Free Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household Page B

settle that.’
    He sent for Peale, a grey little man in a grey little suit whom I had only seen emptying the waste-paper baskets or fetching cups of tea.
    ‘Anybody taking an interest in us, Peale?’
    ‘There is a person in the gardens between Remnant Street and here feeding the birds. He is not very successful with them, sir’—Peale permitted himself a dry chuckle—‘in spite of the fact that he has been there for the past week during office hours. And I understand from Pruce & Fothergill that there are two other persons in Newman’s Row. One of them is waiting for a lady to come out of their offices—a matrimonial case, I believe. The other is not known to us, and was observed to be in communication with the pigeon-man, sir, as soon as this gentleman emerged from his taxi.’
    Saul thanked him, and sent him out to fetch us some beer and a cold bird.
    I asked where he watched from, having a vague picture of Peale hanging over the parapet of the roof when he had nothing better to do.
    ‘Good God, he doesn’t watch!’ exclaimed Saul, as if I had suggested a major impropriety. ‘He just knows all the private detectives who are likely to be hanging around Lincoln’s Inn Fields—on very good terms with them, I believe. They have to have a drink occasionally, and then they ask Peale or his counterpart in some other firm to keep his eyes open. When they see anyone who is not a member of the Trades Union, so to speak, they all know it.’
    Peale came back with the lunch, and a packet of information straight from the counter of the saloon bar. The bird-man had been showing great interest in our windows and had twice telephoned. The chap in Newman’s Row had hailed my taxi as it drove away. He would be able to trace me back to Harley Street and to the clothes shop, where, by a little adroit questioning, he could make an excuse to see the suit I discarded; my identification would be complete. It didn’t much matter, since the watchers already had a strong suspicion that I was their man.
    Peale couldn’t tell us whether another watcher had been posted in Newman’s Row or whether the other exits from Lincoln’s Inn Fields were watched. I was certain that they were, and complained to Saul that all respectable firms of solicitors (who deal with far more scabrous affairs than the crooked) should have a back door. He replied that they weren’t such fools as they looked, and that Peale could take me into Lincoln’s Inn or the Law Courts and lose me completely.
    Perhaps I should have trusted them; but I felt that, while their tricks might be good enough to lose a single private detective, I shouldn’t be allowed to escape so easily. I decided to throw off the hunt in my own way.
    When I kept my gloves on to eat, Saul forgot his official discretion and became an anxious friend. I think he suspected what had happened to me, though not why it had happened. I had to beg him to leave the whole subject alone.
    After lunch, I signed a number of documents to tidy up loose ends, and we blocked out a plan I had often discussed with him of forming a sort of Tenants’ Co-operative Society. Since I never make a penny out of the land, I thought they might as well pay rent to themselves, do their own repairs, and advance their own loans, with the right to purchase their own land by instalments at a price fixed by the committee. I hope it works. At any rate Saul and my land agent will keep them from quarrelling among themselves. I have no other dependants.
    Then I told him something of the fisherman, and passed on the address that he had given me; we arranged for an income to be paid where it would do the most good—a discreet trust that couldn’t conceivably be traced to me. It appeared to come from the estate of a recently defunct old lady who had left the bulk of her money to an institution for inoculating parrots against psittacosis, and the rest to any charitable object that Saul, as sole trustee, might direct.
    There was