Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [17]
Twelve
The Bounty Belfounder studio is situated in a suburb of Southern London where contingency reaches the point of nausea. I went as far as my money would take me in a taxi and the rest of the way by bus. This left me penniless but I had no thoughts beyond the moment. If you have ever seen a film studio you will know how curiously in its decor the glittering and the decrepit are merged. Bounty Belfounder somewhat favoured the latter. It covered a considerable area in between a railway line and a main road and was enclosed on the road side by a very high corrugated-iron fence. The main door, which was in the centre of a strip of low temporary buildings, looked rather like the entrance to a zoo; and over it the name BOUNTY BELFOUNDER perpetually burning in neon lights raised a sigh in the breasts of girls who passed it daily on their way to work in and around the Old Kent Road. Mars and I alighted from the bus. If you have ever tried to get into a film studio you will know that the chances of your turning out to be an Unauthorized Person are very high indeed. I am myself a sort of professional Unauthorized Person; I am sure I have been turned out of more places than any other member of the English intelligentsia. As I stood now looking at the studio it began to occur to me that I might have difficulty in getting in. The main entrance consisted of a pair of iron gates which were not only closed but were guarded by no less than three men who sat in a small office overlooking the road and whose task and joy it plainly was to usher in the illustrious with fawning and to spurn the humble from the door. I knew that it was useless to approach them and ask for Hugo. So I thought I might as well make a tour of the outside of the place and see it there wasn't some more inviting way in. Already I had attracted the attention of the Cerberi and their glances convicted me of loitering. It also occurred to me that, especially in this milieu, Mars might be recognized. I was really rather of Finn's opinion that one Alsatian dog looks much like another; but then there are some people who can distinguish day-old chicks and Chinamen. We turned away looking casual. We followed the iron fence as far as the railway. It was covered with advance publicity of the film which was apparently being made inside at that very moment. I remembered now having seen something about it in the papers. It was a film about the conspiracy of Catiline which was to be remarkable for its painstaking care in presenting this much-disputed and doubtless misrepresented episode. At Last! the posters announced to bewildered Londoners. The Truth About Catiline! No less than three eminent ancient historians were on the payroll. Sadie was playing the part of Orestilla, Catiline's wife, whom Sallust says no good man ever praised save for her beauty and whom Cicero professed to believe to be not only Catiline's wife but also his daughter. Of this latter insinuation the film makes no mention, but the former, whether prompted by research or by the necessities of the script, it repudiates by presenting Orestilla as a woman with a heart of gold and moderate reformist principles. The place seemed to be impregnable. There might have been a way of entering from the railway side. But I left this as a last resort; for although I am not frightened of motor cars I am rather nervous of trains. This I know is illogical since, except in moments of crisis, trains run on rails and cannot pursue you across pavements and into shops as cars can. On this occasion, however, my natural fears were augmented by the presence of Mars. I vividly pictured him being run over by a train, which to my fevered imagination seemed to be the unavoidable consequence of our venturing out on to the tracks. So I turned back towards the main gate. Here I noticed that the three men who had taken me for a felonious loiterer had gone, and that one man only sat framed in the window. I looked at the gate, and as I did so I saw inside it, standing in the studio yard, the big black Alvis which I had last seen gliding away from the Riverside Theatre. I was certain it was the same car. This decided me. Somewhere on the other side of these gates was Hugo. Without an idea in my head I approached the window. The man looked at me questioningly. I leaned towards him. 'I'm George's friend,' I hissed, and looked fixedly into his eyes. I mumbled the name a bit so that it might serve equally for John or Joe or James or Jack. One or other of these bolts evidently reached a target. The man nodded in a rather contemptuous way and touched a lever. The gates opened. 