“Tidy,” conceded Hilary. “Good ale, in those parts. Yes, the Mendips are weird. And the house itself is a bit grim. I liked it when I was a kid, though. It will never be mine, of course, I’m the younger son.” He said it simply, without bitterness, and shifted painfully against his lumpy pillow. “This was to be my last job for a while. I was going home the end of this month.”

Dalton moved nearer to him and shoved the bundle aside so that Hilary was supported more comfortably against his shoulder.

“We’ll get you home, old boy,” he said gently. “Give us time. We’ll see to it.” He glanced again at the empty sky.

“No time,” said Hilary faintly, and his unsteady fingers began to pick aimlessly at the edge of the wallet where it lay. “No time now—too far to Waterloo— now—”

“Good old Waterloo,” said Dalton.

“You get out of the train,” Hilary went on wistfully, and his eyes, half-closed against the desert glare, saw again the cool dim murk of the railway station, the shabby guard in a peaked cap, the ambling, underfed-looking porters, the unhurried flow of the crowd towards the barrier, “and you watch your stuff come out of the van, and you get it on to a taxi—”

“And you get one of those taxis driven by a nice old bloke who thinks he’s still got a horse-cab,” put in Dalton.

“—and you find yourself crossing the Bridge, and there’s Westminster on the left, and the Embankment— and you go on past the Needle and the sphinxes to Charing Cross— You know, that time I came home from Egypt I’d almost forgotten we had those sphinxes on the Embankment—gave me quite a shock to see them sitting there smiling, when I’d just left the original—”

“They do smile, that’s a fact,” said Dalton, as though it had just occurred to him for the first time. “Bit smug, they are—as though they knew all the answers.”

“—and then after Charing Cross you keep on past the Carlton—and there’s the club—” Hilary sighed the long sigh of a tired child whose day is done, and turned his head against Dalton’s shoulder so that his face was shielded from the hot glare beyond the narrow shadow of the plane’s wing. “I haven’t forgotten,” he said with satisfaction. “I haven’t forgotten an inch of the way — I could do it in my sleep — I know the way home so well—”