3

O they rode on and further on,
They waded rivers above the knee,
And they saw neither sun nor moon,
But they heard the roaring of the sea.

THOMAS THE RHYMER

Feeling very guilty for a number of reasons, Polly bought Mr. Lynn a copy of The Three Musketeers for Christmas and got Granny to help her pack it up. Granny’s parcels were works of art made of closely woven string and brown paper. “Well, it’s bound to be late and I daresay he’s a bit old for it, but they say it’s the thought that counts,” Granny said as they came back from posting it.

“Why are you always like that about Mr. Lynn?” said Polly.

“Like what?” said Granny.

“Sort of sarcastic,” said Polly. “Why don’t you like him?”

Granny shrugged. “Oh, I expect he’s well enough, in himself. I just have my reservations about the company he keeps.”

Since Polly knew exactly what Granny meant about the Leroy Perrys, she did not say any more. She just went quietly back to the paper chains she was making.

Dad stayed with them over Christmas, to Polly’s delight. “Mind you,” Granny said, “I said I wouldn’t take sides and I’m not. But I think this is fair.”

“Fair!” Dad said angrily. “I’ve a good mind to get a court order!” He told Polly rather grimly that Mum and David Bragge had gone away together for Christmas. But most of the time he was just as Polly remembered him from over a year ago, laughing and making silly jokes with Granny and Polly. Polly forgot the new wrinkles round his eyes and the grey threads in his curls and romped with him as if she were five years old. There was only one five-year-old thing she refused to do. “Play Let’s Pretend now,” Dad said pleadingly, several times.

“No,” said Polly. “I’ve gone off it.”

“Why?” asked Dad, but Polly did not know.

“Don’t pester her, Reg,” said Granny.

Polly did not dare show Dad or Granny—particularly Granny—her stolen photograph. She looked at it secretly when she went to bed each night, under her Fire and Hemlock picture. Looking back on that Christmas, Polly was rather surprised at the way she thought a great deal about both her pictures, and scarcely at all about that meeting she had overheard between Mr. Leroy and Mr. Lynn. That was so queer, somehow, that she had to push it to one side of her mind. Instead, she stared at the fire and the mysterious figures behind the hemlock.

Up to now Polly had assumed they were trying to put the fire out. But this Christmas it began to seem to her that the people might really be trying to keep the fire going, building it up furiously, racing against time. You could see from the clouds of smoke that the fire was very damp. Perhaps if they left off feeding it for an instant, it would fizzle out and leave them in the dark.

The stolen photograph had a much more ordinary look. It was slightly faded with age. Polly, from much looking at it, became certain that the bit of the house behind the grinning boy was Hunsdon House. But he was not Seb. From some angles his cheeky look reminded her of Leslie in Thomas Piper’s shop. But he had the wrong hair to be either Leslie or Seb, too fair and long and untidy for Seb, and not curly enough for Leslie. Besides, he was older than both of them. Polly decided she simply had not met him yet. She hid the photo carefully inside her school bag before she went to sleep, because Dad was using the camp bed in her room.

The days passed. “Ah well,” said Dad. “Back to Joanna again, I suppose.” He kissed Polly and left. Polly went home to Ivy and David Bragge and took her photograph with her. But she hid it in her folder with the soldiers, and hid the folder in the cupboard where the cistern glopped. She did not trust Ivy not to throw it away.

“You forgot to give David a Christmas present,” Ivy said, handing her a parcel from Mr. Lynn.

Polly had not meant to remember a present for David, so she pretended to be absorbed in opening the parcel. It contained a book about King Arthur and a book of fairy stories and one of Mr. Lynn’s hastiest notes. Polly supposed King Arthur was all right, but fairy stories—! Still, she was sure—without wanting to think of Mr. Leroy—that Mr. Lynn had things on his mind, and she tried not to blame him.

School began next day, and rain with it. For weeks Polly arrived at school soaking wet to find Games cancelled yet again and everyone depressed and coughing. The Superstition Club had vanished as if it had never been. At home there was David Bragge and his jokes to avoid, and Mum hanging lovingly over him, consulting him about everything. “What do you think, David?” Ivy said this so often that Polly took to imitating her secretly and jeeringly in front of the mirror in her little box of a room. “What do you think, David?” With it went a stupid, languishing smile. David did not speak much to Polly. They both seemed to know they had nothing in common.

