For Kicks

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was getting dark when I swung into the college entrance, switched off the engine, and hurried up the steps to the door. There was no one at the porter's desk and the whole place was very quiet. I ran down the corridors, trying to remember the turns, found the stairs, went up two flights. And it was then that I got lost. I had suddenly no idea which way to turn to find Elinor's room.

A thin elderly woman with pince nez was walking towards me carrying a sheaf of papers and a thick book on her arm. One of the staff, I thought.

"Please," I said, 'which is Miss Tarren's room? " She came close to me and looked at me. She did not approve of what she saw. What would I give, I thought, for a respectable appearance at this moment.

"Please," I repeated.

"She may be ill. Which is her room?"

"You have blood on your face," she observed.

"It's only a cut… please tell me…" I gripped her arm.

"Look, show me her room, then if she's all right and perfectly healthy I will go away without any trouble. But I think she may need help very badly. Please believe me…"

"Very well," she said reluctantly.

"We will go and see. It is just round here… and round here."

We arrived at Elinor's door. I knocked hard. There was no answer. I bent down to the low keyhole. The key was in the lock on her side, and I could not see in.

"Open it," I urged the woman, who was still eyeing me dubiously.

"Open it, and see if she's all right."

She put her hand on the knob and turned. But the door didn't budge. It was locked.

I banged on the door again. There was no reply.

"Now please listen," I said urgently.

"As the door is locked on the inside, Elinor Tarren is in there. She doesn't answer because she can't. She needs a doctor very urgently indeed. Can you get hold of one at once?"

The woman nodded, looking at me gravely through the pince nez. I wasn't sure that she believed me, but apparently she did.

"Tell the doctor she has been poisoned with phenobarbitone and gin.

About forty minutes ago. And please, please hurry. Are there any more keys to this door? "

"You can't push out the key that's already there. We've tried on other doors, on other occasions. You will have to break the lock. I will go and telephone." She retreated sedately along the corridor, still breathtakingly calm in the face of a wild looking man with blood on his forehead and the news that one of her students was halfway to the coroner. A tough-minded university lecturer.

The Victorians who had built the place had not intended importunate men friends to batter down the girls' doors. They were a solid job.

But in view of the thin woman's calm assumption that breaking in was within my powers, I didn't care to fail. I broke the lock with my heel, in the end. The wood gave way on the jamb inside the room, and the door opened with a crash.

In spite of the noise I had made, no students had appeared in the corridor. There was still no one about. I went into Elinor's room, switched on the light, and swung the door back into its frame behind me.

She was lying sprawled on top of her blue bedspread fast asleep, the silver hair falling in a smooth swathe beside her head. She looked peaceful and beautiful. She had begun to undress, which was why, I supposed, she had locked her door, and she was wearing only a bra and briefs under a simple slip. All these garments were white with pink rosebuds and ribbons. Pretty. Belinda would have liked them. But in these circumstances they were too poignant, too defenceless. They increased my grinding worry.

The suit which Elinor had worn at Humber's had been dropped in two places on the floor. One stocking hung over the back of a chair: the other was on the floor just beneath her slack hand. A clean pair of stockings lay on the dressing table, and a blue woollen dress on a hanger was hooked on to the outside of the wardrobe. She had been changing for the evening.

If she hadn't heard me kicking the door in she wouldn't wake by being touched, but I tried. I shook her arm. She didn't stir. Her pulse was normal, her breathing regular, her face as delicately coloured as always. Nothing looked wrong with her. I found it frightening.

How much longer, I wondered anxiously, was the doctor going to be? The door had been stubborn or I had been weak, whichever way you looked at it and it must have been more than ten minutes since the thin woman had gone to telephone.

As if on cue the door swung open and a tidy solid- looking middle-aged man in a grey suit stood there taking in the scene. He was alone. He carried a suitcase in one hand and a fire hatchet in the other. Coming in, he looked at the splintered wood, pushed the door shut, and put the axe down on Elinor's desk.

"That's saved time, anyway," he said briskly. He looked me up and down without enthusiasm and gestured to me to get out of the way. Then he cast a closer glance at Elinor with her tucked up slip and her long bare legs, and said to me sharply, suspiciously, "Did you touch her clothes?"

"No," I said bitterly.

"I shook her arm. And felt her pulse. She was lying like that when I came in."