'Straight across the yard and on the left,' he said. I walked in. I didn't want to attract attention to Mars by calling him; I hoped he would have enough sense to follow me in at once. As I could hear the gates beginning to close behind me I couldn't help turning slightly to see what had happened to him. But all was well. He had not only followed discreetly at my heels, but had even lowered his tail as he passed under the office window. Without looking back again I hurried across the yard, past Hugo's car, and entered a labyrinth of buildings on the other side. On my left a large door said EXTRAS. This was doubtless the desired destination of Joe's friend, and I wondered for a moment whether it mightn't profit me to continue in this role. But I decided that really there was no reason why I should have to attire myself like an ancient Roman in order to find Hugo, especially as this would mean surrendering my trousers to another person, an act of which I have a primitive terror. So I went straight on and as I did so I took off my tie and knotted one end of it on to Mars's collar. I felt ready for anything. In the distance I could now hear a voice holding forth in a passionate rhetorical manner. The sound of it carried clearly through the sensitive evening air. It was this way that I went, for I did not doubt that if I could find the centre of operations I should discover Hugo. There was no one about and no other sound to be heard. The office people had evidently gone home. With Mars padding beside me I ran down a lane of concrete buildings and then down another one. Somewhere ahead there was a great deal of light. Then I turned a corner and there opened before me the most astonishing scene. In the background, rising up in an explosion of colour and form, was a piece of ancient Rome. On brick walls and arches and marble pillars and columns there fell the brilliantly white radiance of the arc lamps, making the buildings stand out in a relief more violent than of nature and darkening by contrast the surrounding air into a haze of twilight. Nearer to me was a forest of wooden scaffolding festooned with cables in which were perched the huge lamps themselves; and in between, mounted on steel stilts and poised on cranes, were the innumerable cameras, all eyes. Most strange of all, in the open arena in front of the city stood a crowd of nearly a thousand men in perfectly motionless silence. Their backs were turned to me and they seemed to listen enthralled to the vibrating voice of a single figure who stood raised above them on a chariot, swaying and gesticulating in the focus of the blazing light. This doubtless was Catiline inflaming the Roman plebs. The unnatural whiteness of the light made the colours burn into my eyes and I had to turn my head away. At any other time I would have been fascinated to watch what was going on. At that moment, however, there was but one thought in my mind, that it was now almost certain that only a small distance separated me from Hugo. I began to move round behind the scaffolding, walking behind the beams of light as one walks behind a waterfall. I didn't want Hugo to see me first. And as I went the city seemed to unfold, revealing by some trick of the scene vista after vista of streets and temples and pillared market places. I went on in a stupor, just outside the circle of colour, with the cascade of radiance on one side and the twilight on the other. Even Mars seemed under a spell, a gliding dog whose jointed legs swung to and fro without touching the earth. The passionate voice continued, pouring out an unending flood of exalted protest and appeal. Some of the words which it was uttering began now to find their way into my ears. It was saying: 'And that, comrades, is the way to get rid of the capitalist system. I don't say it's the only way, but I do say it's the best way.' I stopped. For all I knew Marxism might rapidly be transforming the study of ancient history; all the same, this sounded rather odd. Then in a flash I realized that the speaker was not Catiline but Lefty. The voice ceased and the crowd started out of their immobility. In a murmur which rose to a roar and re-echoed from the facades of the artificial city they clapped and shouted, rustling and swaying and turning to one another. Here and there among them were togaed Romans, but the majority of the men were obviously engineers and technicians in blue overalls and shirt sleeves. On the far side of them I could see now, coming more fully into view as its bearers moved a little, a long banner stretched between two poles, on which was printed in enormous letters SOCIALIST POSSIBILITY. And at that moment I