Then, just before half-term, came a proper letter from Mr. Lynn, thanking her for the book. It must have gone astray in the Christmas post, he said, because it had only just arrived. Do you have a hlaf trem? he went on in his bad typing. Or if not, is oyur mother liekly to visit her lwayer again? I have’ny seen yuo forages. If yuo come up to London, I promise to meet yuo at the statoin.

Ivy did indeed go and see her lawyer quite often, but she saw no reason to take Polly. “I’ve enough to buy without spending money on unnecessary jaunts,” she said. “You’ve grown out of all your clothes again.”

This was true. They spent a tiring Saturday shopping. “All dressed up with nowhere to go!” Polly said bitterly, and she gave up all hope of seeing Mr. Lynn.

Oddly enough, it was David Bragge who paid Polly’s fare. Polly did not understand quite why. It seemed to happen because she met him by accident in the middle of town the day school broke up, when she was walking home with six friends. David was across the street, talking to a lady. Polly looked at them because the lady David was with seemed to be Mary Fields. She was not Mary Fields. Polly had lost interest and was turning away when David suddenly waved and came bounding through the puddles on his rather short legs—it was raining, of course.

“Hello, Polly!” he called. Polly had to stop and talk while her friends stood waiting impatiently and getting wet. “Polly,” David said earnestly, “I’ve long felt you deserved rich rewards for sanctity and forbearance and all that jazz. Is there something you haven’t got that you’d like to have? Speak up. Sky’s the limit and so on.”

Polly looked at his face carefully and saw he meant it. “I need a return fare to London,” she said. “And some spending money for when I’m there,” she added, since miracles seldom happen and it is best to get the most out of them when they do.

“Done!” cried David. “Money under plain cover this evening as ever is!” And he bounced off again, back to his lady.

He was as good as his word. He put an envelope full of pound notes into Polly’s hand that night before she went to bed. Polly had a vague feeling he expected something in return, if only she could understand what it might be, but she did not let ignorance stop her taking the envelope. She wrote Mr. Lynn a hasty card and, on the day she had said, she mounted a fast train at Miles Cross Station and was rattled up to London on the morning of what proved to be the only fine day of the half-term holiday. She felt very brave and grown up, doing it, and she worried all the way in case Mr. Lynn had not got her card or turned out to be doing something else that day.

To her relief, he was waiting for her on the platform, with the sun gleaming mildly on his glasses and a well-known large hand held out to shake hers. They were talking as if they had not met for five years—or only been away five minutes—before they had even got off the platform.

“Tan Coul must have some more adventures,” Mr. Lynn greeted her.

Like a password, Polly replied, “And we must find out about Tan Audel soon. It’s stupid not knowing him.”

The horse-car, TC 123, was waiting outside, and they climbed into it, still talking. But there was a slight break in their talk as they set off and Polly discovered that Mr. Lynn still drove as heroes do. It seemed to be the way he was made. They shot into the traffic, squealing on two left wheels, cut in front of a bus, tipped a cyclist neatly into the gutter, and dived between two taxis through a gap that would have been small for the cyclist. But the taxi drivers knew a hero when they saw one and sheered off, honking their horns.

Those horns were drowned in a new outburst of honking as the horse-car shot across in front of the oncoming traffic and screamed into a side street on two right wheels. Two old ladies leaped for their lives.

“Missed them!” remarked Mr. Lynn. Polly was not sure if he said it with relief or regret. “The car’s feeling its oats,” he explained, realising Polly had gone quiet.

“Do—do you get killed often?” Polly said.

“Old heroes never die,” said Mr. Lynn. “But I do rather surprisingly often drive the wrong way up one-way streets. I think I am now.”

They were. Somehow they missed the van coming the other way. Polly tried to take her mind off this heroic driving by asking, very casually and carefully, “Were you in Middleton just before Christmas?”

“No,” Mr. Lynn said, surprised. “I was stuck here with concerts. I’d have looked you up if I had been. Why?”

“I was staying at Granny’s and I thought I saw you,” Polly said carefully.

The little car leaped from the end of the side street and heroically dived among traffic going round a large roundabout. “You couldn’t have done,” Mr. Lynn said, whizzing across the front of a lorry and squealing into the next turning. “I really wasn’t there.”

“Did you see Mr. Leroy at all?” Polly asked. “I thought I saw him too.”