Something, perhaps it was only my obvious weariness, made him give me a suddenly professional, impartial survey.

"All right," he said, and bent down to Elinor.

I waited behind him while he examined her, and when he turned round I noticed he had decorously pulled down her rumpled slip so that it reached smoothly to her knees.

Thenobarbitone and gin," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Self-administered?" He started opening his case.

"No. Definitely not."

"This place is usually teeming with women," he said inconsequentially.

"But apparently they're all at some meeting or another." He gave me another intent look.

"Are you fit to help?"

"Yes."

He hesitated.

"Are you sure?"

"Tell me what to do."

"Very well. Find me a good-sized jug and a bucket or large basin. I'll get her started first, and you can tell me how this happened later."

He took a hypodermic syringe from his case, filled it, and gave Elinor an injection into the vein on the inside of her elbow. I found a jug and a basin in the built-in fitment.

"You've been here before," he observed, eyes again suspicious.

"Once," I said: and for Elinor's sake added, "I am employed by her father. It's nothing personal."

"Oh. All right then." He withdrew the needle, dismantled the syringe, and quickly washed his hands.

"How many tablets did she take, do you know?"

"It wasn't tablets. Powder. A teaspoonful, at least. Maybe more."

He looked alarmed, but said, "That much would be bitter. She'd taste it."

"Gin and Campari… it's bitter anyway."

"Yes. All right. I'm going to wash out her stomach. Most of the drug must have been absorbed already, but if she had as much as that… well, it's still worth trying."

He directed me to fill the jug with tepid water, while he carefully slid a thickish tube down inside Elinor's throat. He surprised me by putting his ear to the long protruding end of it when it was in position, and he explained briefly that with an unconscious patient who couldn't swallow one had to make sure the tube had gone into the stomach and not into the lungs.

"If you can hear them breathe, you're in the wrong place," he said.

He put a funnel in the end of the tube, held out his hand for the jug, and carefully poured in the water. When what seemed to me a fantastic amount had disappeared down the tube he stopped pouring, passed me the jug to put down, and directed me to push the basin near his foot.

Then, removing the funnel, he suddenly lowered the end of the tube over the side of the bed and into the basin. The water flowed out again, together with all the contents of Elinor's stomach.

"Hm," he said calmly.

"She had something to eat first. Cake, I should say. That helps."

I couldn't match his detachment.

"Will she be all right?" My voice sounded strained.

He looked at me briefly and slid the tube out.

"She drank the stuff less than an hour before I got here?"

"About fifty minutes, I think."

"And she'd eaten… Yes, she'll be all right. Healthy girl. The injection I gave her meg imide is an effective antidote. She'll probably wake up in an hour or so. A night in hospital, and it will be out of her system. She'll be as good as new."

I rubbed my hand over my face.

"Time makes a lot of difference," he said calmly.

"If she'd lain here many hours… a teaspoonful; that might be thirty grains or more." He shook his head.

"She could have died."

He took a sample of the contents of the basin for analysis, and covered the rest with a hand towel.

"How did you cut your head?" he said suddenly.

"In a fight."

"It needs stitching. Do you want me to do it?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"I'll do it after Miss Tarren has gone to hospital. Dr. Pritchard said she would ring for an ambulance. They should be here soon."

"Dr. Pritchard?"

"The lecturer who fetched me in. My surgery is only round the corner.

She telephoned and said a violent blood-stained youth was insisting that Miss Tarren was poisoned, and that I'd better come and see. " He smiled briefly.

"You haven't told me how all this happened."

"Oh… it's such a long story," I said tiredly.

"You'll have to tell the police," he pointed out.

I nodded. There was too much I would have to tell the police. I wasn't looking forward to it. The doctor took out pen and paper and wrote a letter to go with Elinor to the hospital.

There was a sudden eruption of girls' voices down the passage, and a tramp of many scholarly feet, and the opening and shutting of doors.

The students were back from their meeting: from Elinor's point of view, too soon, as they would now see her being carried out.

Heavier footsteps came right up to her room and knuckles rapped. Two men in ambulance uniform had arrived with a stretcher, and with economy of movement and time they lifted Elinor between them, tucked her into blankets, and bore her away. She left a wake of pretty voices raised in sympathy and speculation.

