running now, wore a grubby flapping raincoat and had two bright strange bald patches on the top of his head. And under his arm he was carrying a heavy brown-paper package.
‘Stop thief!’ Queston yelled; and before he knew what he was doing he was running in pursuit, dodging through startled pedestrians, trying to keep sight of the weaving rain-coated back. Faces turned to him in alarm or disapproval or vacant wonder, but none moved except a fat young man who swung round from a shop window and at once joined the chase, adding his ‘Stop thief! ’ to Queston’s in a shrill bark.
The man in the raincoat, twenty yards ahead, darted suddenly across the road, leaving a bus screeching unsteadily to a halt and the driver heaving white-faced at his wheel. Through a gap in the traffic they saw the flapping figure grasp at the door of a taxi, and jump inside. The taxi swung out and away, and Queston slowed to a gasping walk.
The young man puffed up at his side. ‘I say, bad luck.’ His round, pink face was glinting with sweat and excitement; he tore off a pair of heavy black spectacles and began to polish them. ‘Not another cab in sight, either. I got the number, though—did you?’
Queston looked at him with respect. There was something to be said after all for the generation reared on television thrillers. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘One-two-seven-six-nine.’
‘Thanks a lot.’ He fumbled for a pencil.
‘Pleasure,’ said the young man cheerfully. ‘Had my first bit of exercise for weeks. There’s a police station up on the corner of Gray’s Inn Road, you know, if you want to report the fellow. What did he get—your wallet?’
‘No,’ Queston said bitterly. ‘The halfwit’s gone off with a book manuscript of mine. I think he expects it to be all about geometry.’ But even as he spoke he knew that it had not been textbooks that the man in the raincoat had been watching in the publisher’s window.
‘O.’ The young man’s interest became merely polite. No glamour attached to a stolen book. ‘Got another copy?’
‘Yes, I have one at home. But all the same—’
‘Ah well then, not so bad.’ Brimming with Boy Scout zeal, he smiled benevolently at Queston and departed.
‘Thank you,’ Queston called after him. Then he stood still on the pavement and swore, once, aloud, causing two tight-skirted young women to turn and giggle. ‘Naughty naughty,’ said one.
At the coffee bar, when he went back, the waitress was tearful with apology. The man in the raincoat had jumped up as Queston went out, and called that the gentleman had left a parcel behind. ‘He said he’d catch you, and he went rushing out with it, sir. It’s an old trick, but no one had a chance to stop him. I’m terribly sorry…’
He found the police station, beside the green oasis of Gray’s Inn, and told his story to a stolid young constable. The smooth, earnest face did not flicker. ‘You say this man followed you from Southampton Row, sir?’
‘He must have done. Can’t think why.’
The constable reached for a notepad, and began to scrawl. ‘Now, if you’ll give me the number of that cab… and your name and address, please.’ He wrote with laborious care, but looked up sharply when he heard where Queston lived. ‘You’re not a Londoner, then, sir. Could I see your pass?’
‘Pass? ’ Queston blinked at him. ‘O yes.’ He reached for the slip of paper the ticket inspector had given him at Waterloo, remembering wryly how startled he had been at the suggestion that he might need it for the police.
The policeman looked at it, licked it, held it up to the light, and wrote down a number. ‘I think that’ll do, thank you.’ He managed obscurely to give the impression that Queston, as an outsider, was somehow responsible for the robbery.
‘We’ll have your local police contact you if there’s any news of your—er—book, though frankly I don’t think there’s much hope. The man would just have hopped into the
Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, June Scobee Rodgers