caught sight of Hugo. He was standing by himself a little apart from the crowd but in the full blaze of the light. He stood upon the steps of a temple on the edge of the city, looking towards Lefty over the heads of the people. In the many-angled radiance he cast no shadow and in the whiteness of the light he looked strangely pale, as if his flesh were covered with chalk. He was joining and unjoining his hands in a pensive gesture which might have been an afterthought of clapping. He stood in a characteristic way which I remembered well, his shoulders hunched and his head thrust forward, his eyes shifting sharply, stooping a little and his lips moving a little. Then he began to bite his nails. I stood rooted to the spot. Lefty began speaking again and a deep silence at once surrounded his voice. Hugo felt my gaze and turned slightly. Some fifteen yards only separated us. I moved from the shadow into the light. Then he saw me. For a moment we looked at each other. I felt no impulse to smile or even to move. I felt as if I looked at Hugo out of another world. Gravity and sadness fell between us like a veil and for a moment I hardly felt that he could see me, so intently was I seeing him. Then Hugo smiled and raised his hand and Mars began to tug me forward towards him. A deep distress overcame me. After the dignity of silence and absence, the vulgarity of speech. I smiled automatically and studied Hugo's face; what did it express? Friendship, contempt, indifference, irritation? It was inscrutable. I mounted the steps and stood beside him. Hugo completed his smile and his salute, neither slowly nor in haste, and then turned back towards the meeting. As he did so he made a gesture towards Lefty which seemed to signify: 'Just listen to this!' 'Hugo!' I hissed. 'Ssh!' said Hugo. 'Hugo, listen,' I said, 'I've got to talk to you at once. Can we go somewhere quiet?' 'Ssh,' said Hugo. 'Later. I want to hear this. It's colossal.' He gave me a sharp sideways look and waved his hands in a deprecatory way. Lefty completed a period and a soft murmur of approval swept over the crowd. 'Hugo,' I said out loud and with strong emphasis, 'I've got to warn you...' Silence had fallen again. Hugo shook his head at me and put his linger to his lips and gave his attention to Lefty. I went on in a lowered voice, trying to drive the words into his cars. 'Sadie is double-crossing you, she...' 'She always is,' said Hugo. 'Shut up, Jake, will you? We can talk later.' Despair overwhelmed me. I sat down on the steps at Hugo's feet. Mister Mars sat beside me. The glare of the arc lamps was boring into my left eye and Lefty's voice was piercing my head like a skewer. 'Ask yourself what you really value,' Lefty was saying. 'You know what it says about where your treasure is your heart is.' I suddenly felt that everything I had been doing lately was pointless--Anna was going to America, Sadie and Sammy were doing whatever they pleased and nothing would stop them, Madge had been deceived, I had found Hugo and he wouldn't speak to me. It only remained for me to be arrested and put in prison for stealing Mars. I put an arm round the latter's neck and he licked me sympathetically behind the ear. Lefty seemed good for another hour. He was really a remarkable speaker. He spoke simply but without faltering. His discourse was copious and yet well ordered too. Not without flowers, it was not without force either. Although afterwards all I could remember of what he said were a few striking phrases, I had the impression at the time that a closely reasoned argument was being presented. He somehow combined the intimate tone of the popular preacher with the dramatic and inflammatory style of the demagogue. Winged by sincerity and passion, his speech fell like an arrow from above, clean and piercing. The thousand men were under his spell. Their breathing was stilled and their eyes fixed intensely upon him. For a while I watched them so. Then there was a slight shiver at the edge of the crowd. Opposite to us and behind the speaker there were a number of boards with slogans upon them. These boards now began to sway gently to and fro like corks upon a pool which is suddenly disturbed. I noticed one or two scuffles developing on the side near the main entrance. But hardly anyone looked round. Lefty absorbed them. I looked up at Hugo. He stood like a man in a trance. I swivelled round, turning my back on the meeting and looking behind me into the streets of the ingenious city which excess of light made to glow with excess of colour. Behind it, all seemed dark. I sighed. Then I looked at Hugo again. My despair began to give way to exasperation and I felt