The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene Page B

ignored his sister completely. He said to Rowe, ‘Just a moment while I write a note for Trench,’ and disappeared behind the screen.
    When they left the office together it was by another door; dropping Jones was as simple as that, for he had no reason to suppose that his employer would try to evade him. Hilfe called a taxi, and as they drove down the street, Rowe was able to see how the shabby figure kept his vigil, lighting yet another cigarette with his eyes obliquely on the great ornate entrance, like a faithful hound who will stay interminably outside his master’s door. Rowe said, ‘I wish we had let him know.’
    â€˜Better not,’ Hilfe said. ‘We can pick him up afterwards. We shan’t be long,’ and the figure slanted out of sight as the taxi wheeled away; he was lost amongst the buses and bicycles, absorbed among all the other loitering seedy London figures, never to be seen again by anyone who knew him.

Chapter 4
    AN EVENING WITH MRS BELLAIRS
    â€˜There be dragons of wrong here and everywhere, quite as venomous as any in my Sagas.’
    The Little Duke
    Mrs Bellairs’ house was a house of character; that is to say it was old and unrenovated, standing behind its little patch of dry and weedy garden among the To Let boards on the slope of Campden Hill. A piece of statuary lay back in a thin thorny hedge like a large block of pumice stone, chipped and grey with neglect, and when you rang the bell under the early Victorian portico, you seemed to hear the sound pursuing the human inhabitants into back rooms as though what was left of life had ebbed up the passages.
    The snowy-white cuffs and the snowy-white apron of the maid who opened the door came as a surprise. She was keeping up appearances as the house wasn’t, though she looked nearly as old. Her face was talcumed and wrinkled and austere like a nun’s. Hilfe said, ‘Is Mrs Bellairs at home?’
    The old maid watched them with the kind of shrewdness people learn in convents. She said, ‘Have you an appointment?’
    â€˜Why no,’ Hilfe said, ‘we were just calling. I’m a friend of Canon Topling’s.’
    â€˜You see,’ the maid explained, ‘this is one of her evenings.’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜If you are not one of the group . . .’
    An elderly man with a face of extraordinary nobility and thick white hair came up the path. ‘Good evening, sir,’ the maid said. ‘Will you come right in?’ He was obviously one of the group, for she showed him into a room on the right and they heard her announce, ‘Dr Forester.’ Then she came back to guard the door.
    Hilfe said, ‘Perhaps if you would take my name to Mrs Bellairs, we might join the group. Hilfe – a friend of Canon Topling’s.’
    â€˜I’ll ask her,’ the maid said dubiously.
    But the result was after all favourable. Mrs Bellairs herself swam into the little jumbled hall. She wore a Liberty dress of shot silk and a toque and she held out both hands as though to welcome them simultaneously. ‘Any friend of Canon Topling . . .’ she said.
    â€˜My name is Hilfe. Of the Free Mothers Fund. And this is Mr Rowe.’
    Rowe watched for a sign of recognition, but there was none. Her broad white face seemed to live in worlds beyond them.
    â€˜If you’d join our group,’ she said, ‘we welcome newcomers. So long as there’s no settled hostility.’
    â€˜Oh, none, none,’ Hilfe said.
    She swayed in front of them like a figure-head into a drawing-room all orange curtain and blue cushion, as though it had been furnished once and for all in the twenties. Blue blackout globes made the room dim like an Oriental café. There were indications among the trays and occasional tables that it was Mrs Beliairs who had supplied the fête with some of its Benares work.
    Half a dozen people were in the room, and one of them