With a jolt and scream of protest, the car stopped for a red light. “I did run into him just before Christmas. Yes,” Mr. Lynn said, carefully and with just a touch of grimness. It reminded Polly of the way Dad talked about David Bragge. And he changed the subject by asking about her stay at Granny’s.

The lights changed while Polly was in the middle of telling him about Dad and David Bragge. The horse-car set off with a bellowing roar before any of the other cars had moved. There were red lights at intervals all down that road. Mr. Lynn treated each one as if it were the starting block for the hundred-metre dash, screaming off ahead of all the other cars, only to rein in with a jerk as the next light turned red. It was fun. Polly began to enjoy the way heroes drove. She felt quite used to it by the time they roared into the street outside Mr. Lynn’s flat and Mr. Lynn parked the car by the simple expedient of knocking the rear bumper off the car in front of the only space there. “I don’t think my car likes other cars,” he explained as he knelt in the road, putting the other car’s bumper roughly back in place. “It does this rather often.”

“Perhaps it would rather be a horse,” Polly suggested.

“That must be it,” agreed Mr. Lynn.

Mr. Lynn’s landlady, Carla, opened the door for them before they got there. The baby from last time had grown into quite a large toddler, hanging on to Carla’s hand and shouting, but otherwise Carla was just the same. “I thought it was you,” she said cheerfully. “I heard the crash. Learn to drive, can’t you!” As they went upstairs, she shouted after them through the toddler’s yelling, “Get him to show you his collection of parking tickets. It may be a record!”

When they reached the privacy of Mr. Lynn’s flat, Polly asked, feeling rather mature, “Is Carla a one-parent family?”

“Not quite,” Mr. Lynn said. “I think there are several Mr. Carlas. It’s rather confusing.”

“Oh,” said Polly, and felt childish after all.

Mr. Lynn gave her one of his considering looks. “People are strange,” he said. “Usually they’re much stranger than you think. Start from there and you’ll never be unpleasantly surprised. Do you fancy doughnuts?”

They were excellent doughnuts, soft, sugary and fresh. Polly ate them absently, though, considering Mr. Lynn in return. He was behaving cheerfully enough, but he was not happy. She knew the signs, from Ivy. There was a sort of effort going into his cheerful remarks. She could feel the pushes. She decided not to say anything about it. She knew how useless it was with Ivy when she was in a mood. But Mr. Lynn was not Ivy. Without intending to, she said, “What’s the matter? Are you very miserable?”

“Yes,” Mr. Lynn said frankly. “But mostly I’m worried and undecided about something. I’ll tell you about it, boring though it is, but there’s something I’d like you to do first. I’ve got quite superstitious—”

“So have I!” Polly exclaimed. And they broke off for her to tell him about the Superstition Club. When she got to the Deputy Head in the mirror, Mr. Lynn gave a great yelp and began laughing properly. Polly stopped then, because she was getting unpleasantly close to telling him how she had stolen the photograph. “What did you want me to do?” she said.

“Cheer me up,” confessed Mr. Lynn. “Selfish of me to drag you all the way to London for that, even though it seems to have worked. The other thing is—do you think you’d know the other heroes if you saw them? Tan Thare and Tan Hanivar anyway?”

Polly nodded. “I would. Positive.” She could see them both as clearly in her mind as she could see Ivy or Nina or David Bragge.

“Then,” said Mr. Lynn, “see if you can find either of them here. Or Tan Audel, if possible.”

He plunged to his mantelpiece and brought down a roll of paper from it. After he had spread it out on the hearth rug and it had rolled up, and he had unrolled it and pinned it down with two books and a salt cellar, Polly saw it was a mass photograph of the British Philharmonic Orchestra. It was very posed. Everyone was in evening dress, facing the front, with their violins or clarinets or trumpets held out stiffly to the side.

“Yes, I know,” Mr. Lynn said. “The BPO posing for Madame Tussaud’s. Rows of stuffed penguins. The conductor comes along with a big key, probably A flat, and winds us all up. Can you see any of them?”

Polly saw Tan Thare almost at once. His face leaped out at her, in spite of an unexpected beard, chubby and carefree and possibly a little dishonest, from the front row of violins. She stabbed her finger on him, crying out with surprise. “Tan Thare! It really is! I don’t like him in that beard, though.”

“Neither did most of his friends,” said Mr. Lynn. “He was held down and forcibly shaved on New Year’s Eve. Anyone else?”