coming upon me that nervous impulse to act at any price which so soon overtakes me in periods of frustration. I let go of Mars. Behind us a pair of double doors opened into the temple. I satisfied myself with a glance that they were real doors and that the temple had a real interior. Then I began to study Hugo's stance. These rapid preliminary studies can be very important in Judo. Notice where your opponent's weight is placed and at what point a pressure will mostly readily upset his balance. I ran over various moves in my mind and decided that the most appropriate would be some version of the 0 Soto-Gari throw, as we term it. Then in a leisurely way I rose to my feet. I stood on the top step beside him. 'Hugo!' I said sharply. He half turned towards me. As he did so I took hold of his right arm between the wrist and the elbow and forced it strongly away to my left, so drawing him to face me. At the same time I hooked my right leg behind the bend of his right knee. As one firm unit my body swung smoothly round my left hip joint, while my right hand grasped Hugo's belt and drew him into the circle of my movement, pushing and lifting at the same time. As he began to collapse I took two or three steps backward and we fell together through the double doors, and went rolling into the interior of the temple. The doors closed behind us, but not before Mister Mars had squeezed through and sat down in front of them as if on guard. Hugo and I picked ourselves up, Hugo rubbing those parts of his anatomy which had suffered in transit. The inside of the temple was dark, lit only by light which filtered through a narrow grating under the angle of the roof. It was empty, except for a wooden box on which after a moment or two Hugo sat down. I joined Mars by the door and sat cross-legged. We looked at Hugo. Mars clearly wasn't quite sure what sort of attitude he ought to adopt towards him, and kept looking at me for a cue. He growled softly every now and then as if to try to keep the situation under control without giving any serious offence. I took out my cigarette packet, selected a cigarette and lit it. I waited for Hugo to say something. 'Why did you do that, Jake?' said Hugo. 'I told you I wanted to speak to you,' I said. 'Well, there's no need to be so rough,' said Hugo. ' You nearly broke my neck.' 'Nonsense,' I said. 'I knew exactly what I was doing.' 'What did you want to tell me?' said Hugo. He seemed quite resigned to being kept a prisoner. 'A great many things,' I said, 'but first of all this.' And I told him rapidly what I knew of Sadie's plans. 'Thank you for telling me this,' said Hugo. He didn't seem very surprised or even very interested. Then he added, 'I see you've got Mister Mars with you.' He didn't seem surprised at that either. I was about to reply when an enormous din began to break out behind us. The sound of stampeding feet mingled with confused shouts and cries. The ground shook and the building shivered about us. 'What is it?' I asked. Mars began to bark. 'The United Nationalists said they were going to break up the meeting,' said Hugo. 'That's probably them arriving. The next thing will be the police.' As he spoke we heard a whistle shrilling in the distance. 'Let's go out and look,' said Hugo. We emerged together. A wild scene met our eyes. The crowd which a few minutes before had been so orderly was split into a chaos of struggling groups. Everywhere we looked a fight seemed to be in progress. The whole mass swayed to and fro like a vast Rugby scrum, into the midst of which every now and then a man would leap from the scaffolding or from one of the camera cranes scattering friend and foe alike. Out of this undulating pile of punching, kicking, and wrestling humanity there arose a steady roar in which cries of pain and anger were inextricably merged. Upon this scene the arc lamps blazed with unabated fierceness, costing the Bounty Belfounder Company some considerable sum of money per hour, and showing us with an astonishing clarity the enraged faces of the combatants. In the distance we could see Lefty, still mounted on his chariot, still gesticulating, his mouth opening and shutting, while round about him, as about the body of Hector, the battle raged to and fro with particular ferocity. Nearby the long banner which said SOCIALIST POSSIBILITY rose and fell upon the surge. Now one end of it descended as the standard bearer fell before an onslaught, and now the other, but eager hands soon raised it once more to flutter its thoughtful message above the scene. The police whistles were sounding now at the very entrance to the studio. There was no time to lose. Even when I don't know which side I am on I hate to watch a fight without joining in; but on this occasion I had no doubt of my sympathies nor did it occur to me to question Hugo's. 