Free Closed Circle by Robert Goddard Page A

blessing."
    "And you will have ... after the event."
    "Steady on, old man," said Max, clearly worried that I was rushing our fences. "What Guy means, darling, is '
    "I know what he means. And he's right. I thought it myself last night, while I was tossing and turning in bed, wondering what to do for the best. It's the only way, isn't it?"
    "I think it is," I said. "I truly do."
    And so it was agreed. The two young lovers or not so young in Max's case adjourned to the hotel garden, there to stroll hand in hand among the borders and hatch the romantic scheme I had conceived for them. I remained in the lounge, smoking a cigarette and idly turning the pages of Country Life. I was not told the details of what they had agreed until Max and I had boarded the train back to London, but he did not hesitate once we were under way to take me into their confidence. Diana was to give her father the impression that she would, however reluctantly, comply with his wishes, while Max with my assistance would make the necessary arrangements for a register office wedding at the end of the following week. At two o'clock in the morning of the relevant day, Diana would steal from the house and meet Max halfway up a wooded path leading to the Dorking road. He would have a car waiting on the road and would whisk her away to London, where the ceremony would take place a few hours later, with my good self serving as best man. Diana would meanwhile have left a note for her father explaining her action and hoping to find him reconciled to it upon their return from a honeymoon in Paris.
    So far, so touchingly simple. Max and I spent most of the next day browbeating various jacks-in-office into supplying a marriage licence without notice and fixing a date and time for a wedding at Marylebone Register Office: Saturday the twenty-second of August at ten o'clock. We then gladdened the heart of a car dealer in Tottenham Court Road by buying a nearly new Talbot Saloon from him for three hundred pounds and dined at the Ritz on the strength of Max's certainty that an idyllic ally contented future was about to be his. All he had to do now was await the joyous day with as much patience as he could muster.
    And I had little choice but to wait with him, knowing it would never dawn. For the expression of dog-like devotion I had seen on his face as he held Diana's hand that afternoon at Burford Bridge had convinced me Charnwood was right. I really would be doing Max a favour by sparing him the creeping realization that love in a garret is very soon hatred in a ditch. I would be saving him and Diana from a grievous disillusionment. And I would be ensuring Max had his share of Charnwood's thousand pounds to console him for his loss, this last being the most compelling argument of all for biding my time and pretending I had not already decided what to do.
    But I had. And two days almost to the hour before the wedding was due to take place, I did it. There were no difficulties gaining admittance this time. The secretary had been told to expect me. Nor were there any sleights-of-hand with five-shilling pieces. Charnwood merely heard me out in silence, then wrote out a cheque for a thousand pounds and slid it across the desk to me.
    "I'm obliged to you, Mr. Horton. You may rest assured Mr. Wingate will be given no cause to suspect you were the source of my information." We rose and shook hands. "It's been a pleasure doing business with such a straightforward man as yourself. It makes life so ... simple."
    Simple for Charnwood perhaps, I reflected as I pocketed the cheque. But, thus far, I had found simplicity to be in desperately short supply.
    CHAPTER
    FOUR
    I did not know how Charnwood intended to prevent the elopement and I did not want to know. Ignorance was, in my case, a guarantee against detection. I took the further precaution of opening a new bank account in my own name, into which I paid his cheque, Max and I having transferred our Canadian deposits to a joint