The doctor swung the door shut behind the ambulance men and withqiymore ado took from his case a needle and thread! amp;d sew up my forehead. I sat on Elinor's bed wmleffie fiddled around with disinfectant and the sticking f "What was the fight about?" he asked, tying knots.

"Because I was attacked," I said.

"Oh^He/ihifted his feet to sew from a different ^pvt his hand on my shoulder to' steady him self. He felt me withdraw from the pressure and looked at me quizzically.

"So you got the worst of it?"

"No," I said slowly.

"I won."

He finished the stitching and gave a final snip with the scissors.

"There you are, then. It won't leave much of a scar."

"Thank you." It sounded a bit weak.

"Do you feel all right?" he said abruptly.

"Or is pale fawn tinged with grey your normal colouring?"

"Pale fawn is normal. Grey just about describes how I feel." I smiled faintly.

"I got a bang on the back of the head, too."

He explored the bump behind the ear and said I would live. He was asking me how many other tender spots I had about me when another heavy tramp of footsteps could be heard coming up the corridor, and presently the door was pushed open with a crash.

Two broad-shouldered businesslike policemen stepped into the room.

They knew the doctor. It appeared that he did a good deal of police work in Durham. They greeted each other politely and the doctor started to say that Miss Tarren was on her way to hospital. They interrupted him.

"We've come for him, sir," said the taller one of them, pointing at me.

"Stable lad, name of Daniel Roke."

"Yes, he reported Miss Tarren's illness…"

"No, sir, it's nothing to do with a Miss Tarren or her illness. We want him for questioning on another matter."

The doctor said, "He's not in very good shape. I think you had better go easy. Can't you leave it until later?"

"I'm afraid that's impossible, sir."

They both came purposefully over to where I sat. The one who had done the talking was a red-headed man about my own age with an unsmiling wary face. His companion was slightly shorter, brown eyed, and just as much on guard. They looked as if they were afraid I was going to leap up and strangle them.

With precision they leaned down and clamped hard hands round my forearms. The red-head, who was on my right, dragged a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, and between them they fastened them on my wrists.

"Better take it quietly, chum," advised the red-head, evidently mistaking my attempt to wrench my arm free of his agonizing grip as a desire to escape in general.

"Let… go," I said.

"I'm not… running anywhere."

They did let go, and stepped back a pace, looking down at me. Most of the wariness had faded from their faces, and I gathered that they really had been afraid I would attack them. It was unnerving. I took two deep breaths to control the soreness of my arm.

"He won't give us much trouble," said the dark one.

"He looks like death."

"He was in a fight," remarked the doctor.

"Is that what he told you, sir?" The dark one laughed.

I looked down at the handcuffs locked round my wrists: they were, I discovered, as uncomfortable as they were humiliating.

"What did he do?" asked the doctor.

The red-head answered, "He… er… he'll be helping in inquiries into an attack on a racehorse trainer he worked for and who is still unconscious, and on another man who had his skull bust right in."

"Dead?"

"So we are told, sir. We haven't actually been to the stables, though they say it's a shambles. We two were sent up from Clavering to fetch him in, and that's where we're taking him back to, the stables being in our area you see."

"You caught up with him very quickly," commented the doctor.

"Yes," said the red-head with satisfaction.

"It was a nice bit of work by some of the lads. A lady here telephoned to the police in Durham about half an hour ago and described him, and when they got the general call from Clavering about the job at the stables someone connected the two descriptions and told us about it. So we were sent up to see, and bingo… there was his motor-bike, right number plate and all, standing outside the college door."

I lifted my head. The doctor looked down at me. He was disillusioned, disenchanted. He shrugged his shoulders and said in a tired voice, "You never know with them, do you? He seemed… well… not quite the usual sort of tear away And now this." He turned away and picked up his bag.

It was suddenly too much. I had let too many people despise me and done nothing about it. This was one too many.

"I fought because they attacked me," I said.

The doctor half turned round. I didn't know why I thought it was important to convince him, but it seemed so at the time.

The dark policeman raised an eyebrow and said to the doctor, "The trainer was his employer, sir, and I understand the man who died is a rich gentleman whose horses were trained there. The head lad reported the killing. He saw Roke belting off on his motor-bike and thought it was strange, because Roke had been sacked the day before, and he went to tell the trainer about it, and found him unconscious and the other man dead."

The doctor had heard enough. He walked out of the room without looking back. What was the use of trying? Better just do what the red-head said, and take it quietly, bitterness and all.

