Operation Pax by Michael Innes Page A

flexed them cautiously and then, rolling over on his stomach, managed to raise himself to his hands and knees.
    The place was tiny and smelt of fresh plasterwork; it had a single casement window, unbarred. Sudden hope leapt up in Routh. This was simply the tiny house in which he had hoped to find refuge, and it was not his enemies who were responsible for his being in it now. It was not they who had laid hands on him. He had been carried in here by a friendly, not a hostile power. But in that case his pursuers must still be close by. He got unsteadily to his feet. Why had his rescuers simply dumped him here? He must find them. He must explain the danger. Routh’s eye, proposing to search the bleak little room for a door, fell once more upon the window. Squire and the bearded man were framed in it.
    Without consciousness of the movement, he tumbled again to his hands and knees. And so he remained – looking up and out at his enemies, like a cornered dog. Squire’s hand was on the window, and it was plain that he could force it in an instant. He was trapped. Only a miracle could save him now.
    Routh prayed. He prayed for the miracle that would take him from these implacable men. And as he did so the faces of Squire and the bearded man moved queerly and unnaturally across the window – glided smoothly and laterally away. They were replaced by a telegraph post. And that glided away too. There was a tremor under Routh’s body. The little house was moving. It was because he had been on his knees, he thought. Darling, darling Mummy –
    This time he was unconscious for much longer.

 
     
6
     
    Somebody was bending over him. It was the lad to whom he had given the handkerchief to wipe the coffee from his face and mop his hair. Behind him was his companion, the hairy man who had begun the talking about the pools. ‘I wouldn’t ’ave thought it of ’im,’ the hairy man was saying. ‘Law-abiding little beggar, ’e looks to me.’
    ‘They might ’ave been crooks or they might ’ave been cops. But whichever they was, we didn’t ’arf get ’im away from them nicely.’ The lad laughed cheerfully; then, looking down at Routh, saw that his eyes were open. ‘That’s right, mate. Sit up and take a bit of notice. We must get you out before they check us in. No passengers allowed in these bleeding travelling Ritzes.’
    Routh sat up. The hairy man stepped forward, fished the remains of a cigarette from behind his ear, and thrust it companionably in Routh’s mouth. ‘’Ere,’ he said, ‘no ’arm in a puff of tobacco in the Louis Cans lounge.’
    The Louis Cans lounge was the same bare little room in which Routh had lost consciousness. There was the window through which Squire and his confederate had peered at him. Routh got to his feet and staggered to it. He looked out on a landscape of trodden mud, dotted for as far as he could see with prefabricated houses. They were the kind that arrive in three ready-made sections which simply bolt together. He had seen these sections on the road often enough. And of course he was in one now.
    The miracle was explained. Routh felt a momentary resentment against providence for not having, as he had supposed, suspended the natural order of things in his favour. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
    The hairy man held out a match. ‘We’d pulled up to fill in the log, mate, when you came tumbling over the wall like a sack. So we nipped out and took a look over, and there was your commercial gent coming after you with a gun, and a nasty-looking beggar with a beard beside him. So we bundled you into Buckingham Palace here, and carried you off under their bleeding noses.’
    ‘How do I get away from this?’
    ‘Straight down the Mall, mate.’ The lad advanced to the window and pointed. ‘There’s a bus service at the other end.’
    The hairy man had opened a door through which one could drop to the ground. Routh looked at the two men awkwardly. They looked back at him, benevolent and