact, Cheel realized that his enemies had been at work again. They had spirited Holme away; they had probably as good as locked him up in some fastness of their own; and they had seen to it that there was nothing whatever to which Cheel could point by way of substantiating his claim that Sebastian Holme
existed
.
Once more Cheel’s head swam. It was the reversal of his role that was so confusing. He had put all that effort into (so to speak) keeping Holme
dead
. And now it was absolutely necessary to keep him
alive
. He felt that he wouldn’t greatly care even if the whole story became public and never yielded another penny again. This would represent, of course, a shocking disappointment to his just hopes. It might even be exceedingly awkward from a legal point of view. But at least it would get him clear of the charge of having painted ‘Mourning Dance with Torches’, ‘Fishing Cats at Pool’, ‘Clouded Leopards Playing’, and several other supposed Sebastian Holmes, himself. He had no illusions about where being convicted of
that
would land him. Moreover he had a strong, irrational, but entirely laudable distaste for the notion of doing, or being taxed with doing, another man’s painting. It was true that Sebastian Holme
could paint
; it was true that he could do things with pigment and oil on canvas that Cheel, somehow, just didn’t have the knack of. But Cheel
could
do abstract
pointillism
; if he wasn’t its inventor he was its refiner and perfecter; and one day his reputation would rise clear of that of all his contemporaries. He would hate to be in any way associated with Sebastian Holme’s work. It was superb of its kind, one had to admit. But that sort of thing, after all, was very old hat.
This train of reflection was not, for one in Cheel’s present situation, of much utility. Fatigue, perhaps, was telling on him. Certainly he had sat down – and he now fell to staring rather vacantly around him, possessed of a dismal sense that he wasn’t even, with any degree of security, back where he started. But from this lethargy he was presently aroused by a step on the stairs. Holme was returning, perhaps, from one of his illicit expeditions. Conceivably he was so returning not as Sebastian Holme (which he was) but as
Gregory
Holme (which he wasn’t). Cheel stood up. He prepared to do battle,
But the man who entered the attic room wasn’t a Holme at all. He was the imbecile cuckold, Duffy.
Duffy seemed to be as surprised to see Cheel as Cheel was to see him. He looked puzzled and disconcerted; it was some seconds before a ghostly simulacrum of jovial recognition flickered in his features.
‘Hullo, hullo!’ he said. ‘Fancy running into you. Haven’t seen each other, have we, since jolly old St Tropez?’
‘Yes,’ Cheel said. ‘We have.’ This wasn’t, conceivably, a wise retort. It was sheer irritation and an impulse to tart contradiction that produced it. And malice made Cheel add: ‘How’s Debby?’
‘Debby? Much as usual, I’d say. Taken an old lady away on a holiday, as a matter of fact. Only I rather thought she might be here.’
‘Here? What should make you think that?’
‘Well, I’ve stumbled on the address. It seems Debby’s been coming along here – I suppose to see this old woman. I thought I might catch her.’
‘Catch her?’
‘Oh, just with a message before she went off.’ Duffy was staring about him. He seemed confused or ill at ease. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘things are deucedly tiresome. Is this where
you
live?’
‘Yes,’ Cheel said. ‘I mean, no. I did once.’
‘Odd. I don’t see that Debby could possibly take an interest–’ Duffy checked himself. ‘Something about you,’ he said, ‘that I’d like to remember. Any idea what it can be?’
‘No. None whatever. And, as you’ve made some mistake, you’d better go away.’
‘Go away? Well, I am – as a matter of fact.’ Duffy brightened. ‘Taking somebody on a holiday. Spot of charity, really. The decent thing, now and then.’
‘No doubt,’ Cheel said. His impatience with Duffy (and Duffy’s old schoolmaster) was extreme. ‘Try St Tropez.’
‘My God – it’s come back to me!’ Duffy had suddenly pointed an accusing index-finger at Cheel. ‘That dinner, you know. With Debby and old Wuggles. Your treat. And you cut out of it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘There you are – trying to cut out again. Not the thing, old boy Not the thing at all. Not as if you were on your uppers. I remember the style you kept up at jolly old–’
‘You don’t remember anything of the sort. I’ve never been there. I wouldn’t be seen dead in the vulgar place. Now, go away.’
‘It won’t do, Mervie. I remember your name now. And I remember your car, too, In fact, I’ve just noticed it outside this house. Be a man, Mr Mervie, and cough up.’
‘I’m not Mr Mervie. I’m–’
‘I don’t care who you are.’ Duffy – perhaps because domestic matters were preying on his mind – showed signs of departing from his customary good cheer. ‘Sixteen quid and a bit. Allowing for the tips, we’ll call it a round eighteen. And I’ll collect now. In cash, Mr Mervie. Fellows with cars like yours carry plenty of that around.’
As far as Cheel was concerned, this was, as it happened, a sociological observation of some exactness. A resourceful man is prepared for any emergency. Cheel carried on his person, in ten pound notes, a very considerable sum indeed. And Duffy was now looking so threatening that Cheel judged himself to be in some danger of suffering physical violence. Without further words, therefore, he took out his pocket-book and paid up. Had he attempted speech, indeed, he would probably have found his voice strangled with rage.
