The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [99]
“Do you hear that?” he said. “She’s got one. After her, quick.”
“No good,” said Mr. James. “We can never catch that car.”
“We can try. We shall try, unless,” he said with a new and more sinister note in his voice, “unless you don’t want to.”
Mr. James accelerated. But the large car was nearly out of sight.
“Once before,” said his passenger, “I was tricked. The BBC sent one of their spies. He was very like you. He pretended to be one of my followers; he said he was taking me to the Director-General’s office. Instead he took me to a prison. Now I know what to do with spies. I kill them.” He leaned towards Mr. James.
“I assure you, my dear sir, you have no more loyal supporter than myself. It is simply a question of cars. I cannot overtake her. But no doubt we shall find her at the station.”
“We shall see. If we do not, I shall know whom to thank, and how to thank him.”
They were in the town now and making for the station. Mr. James looked despairingly at the policeman on point duty, but was signalled on with a negligent flick of the hand. In the station yard the passenger looked round eagerly.
“I do not see that car,” he said.
Mr. James fumbled for a second with the catch of the door and then tumbled out. “Help!” he cried. “Help! There’s a madman here.”
With a great shout of anger the man dodged round the front of the car and bore down on him.
At that moment three men in uniforms charged out of the station doorway. There was a brief scuffle; then, adroitly, they had their man strapped up.
“We thought he’d make for the railway,” said their chief. “You must have had quite an exciting drive, sir.”
Mr. James could scarcely speak. “Wireless,” he muttered weakly.
“Ho, he’s been talking to you about that, has he? Then you’re very lucky to be here to tell us. It’s his foible, as you might say. I hope you didn’t disagree with him.”
“No,” said Mr. James. “At least, not at first.”
“Well, you’re luckier than some. He can’t be crossed, not about wireless. Gets very wild. Why, he killed two people and half killed a third last time he got away. Well, many thanks for bringing him in so nicely, sir. We must be getting him home.”
Home. Mr. James drove back along the familiar road.
“Why,” said his wife when he entered the house. “How quick you’ve been. Where’s the parcel?”
“I think I must have forgotten it.”
“How very unlike you. Why, you’re looking quite ill. I’ll run in and tell Agnes to switch off the radio. She can’t have heard you come in.”
“No,” said Mr. James, sitting down heavily. “Not switch off radio. Like it. Homely.”
MY FATHER’S HOUSE
Chapter One of the unfinished novel Work Suspended
I
At the time of my father’s death I was in Morocco, at a small French hotel outside the fortifications of Fez. I had been there for six weeks, doing little else but write, and my book, Murder at Mountrichard Castle, was within twenty thousand words of its end. In three weeks I should pack it up for the typist; perhaps sooner, for I had nearly passed that heavy middle period where less conscientious writers introduce their second corpse. I was thirty-three years of age at the time, and a serious writer. I had always been a one-corpse man and, as far as possible, a clean corpse man, eschewing the blood-transfusions to which most of my rivals resorted to revitalize their flagging stories; moreover, I eschewed anything that was even remotely sordid or salacious. My corpses, invariably, were male, solitary, of high position in the world and, as near as possible, bloodless. I abhorred blunt instruments and “features battered beyond recognition.” Lord George Vanburgh, in Death in the Dukeries, was decapitated but only, it will be remembered, after he had been dead for some time through other causes. My poisons were painless; no character of mine ever writhed or vomited. Cardinal Vascari, in Vengeance at the Vatican, my first and in other ways my least successful story, met death in a model fashion, lapsing into