He sounded casual, but Polly could tell it meant a lot to him. She searched the photograph again. Mr. Lynn himself came to light among the cellos, although he was not so easy to find. He seemed to have faded away into the rest of the cellists, built into the orchestra like a brick. Tan Hanivar’s long nose and gloomy face ought to be easier to find—and there he was! He was among the violins too, over to the right, behind Tan Thare. The gloomy face had a mop of dark hair above it, more than Polly had imagined, but it was definitely poor, shape-changing Tan Hanivar. Polly pointed. “Tan Hanivar. What’s his real name?”

“Samuel Rensky. And Tan Thare is usually known as Edward Davies. Any luck with Tan Audel?” Mr. Lynn asked rather tensely.

But Polly still did not know what Tan Audel looked like. She searched and searched the mass of faces. “Sorry,” she said at last. “I just don’t know him.”

“Him?” said Mr. Lynn. “Er—have you considered, as a female assistant hero yourself, that Tan Audel might be a woman?” He sounded really nervous about it.

As soon as he said it, Polly knew he was right. “Oh, good heavens!” she said. “I never thought!” Of course Tan Audel was a woman, now she thought. She even knew, dimly, some of the things Tan Audel was famous for. She went back to the photograph, scanning the ladies in dark dresses she had been ignoring up to then, very much ashamed of herself. And there was Tan Audel at last. She was in among the set of those big violins—violas, they were called. “Here,” she said, with her finger under the strong, squarish face with strong, square, black hair. Tan Audel was not pretty. But she looked nice.

Mr. Lynn leaped up with a shout. “Ann Abraham! You’ve done it, Polly! You truly did it! I can hardly believe it!” He was so excited that Polly had to pull his sweater to get him to explain why. Then he seemed to think she might find the explanation boring. “It’s like this,” he said, folding himself down onto the hearth rug rather apologetically. “As soon as I joined the BPO, I found I wanted to leave it—not the orchestra’s fault, just my habit of not fitting in very well—and play on my own. But I hadn’t any money, and there’s only a limited amount a lone cellist can do anyway. The best way to do it was to form a group, a quartet or a trio, because there are quite a lot of things four players can do. But of course they have to be known before they can make any money at it. You wouldn’t believe how many good players in the orchestra wouldn’t dream of taking the risk. They thought I was crazy. So did I, to tell the truth. Then you came along and told me about heroes. And then there was the horse, which made me sell a picture, and I thought: Damn it, I can do it! So I talked to some friends and, to cut a long story short, Ed Davies, Sam Rensky, Ann Abraham, and I got together and tried—”

“What went wrong?” Polly asked as Mr. Lynn trailed off.

“Nothing at all heroic.” Mr. Lynn gave his gulping laugh. “Cold feet. If we want to form a proper quartet, we’re going to have to leave the orchestra and try—but it’s always possible we’ll end up busking in the Underground a year from now. I thought I’d sell another picture.” He pointed. Polly swivelled round to look at the pink-and-blue clown picture leaning against the wall. Her face went hot with guilt and she had to stay turned away when Mr. Lynn said, “I thought it must be a reproduction or at least a copy, but it turns out to be a real Picasso.” He added, sounding unhappy, “It’s not money, though. It’s—well, are we good enough to foist ourselves on the public?”

That made Polly turn back. “Granny says the only way to find out is to try,” she said. “I say that too,” she added, thinking about it.

“I know,” Mr. Lynn said in his humblest way. “And I hope you’ll forgive me, Polly. Since it started with you in a way, I thought I’d let you decide. If you could find the right heroes in the photograph, I swore we’d go on. If you didn’t, I’d superstitiously decided to scrap the whole idea.”

“You took a risk!” said Polly. She was extremely glad she had not known how much depended on her finding Tan Thare and the others. “Suppose I hadn’t found them? Or what if I did find them, but they weren’t the ones you meant?”

Mr. Lynn bowed his head over his big hands and looked ashamed. “I think I’d have approached the ones you chose instead. You have a knack of telling me the right thing.” And at that he sprang up. “Now you deserve a treat. Where would you like to go in London? What shall we do?”