‘Thanks a lot, old man.’ Duffy’s equanimity was instantly restored – a circumstance that was very far from restoring Cheel’s. ‘See you down there next year, perhaps?’
‘I’ll see you in hell,’ Cheel managed to say.
‘Never heard of it.’ Duffy looked puzzled. ‘Or is it that little place near Hyéres? Well, so long.’ He opened the door and went out. Then, momentarily, he stuck his head in again. ‘Another visitor coming upstairs,’ he said. ‘Wonder if you owe him a spot, too? Bye-bye.’
There was certainly the sound of ascending footsteps. And they had passed the floor below. Cheel found himself backing towards a corner of the room. His prescient soul foretold more trouble.
And his prescient soul was right. The door opened again. Framed in it was the dreaded form of Rumbelow.
‘Hither to me,’ Rumbelow said.
Mephistopheles had spoken. Cheel was too alarmed to consider it a poor joke, or even to resent the disagreeable humour with which Rumbelow accompanied his summons with a devilishly beckoning finger. But his position, he obscurely knew, was not precisely that of Faust at the end of the old play. In his case, there was some infernal bargain yet in the making.
‘What do you mean?’ Cheel said weakly. ‘I’m waiting for someone.’
‘Yes, but for someone who won’t turn up.’ Rumbelow brought an ancient gold watch from a pocket, and consulted it. ‘One may calculate,’ he said, ‘that Sebastian Holme is now somewhere over the Mediterranean. So, I am sorry to say, is the wife of that corpulent person I have just passed on the stairs. It would be well for you if you, too, were at least as far away as that. But you are not.’
‘It’s Holme who had gone off with Debby? I thought so! But I’ll get him back.’ Cheel produced this with what, in melodramatic fiction, would be termed a snarl. ‘He’s a forger. He’s stolen his brother’s money. He’s–’
‘The real forgery in the case, Cheel, has been going on in this room. When you haven’t been wandering about, insulting honest artists in public places, you’ve been forging paintings by Sebastian Holme. A very large-scale affair. I have taken well qualified advice, and I am told it might get you five to seven years.’
‘It’s a lie, and you know it is! Holme has had this room as his studio, and has painted a number of things to replace others that were destroyed. His own survival had to be a secret, because they were after him in Wamba. I’ve done nothing but help the poor fellow along, and now he repays me by this foul trick.’ Cheel’s voice broke. He was overwhelmed by an enormous sense of injury. ‘And that scoundrel, Braunkopf–’
‘I have just come, as it happens, from the Da Vinci Gallery. As you know, some of my current minor work is being exhibited there. I looked in this morning, and was drawn into what may be termed a conference of persons having some concern with your affairs. I gained much information. I gained one crucial piece of information. Your malignity, it appears, has not stopped short of proposing murder, or something like it. This final circumstance has brought me to my present resolution. It is the reason of our leaving here together – as we shall now do.’
‘You’re crazy! I refuse to have anything to do with you. And I can prove that Sebastian Holme has been here.’
‘I think not, By the way, his present destination, as you have no doubt gathered, is Wamba. Wamba-Wamba, as a matter of fact.’
‘Rubbish! You’re trying to trick me. I tell you, they’re after him in Wamba. That was the start of the whole thing. He seduced some top man’s wife.’
‘Quite so. The so-called “Professor” Ushirombo’s wife. But Ushirombo’s government, as you must have heard, has been overthrown. Power has passed to Dr Mkaka. As it happens, I have considerable influence with him. His artistic taste seems to be such that he highly approves of the designs I have been preparing for the Wamba Palace of Industry. I am in radio communication with him now.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it! An obscure old dauber like you couldn’t have influence with anybody.’
‘We shall see. I am quite sure that the Prime Minister – Dr Mkaka himself, that is – will find that Sebastian Holme was not killed. He will also find that he never left Wamba. In fact, the admirably liberal and humane Mkaka will have rescued Holme from a dungeon in which he has been languishing ever since power was seized by the ruthless tyrant Ushirombo. Dr Mkaka will rehabilitate him, and Sebastian Holme will be able to take up his career where he left off. Any story that he has been in England will – as you can see – simply be laughed out of court.’
‘You devil!’ Cheel cast about in his mind for some last ditch in which to stand. ‘There’s Gregory Holme. He’s supposed to be alive. If it wasn’t the live Sebastian cashing Gregory’s cheques in England, then it was Gregory himself. But you won’t be able to produce him.’
‘Producing Gregory Holme is no responsibility of mine. And remember that he was a celebrated explorer. Such people can vanish for years without exciting much remark. Sometimes, they never turn up again. And now, Cheel, are you ready? You won’t need any possessions.’
‘What the hell do you mean? Are you off your rocker, and thinking of a little quiet murder on your own account? Of course I’m not going with you anywhere.’
‘In that case I must call the police. I noticed a telephone in the hall downstairs. So don’t think you can get away. Or not for those five years or so. It will be a remarkable case.’