He wanted nothing but to scale the roofs of London and to do so forever. One thing only troubled him, Silver said, and that was no small thing. He was twenty-eight. Like any sportsman he would begin to lose his skills, his impeccable sense of balance, his bodily control and, above all those, his stamina. Thirty or perhaps thirty-five would be the watershed. His nightmare, a real nightmare, a genuine recurring bad dream, was not of falling but of failing to perform some strenuous move with rope or hook that had once been child’s play to him, his strength ebbing and his energy there no longer.

“If I can’t go on the roofs,” he said to Silver, “I shall die.”

He said it calmly, even conversationally, as someone else might say that if he failed to find the item he wanted at a certain shop, he would try another. One evening, going into Silver’s kitchen for a glass of water, I came upon him sitting on the floor feeding Liv’s tribe of mice chocolate biscuits. He looked up at me and smiled.

Chapter 12

12

THIS MORNING DARREN AND Lysander and I started work on three adjoining houses in Sussex Gardens. They have been gutted and are in the process of being turned into one of those small luxury hotels that have become fashionable. The interesting thing for me is that the middle one is the hotel where Jonny was driven mad by the lift and where he half-killed Tudorlap.

If I had only relied on Jonny’s account and not on my own later experience, I’d never have recognized it. By the time we got there today the lift was long gone, as was the sign telling guests that this was the Gilmore Hotel. We were contracted to do a complete wiring job to the twelve suites, twenty-six bedrooms, lounges, restaurants, and kitchens. This is what we call the “first fix,” the carcassing, that’s carried out before the plastering. Bare walls confronted us, newly boarded floors, large rooms where formerly there were two or three small rooms. Lounges and dining areas were all to have chandeliers and the installations for these, of course, had to be fitted from above. The window curtains in the suites were to be electronically operated and by remote control, but that would be part of the “second fix,” when we put in the switch plates. There would be closed-circuit TV as well. It was a big job and extremely lucrative, just what I needed to occupy the time before work began at Paddington Basin.

“I’ve been here before,” I said. “I took a room for the evening,” knowing how Darren would take it. He didn’t disappoint me.

“A short time with Mr. Mystery, I suppose,” he said. “Him of the sparkling eyes you used to run around with.”