Nightingale nodded. Runciman’s father had held some position at the Petersburg embassy for several years before the Revolution. His mother had been Greek. So it was hardly surprising that Runciman himself had found the study of Eastern Europe congenial. Nightingale had forgotten what was his special field. He could remember that Runciman had once laid himself open to mockery of almost a year’s duration because, asked by a superintendent for help in a newspaper quiz, he had been at a loss for the date of the battle of Agincourt, and had excused himself with the plea that it was outside his period. Nightingale made a note to have the usefulness of Runciman’s derided specialisation brought to that superintendent’s knowledge; only as he was now considerably more than a superintendent it would better be done by devious means.

He rang the divisional office. “About the Karukhins,” he said. “It seems likely that they’ve lived at Bright’s Row since the early twenties. As he would have been only three or four years old when they came, he must have attended a local school. Find out which, please, and if there’s anyone on the staff old enough to remember him. Of course, the schools will have closed for the holiday, but your people probably know the caretakers, and they can get the headmasters’ addresses from them. There’s always the education office as a last resort. See what you can do, anyway. Also, he drinks, I believe. Does he patronise a particular pub, do you know? What about that one behind Sadlers Wells, the Empress of Russia? No, perhaps not—a sort of lèse majesté. Well, a chat with the landlord, if you can find him. I gather his present stopping place isn’t a regular haunt or you’d have looked sooner. And I’d like more from St. Pancras than an alibi and a negative character. Anything at all about him. All right. As quickly as you can.”

The ’phone started to ring as soon as it was settled. Majendie, he thought, picking it up. It was Majendie; rather, he was the subject of the call; he had just returned from the theatre. Nightingale glanced at his watch. It was late, but not too late. He would see him now.

* * *

There was a pause in the argument of three men at the bar, followed by a sudden but unrelated hush in general conversation. The impassive, heavy-chinned barmaid pulled the handles for a mild and bitter. Prompted laughter barked distantly from a radio to which no one was listening.

Beddoes glanced with assumed idleness at Ivan Karukhin; and seeing that he was handing over the counter money for yet another drink, returned to his ostensible struggle with the evening paper’s crossword, a puzzle of such puerility as not to deserve the name. He gnawed the end of his pencil, an exercise fostering an illusion of mental labour and dispelling the taste of beer, which was a liquor he could not teach himself to like, although considerations of anonymity and expense had caused him to order and swallow half of pale ale.