Free Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household Page A

he is sombrely and richly attired, and has even taken in recent years to wearing a black silk stock. At night he puts on tweeds, a sweater, and a tie that would frighten a newspaperman. One can’t make him change for dinner. He would rather refuse an invitation.
    Saul greeted me with concern rather than surprise; it was as if he had expected me to turn up in a hurry and the worse for wear. He locked the door and told his office manager we were not to be disturbed.
    I assured him that I was all right and that the bandage was four times as long as was necessary. I asked what he knew and who had enquired for me.
    He said that there had been a pointedly casual enquiry from Holy George, and that a few days later a fellow had come in to consult him about some inconceivable tangle under the Married Women’s Property Act.
    ‘He was so perfectly the retired military man from the West of England,’ said Saul, ‘that I felt he couldn’t be real. He claimed to be a friend and neighbour of yours and was continually referring to you. When I cross-examined him a bit, it looked as if he had mugged up his case out of a law book and was really after information. Major Quive-Smith, he called himself. Ever heard of him?’
    ‘Never,’ I replied. ‘He certainly isn’t a neighbour of mine. Was he English?’
    ‘I thought so. Did you expect him not to be English?’
    I said I wasn’t answering any of his innocent questions, that he was, after all, an Officer of the Court, and that I didn’t wish to involve him.
    ‘Tell me this much,’ he said. ‘Have you been abroad in the employ of our government?’
    ‘No, on my own business. But I have to disappear.’
    ‘You shouldn’t think of the police as tactless,’ he reminded me gently. ‘A man in your position is protected without question. You’ve been abroad so much that I don’t think you have ever realized the power of your name. You’re automatically trusted, you see.’
    I told him that I knew as much of my own people as he did—perhaps more, since I had been an exile long enough to see them from the outside. But I had to vanish. There was a risk that I might be disgraced.
    A nasty word, that. I am not disgraced, and I will not feel it.
    ‘Can I vanish? Financially, I mean?’ I asked him. ‘You have my power of attorney and you know more of my affairs than I do myself. Can you go on handling my estate if I am never heard of again?’
    ‘So long as I know you are alive.’
    ‘What do you mean by that?’
    ‘A postcard this time next year will do.’
    ‘X marks my window, and this is a palm tree?’
    ‘Quite sufficient if in your own handwriting. You needn’t even sign it.’
    ‘Mightn’t you be asked for proof?’ I enquired.
    ‘No. If I say you are alive, why the devil should it ever be questioned? But don’t leave me without a postcard from time to time. You mustn’t put me in the position of maintaining what might be a lie.’
    I told him that if he ever got one postcard, he’d probably get a lot more; it was my ever living to write the first that was doubtful.
    He blew up and told me I was absurd. He mingled abuse with affection in a way I hadn’t heard since my father died. I didn’t think he would take my disappearance so hard; I suppose he is as fond of me, after all, as I am of him, and that’s saying a lot. He begged me again to let him talk to the police. I had no idea, he insisted, of the number and the subtle beauty of the strings that could be pulled.
    I could only say I was awfully sorry, and after a silence I told him I wanted five thousand pounds in cash.
    He produced my deed box and accounts. I had a balance of three thousand at the bank; he wrote his own cheque for the other two. That was like him—no nonsense about waiting for sales of stock or arranging an overdraft.
    ‘Shall we go out and lunch while the boy is at the Bank?’ he suggested.
    ‘I think I’ll leave here only once,’ I said.
    ‘You might be watched? Well, we’ll soon