'Which ones are which?' I asked Hugo. 'I'm afraid there's no way of distinguishing them,' he said. Since this was clearly the case the most sensible thing to do was to go and defend the one person whose identity we were sure of, and that was Lefty. I told Hugo this, and set off, keeping a close grip on Mars, who was beginning to look as if he wanted to bite somebody. Hugo followed me. We made our way with difficulty through the battle in the direction of the chariot. The din was appalling; and behind us there stood out against the gathering night the brilliantly illumined skyline of the Eternal City, swaying very gently to and fro as the ground trembled under a thousand stamping feet. It took us some time to reach Lefty. It was necessary more than once, in defence of our right to proceed, to deal violently with some person or persons who disputed this right. So we lashed out, hoping that our blows were falling by and large upon the unrighteous. I got through more or less unscathed, but Hugo received a blow in the eye which seemed to enrage him considerably. As we approached the chariot, Lefty, who had been resisting the attempts of the enemy to drag him down, suddenly leapt with a yell of fury on top of one of his foes, and the two rolled on the ground. At the same moment two toughs, clearly friends of Lefty's antagonist, closed in upon them--and it would have gone hard with Lefty had not Hugo and I dashed forward and flung ourselves upon the heap with the abandon of swimmers entering a summer sea. Mars, whom I had let go of some time ago, pranced around the outside of the skirmish, nipping the legs of this and that person rather indiscriminately. The struggle, in the course of which I was able to put in some good ground work, and use one or two particularly rare and exquisite leg locks, lasted only a few minutes. Lefty was fighting like a wild cat, while Hugo, looking more than ever like a bear, was standing erect, his feet wide apart, and his arms whirling like a windmill. For myself, I prefer to get my opponent on to the ground as soon as possible. The enemy fled. We picked up Lefty, who looked a little the worse for wear. 'Thanks!' said Lefty. 'Hello, Donaghue, nice to see you. I didn't know you were here.' 'I didn't know you knew Lefty,' said. Hugo. 'I didn't know you knew Lefty,' I said. But there was no time to discuss these interesting discoveries. 'Look!' said Lefty. We turned towards the studio entrance and there, advancing upon the battle, which still raged with undiminished fury, was a large force of police, some on foot and some on horseback. 'Damn!' said Lefty. 'Now they'll arrest everyone within sight, especially me--which will be pretty inconvenient just now. Is there a way out at the back?' We retreated into the streets of Rome, which were already invaded by a small number of combatants who were, however, more concerned with mutual assault and battery than with the possibility of escape. We passed under a brick archway. 'I don't think there's any way through,' said Hugo. 'It all ends at the wall.' The city was really much smaller than it had appeared to be on my first view of it. In a moment or two we had reached the city wall, a high structure of spurious red brick which was surmounted at intervals by watch towers and gave the impression of tremendous thickness. It swept round behind the buildings in an unbroken semicircle. Lefty struck it with his fist. 'No use!' said Hugo. It was as smooth as a chestnut and too high to climb. 'We're trapped!' said Lefty. The din in the arena had taken on a new note and we could hear the police shouting instructions through loud-speakers. We looked round us frantically. 'What shall we do?' I said to Hugo. He was standing there with his eyes glazed. He turned his big head towards me slowly. The noise was coming nearer and already one or two policemen were to be seen hurrying under the archway. 'Leave it to me!' said Hugo. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a small object. 'Belfounder's Domestic Detonator,' he said. 'Invaluable for shifting tree roots and clearing rabbit warrens.' The object ended in a point, which Hugo plunged into the base of the wall. Then he brought out a box of matches. In a moment there was a fierce sizzling sound. 