"Let's be going, chum," said the dark one. They stood there, tense again, with watchful eyes and hostile faces.

I got slowly to my feet. Slowly, because I was perilously near to not being able to stand up at all, and I didn't want to seem to be asking for a sympathy I was clearly not going to get. But it was all right:

once upright I felt better; which was psychological as much as physical because they were then not two huge threatening policemen but two quite ordinary young men of my own height doing their duty, and very concerned not to make any mistakes.

It worked the other way with them, of course. I think they had subconsciously expected a stable lad to be very short, and they were taken aback to discover I wasn't. They became visibly more aggressive:

and I realized in the circumstances, and in those black clothes, I probably seemed to them, as Terence had once put it, a bit dangerous and hard to handle.

I didn't see any sense in getting roughed up any more, especially by the law, if it could be avoided.

"Look," I sighed, 'like you said, I won't give you any trouble. "

But I suppose they had been told to bring in someone who had gone berserk and smashed a man's head in, and they were taking no chances.

Red-head took a fierce grip of my right arm above the elbow and shoved me over to the door, and once outside in the passage the dark one took a similar grip on the left.

The corridor was lined with girls standing in little gossiping groups.

I stopped dead. The two policemen pushed me on. And the girls stared.

That old saying about wishing the floor would open and swallow one up suddenly took on a fresh personal meaning. What little was left of my sense of dignity revolted totally against being exhibited as a prisoner in front of so many intelligent and personable young women. They were the wrong age. The wrong sex. I could have stood it better if they had been men.

But there was no easy exit. It was a good long way from Elinor's room to the outside door, along those twisting corridors and down two flights of stairs, and every single step was watched by interested female eyes.

This was the sort of thing one wouldn't be able to forget. It went too deep. Or perhaps, I thought miserably, one could even get accustomed to being hauled around in handcuffs if it happened often enough. If one were used to it, perhaps one wouldn't care. which would be peaceful.

I did at least manage not to stumble, not even on the stairs, so to that extent something was saved from the wreck. The police car however, into which I was presently thrust, seemed a perfect haven in contrast.

I sat in front, between them. The dark one drove.

"Phew," he said, pushing his cap back an inch.

"All those girls." He had blushed under their scrutiny and there was a dew of sweat on his forehead.

"He's a tough boy, is this," said Red-head, mopping his neck with a white handkerchief as he sat sideways against the door and stared at me.

"He didn't turn a hair."

I looked straight ahead through the windscreen as the lights of Durham began to slide past and thought how little could be told from a face. That walk had been a torture. If I hadn't shown it, it was probably only because I had by then had months of practice in hiding my feelings and thoughts, and the habit was strong. I guessed correctly that it was a habit I would find strength in clinging to for some time to come.

I spent the rest of the journey reflecting that I had got myself into a proper mess and that I was going to have a very unpleasant time getting out. I had indeed killed Adams. There was no denying or ducking that. And I was not going to be listened to as a respectable solid citizen but as a murdering villain trying every dodge to escape the consequences. I was going to be taken at my face value, which was very low indeed. That couldn't be helped. I had, after all, survived eight weeks at Humber's only because I looked like dregs. The appearance which had deceived Adams was going to be just as convincing to the police, and proof that in fact it already was sat on either side of me in the car, watchful and antagonistic.

Red-head's eyes never left my face.

"He doesn't talk much," he observed, after a long silence.

"Got a lot on his mind," agreed the dark one with sarcasm.

The damage Adams and Humber had done gave me no respite. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, and the handcuffs clinked. The lightheartedness with which I had gone in my new clothes to Slaw seemed a long long time ago.

The lights of Clavering lay ahead. The dark one gave me a look of subtle enjoyment. A capture made. His purpose fulfilled.

Red-head broke another long silence, his voice full of the same sort of satisfaction.

"He'll be a lot older when he gets out," he said.

I emphatically hoped not: but I was all too aware that the length of time I remained in custody depended solely on how conclusively I could show that I had killed in self-defence. I wasn't a lawyer's son for nothing.

The next hours were abysmal. The Clavering police force were collectively a hardened cynical bunch suppressing as bebrthey could a vigorous crime wave in a mining area^wfthja high unemployment percentage. Kid gloves did"58t figure in their book. Individually they may have loved their wives and been nice to their children, but if so they kept their humour and humanity strictly for leisure.