The rest of the day was a great golden excitement to Polly. She had never been anywhere much in London, so it was all new and wonderful to her, whether she was in the horse-car screaming round and round the roundabout in front of Buckingham Palace because Mr. Lynn kept missing the road they wanted, or heroically belting along the Embankment, or looking at the Crown Jewels in the Tower, or eating kebab somewhere beyond that. Now Mr. Lynn was happy again, they talked and talked the whole time, but Polly only remembered snatches of what they said. She remembered being in front of the Houses of Parliament, eating a hot dog. She looked up at Big Ben and said suddenly, “Tan Coul and the others have to be on a quest for something.”

“Do you insist?” said Mr. Lynn.

“Yes,” said Polly. “All the best heroes are.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Lynn. “What are we looking for?”

Polly replied promptly, “An Obah Cypt.” But when Mr. Lynn questioned her, she had not the least idea what an Obah Cypt could be.

Later they were standing looking at the Thames somewhere while Polly ate a choc-ice—she spent most of the day eating something—and Mr. Lynn asked her if she had liked the books he had sent for Christmas.

Polly did her best to be tactful. It was not easy, because the choc-ice had just fallen apart and she was trying to balance a sheet of chocolate on her tongue while she sucked at the dripping ice cream beneath. “King Arthur’s all right,” she said liquidly.

“You don’t like fairy stories. Have you read them?” said Mr. Lynn. Polly was forced to shake her head. “Please read them,” said Mr. Lynn. “Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look.”

“A’ ri’,” said Polly over a dissolving handful of white goo and brown flakes.

Later still the horse-car broke down in rush hour when they were racing to catch Polly’s train. Mr. Lynn was quite used to this. Shouting that the brute always did it when he was in a hurry, he leaped out and pushed the car at a run onto the nearest pavement. There he first kicked it in the tyre, and then tore open the bonnet and prodded inside with the largest Stow-on-the-Water screwdriver while he called it a number of very insulting names. Then he kicked it again and it started. “The only language it understands,” he said as they roared off again.

They arrived not quite too late for Polly’s train and ran towards the platform among the thousands of other hurrying people. Polly shouted across the hammering of their many feet, “You know, the way you got the car to start is the only peculiar thing that’s happened this time!”

“Beware famous last words!” panted Mr. Lynn. “Not true. Think of the way you spotted the heroes.” As they came near the barrier, he stopped almost dead. Polly thought she heard him say, “Famous last words indeed!” She looked round to ask what he meant and saw Mr. Leroy coming through the crowds towards them with long, impatient steps.

Mr. Leroy was wearing a coat with a fur collar which made him look both rich and important, and he was holding a rolled umbrella out before him, slanted slightly downwards. “I don’t want to hurt you with this, so get out of my way!” the umbrella said, and people obeyed it. With Mr. Leroy there was a smaller person in a sheepskin jacket. It took Polly an instant or so to realise that the second person was Seb—Seb about a foot taller than when she last saw him. In that instant Mr. Leroy’s umbrella had cleared every other person out of the way and he was standing looking at Mr. Lynn. “I have you now!” said the look in the dark-pouched eyes, angry, triumphant, and accusing. The things Polly had overheard in Hunsdon House came out from hiding at the side of her mind when she saw that look, and she felt sick.

“Well, fancy meeting you here, Tom!” said Mr. Leroy. The friendly surprise did not go with his look at all.

“Hello, Morton,” Mr. Lynn said. Polly wondered how he could take it so calmly. “Are you going down to Middleton?”

“No. I’m just putting Seb on the train after his half-term,” Mr. Leroy said. “I assume you’re doing the same with—” the dark pouches under his eyes moved as he looked at Polly “—this young lady.”

Polly had an idea that Seb was looking at her too, rather consideringly, but when she tore her eyes away from Mr. Leroy to make sure, Seb was staring scornfully at a book stall.

“Yes I am,” said Mr. Lynn. “And she’s going to miss the train if she doesn’t go now.”

“Seb can look after her,” said Mr. Leroy. “Got your ticket, Seb?”

“Yes,” Seb said.

“Off you both run, then,” said Mr. Leroy. “I can see the guard getting ready to signal. Hurry.”

Mr. Lynn said, “Bye, Polly. Better run,” and gave her a firm, friendly smile. Seb glanced at the air above Polly, jerked his head to say “Come on” and set off at a trot towards the ticket barrier. There was nothing Polly could do but call “Goodbye!” to Mr. Lynn over her shoulder as she ran after Seb. The train really was just about to go.