'Stand back!' cried Hugo. A sharp explosion followed, and like magic a hole about five feet in diameter had appeared in the wall, through which in the early darkness we could see a ragged field scattered with corrugated-iron sheds and bounded by a low fence and a Bovril advertisement. Beyond it was the railway. As I took this in Lefty had already passed us and like a circus dog going through a hoop sped gracefully through the hole, and we could see him a moment later leaping the fence and diminishing across the railway lines under the twinkling red and green lights. Quick! ' said Hugo to me. But something else was happening. The shock of the explosion must have dislocated something in the fabric of the city. For now suddenly the whole structure was beginning to sway and totter in the most alarming fashion. I looked up and saw as in a dream the brick and marble skyline vacillating drunkenly while there was a slow crescendo of cracking and splintering and rending. 'Damn, that's torn it!' said Hugo. 'It's all right,' he added. 'It's only made of plastic and Essex board.' We seemed to be surrounded by shouting policemen. In the distance I could see columns heeling slowly sideways, and triumphal arches crumbling and sagging and finally collapsing like opera hats. There was a menacing sound like an earthquake tuning up. For a moment I watched petrified; then I turned towards the hole in the wall. But it was already too late. Directly above us the wall began to lean inwards. To see what looks like fifty feet of solid brickwork descending on you is an unnerving sight, even if you have been told that it is only made of plastic and Essex board. With a sickening roar it began to fall. I threw Mars to the ground and hurled myself down, one arm clutching the dog and the other protecting the back of my neck. Next moment, with an apocalyptic clatter, the whole thing was on top of us. The world blacked out and something struck me violently on the shoulder. I had made myself so flat I almost bored into the earth. Somewhere the shouting and the splintering continued. I tried to get up but something was pinning me down. I became panic-stricken and struggled madly, and then I found myself sitting up with the remains of the wall, in pieces of various sizes, scattered round me. I looked about wildly for Mars, and soon saw him crawling out from under a pile of debris. He shook himself and came towards me with nonchalance. No doubt his film career had familiarized him with incidents of this kind. We surveyed the scene. All was changed. The whole of Rome was now horizontal and out of its ruins an immense cloud of dust was rising, thick as a fog in the glare of the lamps. In the arena, like a formal picture of the battle of Waterloo, stood a mass of black figures, some mounted on horses, others standing on top of cars, and others on foot marshalling into neat groups. A voice was saying something blurred through a loud-speaker. The foreground looked more like the moment after the battle. The ground was strewn with legless torsos and halves of men and others cut off at the shoulders, all of whom, however, were lustily engaged in restoring themselves to wholeness by dragging the hidden parts of their anatomy out from under the flat wedges of scenery, which lay now like a big pack of cards, some pieces still showing bricks and marble, while others revealed upon their prostrate backs the names of commercial firms and the instructions of the scene shifter. As I shook myself free I saw Hugo rising like a surfacing whale and thrusting his monumental shoulders through the wreckage as if it had been cardboard. He rose to his feet, showering the fragments to right and left. For an instant he was outlined against the sky, and then he shot off in the direction of the railway and was to be seen in the dim light, leaping across the lines like a stampeding buffalo, and disappearing into the distance. I staggered up and was about to follow him when Mars created an unfortunate diversion. All about us, like a nest of disquieted wood-lice, policemen were crawling out from underneath pieces of boarding. Whether this stirred some memory in Mars's simple mind I know not; but evidently some strong reflex was set off. He was doubtless so accustomed to rescuing people from predicaments such as this that the simultaneous sight of so many eligible rescuees was too much for him. He dashed at the nearest policeman and seizing him by the shoulder began to pull him vigorously into the open. This gesture, which I admit I may have misinterpreted, was certainly taken in bad part by the policeman, who seemed to imagine that Mars was attacking him, and fought back fiercely. I watched for a little while, until I began to be afraid that Mars might get hurt. Then I interfered and pulled him off, explaining as I did so to the policeman that, in my view, Mars's intentions had been kindly, and not, as the other