They were busy. The building was full of bustle and hurrying voices.

They shoved me still handcuffed from room to room under escort and barked out intermittent questions.

"Later," they said.

"Deal with that one later. We've got all night for him."

I thought with longing of a hot bath, a soft bed, and a handful of aspirins. I didn't get any of them.

At some point late in the evening they gave me a chair in a bare brightly lit little room, and I told them what I had been doing at Humber's and how I had come to kill Adams. I told them everything which had happened that day. They didn't believe me, for which one couldn't blame them. They immediately, as a matter of form, charged me with murder. I protested. Uselessly.

They asked me a lot of questions. I answered them. They asked them again. I answered. They asked the questions like a relay team, one of them taking over presently from another, so that they all appeared to remain full of fresh energy while I grew more and more tired. I was glad I did not have to maintain a series of lies in that state of continuing discomfort and growing fatigue, as it was hard to keep a clear head, even for the truth, and they were waiting for me to make a mistake.

"Now tell us what really happened."

"I've told you."

"Not all that cloak and dagger stuff."

"Cable to Australia for a copy of the contract I signed when I took on the job." For the fourth time I repeated my solicitor's address, and for the fourth time they didn't write it down.

"Who did you say engaged you?"

"The Earl of October."

"And no doubt we can check with him too?"

"He's in Germany until Saturday."

"Too bad." They smiled nastily. They knew from Cass that I had worked in October's stable. Cass had told them I was a slovenly stable lad, dishonest, easily frightened, and not very bright. As he believed what he said, he had carried conviction.

"You got into trouble with his Lordship's daughter, didn't you?"

Damn Cass, I thought bitterly, damn Cass and his chattering tongue.

"Getting your own back on him for sacking you, aren't you, by dragging his name into this?"

"Like you got your own back on Mr. Humber for sacking you yesterday?"

"No. I left because I had finished my job there."

"For beating you, then?"

"No."

"The head lad said you deserved it."

"Adams and Humber were running a crooked racing scheme. I found them out, and they tried to kill me." It seemed to me it was the tenth time that I had said that without making the slightest impression.

"You resented being beaten. You went back to get even… It's a common enough pattern."

"No."

"You brooded over it and went back and attacked them. It was a shambles. Blood all over the place."

"It was my blood."

"We can group it."

"Do that. It's my blood."

"From that little cut? Don't be so stupid."

"It's been stitched."

"Ah yes, that brings us back to Lady Elinor Tarren. Lord October's daughter. Got her into trouble, did you?"

"No."

"In the family way…"

"No. Check with the doctor."

"So she took sleeping pills…"

"No. Adams poisoned her." I had told them twice about the bottle of phenobarbitone, and they must have found it when they had been at the stables, but they wouldn't admit it.

"You got the sack from her father for seducing her. She couldn't stand the disgrace. She took sleeping pills."

"She had no reason to feel disgraced. It was not she, but her sister Patricia, who accused me of seducing her. Adams poisoned Elinor in gin and Campari. There are gin and Campari and phenobarbitone in the office and also in the sample from her stomach."

They took no notice.

"She found you had deserted her on top of everything else. Mr. Humber consoled her with a drink, but she went back to college and took sleeping pills."

"No."

They were sceptical, to put it mildly, about Adams' use of the flame thrower.

"You'll find it in the shed."

"This shed, yes. Where did you say it was?"

I told them again, exactly.

"The field probably belongs to Adams. You could find out."

"It only exists in your imagination."

"Look and you'll find it, and the flame thrower."

"That's likely to be used for burning off the heath. Lots of farmers have them, round here."

They had let me make two telephone calls to try to find Colonel Beckett. His manservant in London said he had gone to stay with friends in Berkshire for New- bury races. The little local exchange in Berkshire was out of action, the operator said, because a water main had burst and flooded a cable. Engineers were working on it.

Didn't my wanting to talk to one of the top brass of steeple-chasing convince them, I wanted to know?

"Remember that chap we had in here once who'd strangled his wife?

Nutty as a fruit cake. Insisted on ringing up Lord Bertrand Russell, didn't he, to tell him he'd struck a blow for peace. "

At around midnight one of them pointed out that even if (and, mind you, he didn't himself believe it) even if all I had said about being employed to find out about Adams and Humber were against all probability true, that still didn't give me the right to kill them.