They caught the train by getting on the nearest end as it started to move. Then they had to walk down it to find seats. Polly expected Seb to lose her at this point, since he had done what his father wanted. But he stuck close behind her the whole way down the crowded train. Polly felt trapped. And she was horribly worried about Mr. Lynn. They found two seats facing one another. As Polly squeezed into one and watched Seb sit down opposite her, she was wondering if she would ever see Mr. Lynn again.

To her surprise, Seb said quite cheerfully, “Did you have a good time in London? I did.”

Polly jumped rather. She had not expected him to speak. He had looked so fed up at being put in charge of her. But because he had spoken so cheerfully, she found herself replying, equally cheerfully, “Yes. Lovely, thanks.” Hearing herself, she went into a silent panic. Quite apart from the fact that Seb was guarding her, she had not the least idea what you talked about to boys of fifteen. At Manor Road no boy that age would be seen dead talking to a First Year girl. “I—er—I saw the Tower of London,” she said lamely.

“I was there yesterday,” said Seb. “Cigarette?”

“N-no thanks,” Polly stammered, and watched with awe while Seb took out a packet of cigarettes and a silver lighter and lit himself a cigarette. It was all the more awesome because he was sitting beside a NO SMOKING sign on the train window. She could feel her eyes going wide and round.

“My father objects,” Seb said, blowing lines of smoke like a dragon. “You don’t, do you?”

“Oh no,” said Polly.

“Good place, London,” Seb said. “Better than school.”

“Yes,” said Polly.

That seemed to bring the conversation to an end. Polly thought she was relieved. But it seemed so awkward just to sit there that she began to feel compelled to say something else. But what? The only things she wanted to say were to ask about Mr. Lynn and why Mr. Leroy did not want him to see her. She was sure Seb knew why. But she did not dare. It was maddening. She seemed far more afraid of Seb now than she was when she was ten.

Perhaps if I could get him talking first about something else, she thought, I could lead round to it. But what did you say? She scrambled round inside her head, rooting in odd corners for something—anything!—she could say, and suddenly she came upon her secret visit to Hunsdon House. It dawned on her that she had a guilty inside view on Seb. “Which pop groups do you like?” she asked, in the greatest relief.

“Doors. Pity their singer’s dead,” said Seb. “Do you know the Doors?” Polly did not, but it did not matter. Seb told her. He talked all the rest of the way to Middleton, and all Polly was able to do was nod and listen. She never got a chance to ask anything. Before long she was glad she had put her question the way she did. The posters on Seb’s walls were the groups he had liked last year, and he told her he was sick of them now. He still liked Michael Moorcock, he said, but this turned out to be a writer. “Great stuff,” Seb told Polly. “You should read him.”

By the end of the journey Polly was finding Seb almost agreeable. He looked much nicer when he smiled. His laugh was like Mr. Leroy’s, but lower and more grating, which made it, to Polly’s mind, much less fatal. A sort of elegant churring, really, she thought. And it was flattering that he did not seem to mind talking to her.

The train drew into Middleton. As they got up to get off, Seb said, “There’s a disco at my school at the end of term. You could come, if you’re interested.”

Polly was so flustered at this that she said, “I’d love to!” and then wondered what had made her say it.

Seb said he would let her know when it was. They got off the train and walked out of the station together, into the dark and windy forecourt. Seb stopped near the fountain thing in the middle. “See here,” he said quite kindly. “I warned you off a year and a half ago. You didn’t take the blindest bit of notice, did you?”

This shook Polly exceedingly. By this time she had begun to believe that Seb had forgotten who she was. “No, I didn’t,” she said. “But you hadn’t any right to, anyway!”

“You should have listened,” said Seb. “You’ve got my father angry now, and he can be quite vile when he’s angry. You’d better be careful from now on. Very careful. That’s all. Want me to walk home with you?”

“No thanks,” said Polly. “See you.” It was a long way home from Miles Cross, but she ran all the way. It was a relief to find that Ivy and David were out when she got there. She did not feel like talking.

About a week later Mr. Lynn telephoned. Polly had got used to taking messages for David Bragge, and she answered the phone in the way she had invented to make it less boring.

Good evening,” she said in a silly squeak. Then, making her voice go deep and booming, “Whittacker residence here, and Bragge lodging.”

“Good Lord!” said Mr. Lynn. “Is that what it is? Miss Jeeves, would you be so good as to tell Hero that Tan Coul wishes to speak to her?”

