“Lost him,” he announced, throwing up great hands in a fine impressionist sketch of flight. “We shall get him in the next hour or two. We can’t help doing that. If we continue to be lame, blind, half-witted, and cloth-eared for the rest of our naturals, we shall pick him up. Alive, too, if we don’t crush him to death getting out of each other’s way. Twenty-five men! Twenty-five men of various branches, counting five drivers and six senior officials, and what happens? The bloke slides out of the bathroom window, the only one in the house which hadn’t got a d**k sitting under the sill, and leaps into the fog. He has to jump blind, the night is thick as canteen coffee, and does he kill himself dropping on to the spiked railings round the area? Does he hell!”
He had been talking to Oates all