thought, aggressive. The policeman answered impolitely--and rather than prolong the discussion I turned, taking a firm grip on my necktie which was still trailing from Mars's collar, and prepared to follow in Hugo's footsteps, trains or no trains. Imagine my dismay when I saw that between me and the railway line, across the piece of waste ground from one side of it to the other, there now stretched a thin but regular cordon of police. To run the gauntlet of both police and trains was more than I could bear. The immediate requirement, however, was to get away from the vicinity of the attacked policeman, so I set off at a run with Mars, skirting the edge of the studio and hoping that I might find a gap where the studio wall ended before the police began. But there was no such gap; and I found myself coming back towards the front of the. studio, where the erstwhile combatants now stood in docile groups, a mass of uniforms barred the exit, and a superhuman voice was saying NO ONE IS TO LEAVE. It then occurred to me that really the police could hardly be want-to arrest everyone, and as I had nothing on my conscience I might as well wait peacefully to be dismissed instead of rushing about the scene and drawing attention to myself. Then as I looked down at Mars it became clear to me on second thoughts that now was not the ideal moment to fall into the arms of the law. I stopped running and started thinking. As I thought I kept on walking in the direction of the front entrance, where the thickest mass of police were gathered beside the labyrinth of office buildings. I addressed Mars. 'You got me into this,' I told him. 'You can get me out.' I led Mars into the shadow of one of the buildings and looked about me. From that point I could see down one of the side lanes the gates of the main entrance. They stood open, and a troop of mounted police were just riding into the yard. Through the gates I could see a crowd outside who were peering in and the flashing cameras of newspaper men. In between, by the gate itself, was a small group of police to whom the battlefield was invisible because of the buildings, so that I could assume that they had not been witnesses of my recent antics. I turned to Mars. The crucial moment had come. I stroked him and looked into his eyes, to command his attention for something of the utmost seriousness. He returned my gaze expectantly. 'Sham dead,' I said. 'Dead! Dead. dog!' I hoped that this word was in his vocabulary. It was. In a moment Mars's legs sagged and his body became limp and he slid to the ground, his eyes turning back and his mouth hanging open. It was terribly convincing. I was quite upset. Then I collected my wits and took a quick look at the gate. No one had seen us. I knelt down, and levering Mars from the ground I lifted him over my shoulder. It was as if he weighed a ton. The inertia of his body seemed to glue it to the ground. Bracing my hand against the wall I rose slowly to my feet. Mars's head, with his tongue hanging out, lay swaying against my chest, and his hind-quarters were bumping the small of my back. I set myself in motion. A I approached the main gate I came into a focus of attention, not only from the police who were keeping the gate, but also from the crowd who were standing outside. As soon as we were well in view a murmur of sympathy arose from the crowd. 'Oh, the poor dog!' I could hear several women saying. And indeed Mars was a pathetic sight. I quickened my pace as much as I could. The police barred my way. They had their orders to let no one out. 'Now then!' said one of them. I strode resolutely on, and when I was close to them I cried out, in tones of urgency, 'The dog's hurt! I must find a vet! There's one just down the road.' I was in mortal terror all this time lest Mars should tire of the game. He must have been extremely uncomfortable hanging there with the bones of my shoulder pressing into his stomach. But he endured. The policeman hesitated. 'I must get him attended to at once!' I repeated. A cross murmur began to rise from the crowd. 'Let the poor chap out to get his dog looked after!' said someone, and this seemed to express the general sentiment. 'Oh, all right, out you go!' said the policeman. I walked through the gates. The crowd parted with respectful and sympathetic remarks. As soon as I was clear of them and saw in front of me the wide open expanse of New Cross Road, unenclosed and empty of police, I could bear it no longer. 'Wake up! Live dog!' I said to Mars; as I knelt down he sprang from my shoulder, and together we set off down the road at full pelt. Behind us, diminishing now in the distance, there arose an immense roar of laughter.