“Oh it’s you!” shouted Polly, and found she was blushing at the telephone. “I thought it was—Are you all right? Really all right?”

“Very well, thank you,” Mr. Lynn said in his polite way. But he was upset. Polly could hear he was. She clenched her teeth and half shut her eyes, thinking of all the things she had imagined Mr. Leroy doing to Mr. Lynn. “Polly, do you remember us discussing selling a picture?”

“Yes.” Polly’s conscience gave her a guilty jab somewhere in the middle of her chest.

“One of the ones you helped me choose,” Mr. Lynn said, causing Polly another jab, “and I told you it turned out to be a Picasso. Well, it seems that we somehow got all the wrong ones. They’ve just found out. Laurel’s been on to me, and Morton Leroy, and they’re trying to trace the one I sold to buy the horse. Of course I’ve had to give the Picasso back—”

Oh no! thought Polly. This is Mr. Leroy’s revenge. “Do they want my fire-and-cow-parsley one too?” she asked, with a further guilty jab because of the stolen photograph hidden upstairs in the cistern cupboard.

“They haven’t mentioned that one yet,” Mr. Lynn said. “It’s a photograph, so maybe it isn’t as valuable as the others. I won’t say anything about it unless they ask.”

“Thank you,” said Polly. Then, because of her relief, her mind turned round to see Mr. Lynn’s point of view. “Does that mean you won’t have any money to start your quartet with?”

“I’m afraid not,” Mr. Lynn said rather colourlessly.

All the pictures?” said Polly. “The Chinese horse and the musicians too?”

“I can keep those two on condition I don’t sell them. But I’ve had to give the carnival picture back with the clowns. It’s fair enough. It was a mistake—”

But after all this time! Polly thought. She interrupted fiercely. “You’re not going to stop doing your quartet! Not now you’ve decided! You mustn’t!”

“Thank you for saying that,” said Mr. Lynn. “That’s why I rang really. I am going on with it. The others have said they’ll risk it. But it means I’m going to be very occupied for quite some time, trying to get people to listen to us, and I’m not going to have time to see you, or think of hero business, or even write very much. I’m sorry.”

“I see,” Polly said miserably. “This is a goodbye call.”

“Oh no, no, no!” said Mr. Lynn, but she could see it was, even though he added, “By the way, do you think an Obah Cypt is a sort of container of some kind? I see it as a small jewelled phial.”

“A little vase with a lid,” said Polly. “Carved out of one precious stone and worth a king’s ransom. It may be. What’s in it, though?”

“Something even more valuable, obviously. The water of life? The key to all knowledge?”

“Not quite. I’ll work on it,” said Polly. “Is Michael Moorcock any good?”

“We-ell,” said Mr. Lynn. “You may prefer Asimov. I’ll see you. For the moment you’ll have to think of me as away on a quest for an audience.”

Polly put the phone down, full of stony, Ivy-like anger. Curses upon Mr. Leroy! A very civilised revenge. He had stopped her seeing Mr. Lynn and punished Mr. Lynn for seeing her, all in one neat sweep. She knew she had broken the rules by seeing Mr. Lynn, which was what allowed Mr. Leroy his revenge. But it seemed so hard and horrible that her wrong-doing over the pictures should rebound on Mr. Lynn.

“I’ll do something to Mr. Leroy one of these days,” she said to herself. “Something quite legal this time, but quite awful.” Then she went sadly upstairs and tried to read the book of fairy stories. “Cinderella! How stupid!” Polly turned to the next story, but instead of reading it, raised her head to look at the clown picture in her mind’s eye. She could see it clearly. A man clown and a boy clown standing on a beach, rather dejectedly, so that they seemed gawky and lumpish in their pink-and-blue Harlequin clothes. Things had gone wrong for them. They could have been a hero and his assistant in disguise.

Resolutely Polly put her head down again and found herself looking at a story called “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” The title made her blink and think a bit. “It could be a way of saying Nowhere,” she said aloud, doubtfully. She read it, but she could not find the one true fact Mr. Lynn had assured her would be there. The girl in the story was carried off by a man who was under a spell which made him a bear in the daytime. He warned her never to look at him when he was a man, but she did. Then of course he vanished to marry a princess, and she had a terrible job getting him back. Pointless, to Polly’s mind. The girl had only herself to blame for her troubles. She was told not to do a thing and she did. And she cried so much. Polly despised her.