"Humber isn't dead," I said.

"Not yet."

My heart lurched. Dear God, I thought, not Humber too. Not Humber too.

"You clubbed Adams with the walking stick then?"

"No, I told you, with a green glass ball. I had it in my left hand and I hit him as hard as I could. I didn't mean to kill him, just knock him out. I'm right handed… I

couldn't judge very well how hard I was hitting with my left. "

"Why did you use your left hand then?"

f! told you. "

"Tell us again."

I told them again.

"And after your right arm was put out of action you got on a motor-cycle and rode ten miles to Durham? What sort of fools do you take us for?"

"The fingerprints of both my hands are on that paperweight. The right ones from when I threw it at Humber, and the left ones on top, from where I hit Adams. You have only to check."

"Fingerprints, now," they said sarcastically.

"And while you're on the subject, you'll also find the fingerprints of my left hand on the telephone. I tried to call you from the office. My left hand prints are on the tap in the washroom… and on the key, and on the door handle, both inside and out. Or at least, they were…"

"All the same, you rode that motor-bike."

"The numbness had gone by then."

"And now?"

"It isn't numb now either."

One of them came round beside me, picked up my right wrist, and pulled my arm up high. The handcuffs jerked and lifted my left arm as well.

The bruises had all stiffened and were very sore. The policeman put my arm down again. There was a short silence.

"That hurt," one of them said at last, grudgingly.

"He's putting it on."

"Maybe…"

They had been drinking endless cups of tea all evening and had not given me any. I asked if I could have some then, and got it; only to find that the difficulty I had in lifting the cup was hardly worth it.

They began again.

"Granted Adams struck your arm, but he did it in self-defence. He saw you throw the paper weight at your employer and realized you were going to attack him next. He was warding you off."

"He had already cut my forehead open… and hit me several times on the body, and once on the head."

"Most of that was yesterday, according to the head lad. That's why you went back and attacked Mr. Humber."

"Humber hit me only twice yesterday. I didn't particularly resent it.

The rest was today, and it was mostly done by Adams. " I remembered something.

"He took my crash helmet off when he had knocked me dizzy.

His fingerprints must be on it. "

"Fingerprints again."

"They spell it out," I said.

"Let's begin at the beginning. How can we believe a yob like you?"

Yob. One of the leather boys. Tearaway. Rocker. I knew all the words.

I knew what I looked like. What a millstone of a handicap.

I said despairingly, "There's no point in pretending to be a disreputable, dishonest lad if you don't look the part."

"You look the part all right," they said offensively.

"Born to it, you were."

I looked at their stony faces, their hard, unimpressed eyes. Tough efficient policemen who were not going to be conned. I could read their thoughts like glass: if I convinced them and they later found out it was all a pack of lies, they'd never live it down. Their instincts were all dead against having to believe. My bad luck.

The room grew stuffy and full of cigarette smoke and I became too hot in my jerseys and jacket. I knew they took the sweat on my forehead to be guilt, not heat, not pain.

I went on answering all their questions. They covered the ground twice more with undiminished zeal, setting traps, sometimes shouting, walking round me, never touching me again, but springing the questions from all directions. I was really much too tired for that sort of thing because apart from the wearing-out effect of the injuries I had not slept for the whole of the previous night. Towards two o'clock I could hardly speak from exhaustion, and after they had woken me from a sort of dazed sleep three times in half an hour, they gave it up.

From the beginning I had known that there was only one logical end to that evening, and I had tried to shut it out of my mind, because I dreaded it. But there you are, you set off on a primrose path and if it leads to hell that's just too bad.

Two uniformed policemen, a sergeant and a constable, were detailed to put me away for the night, which I found involved a form of accommodation to make Humber's dormitory seem a paradise.

The cell was cubic, eight feet by eight by eight, built of glazed bricks, brown to shoulder height and white above that. There was a small barred window too high to see out of, a narrow slab of concrete for a bed, a bucket with a lid on it in a corner, and a printed list of regulations on one wall. Nothing else. Bleak enough to shrink the guts; and I had never much cared for small enclosed spaces.

The two policemen brusquely told me to sit on the concrete. They removed my boots and the belt from my jeans, and also found and unbuckled the money belt underneath. They took off the handcuffs. Then they went out, shut the door with a clang, and locked me in.

The rest of that night was in every way rock bottom.