Part 4
Dr Edgar's game was developing nicely. His interventions, among others, to protect the reputation of Sir Maxwell Melville, conceal the indiscretions of Madam Gdina, and save Miss Louisa Scott from the displeasures of the Service had earned him something of a reputation, in those quiet circles in which he was known.
Now all this, while most entertaining, I am sure you understand, did not please everybody. The City can get by with a trader hors de combat now and again; the Press can afford to lose a scoop here and a hack there; but there are certain… fraternities… who are much less… forgiving.
The Service does not approve of losing an agent; they do not allow a particularly tasty source to slip, somehow, from under their almighty thumb. They do not like it. Oh I'll say! They do not like it at all.
For all of Edward's caution, the Service had now noticed him.
But to the Service, Dr Edgar was a bug, an annoyance, a biting insect that had drawn blood. Their first thought was to squash this impudent insect. At least, their first thought was to look for it. But how do you find the person not on your web? Their sources and informants couldn't help – or wouldn't. They were released from the Service's command; their rescuer was beyond control.
Perhaps they, the Service, thought they would try intimidation of their former victims. But always the victim was already gone: a surprise holiday, a sudden lecture tour, an unexpected visit to relatives.
So, the Service tried tipping off some of their contacts in the underworld: the West End Firms; the East End Families. The Families in particular had a score to settle: a bullion job had fallen through when the man they thought they had in a tight spot somehow eluded them. Money and face had been lost. So, a contract was agreed; a minor enforcer was sent. Freddie Durham, one of the old school, by which I mean His Majesty's 'Big School' Brixton and Strangeways. Durham wasn't afraid to hurt people to find out what he wanted; in fact, he was quite looking forward to it. Edgar wasn't going to let that happen, and he made sure by the simple expedient of telephoning the hit man and telling him exactly where to find him.
Durham broke into Edgar's cottage, and caught the doctor in his library. He produced rope and a knife and made to tie the doctor up. It was, he said, his intention to have a quiet word and put a stop to Edgar's activities. No doubt his real intention was to tie Edgar up, torture him and then kill him. Which would indeed have stopped his activities. Unfortunately for Durham, before he got any further, Dr Edgar's housekeeper Leticia brained him with a copper bedpan.
Sadly, I only traced Mr Durham after the Families had found him first, and consequently he didn't have long in which to tell his story, and he wasn't as lucid at the end as he had been. It seems from what I understood that he recovered to find himself tied with his own rope and Dr Edgar standing over him. Edgar thumbed through his dossier and found a page on Durham. Freddie, it would seem, had secrets too, and by the outcome not ones he would have wanted the Families finding out. Alas, poor Freddie.
The Service, however, were not put off.
One of their intelligence officers had an idea, one of their "snakecharmers" as they call them with their ridiculous love of colourful codenames: "bulldogs" for security; "undertakers" for field operatives; "lamplighters" for technical staff; "birdwatchers"; "chatelaines" and all the rest of the menagerie.
Charles Redbridge, his name was; I spoke to him in the lunatic asylum where they put him, poor fellow. His idea was to go undercover as the right sort of person, to feign a problem of the sort that Dr Edgar normally solved, and to wait for a friend of a friend of a friend to put him the right way. Which of course they did, poor fool.
Dr Edgar knew he was Service; it was in the doctor's dossier. Edgar showed him the page in the file, the page that showed – in exact and precise detail – just how totally unimportant he was in the Service's grand scheme. The knowledge drove him mad.
Now this was becoming embarrassing for the Service.
They are not stupid people. Intransigent. Predictable. Bloody-minded. But not stupid.
One of their overseers went to meet him, a woman of quite senior rank I believe though I never got to meet her. This last part of the story I confess I had to piece together from some rather sordid contacts in the Service itself, and a day journal stolen from a middle-ranking watchman who happened to be on the scene.
This woman, whoever she was, had recognised Dr Edgar as a kindred spirit, a fellow spider.
Far from cutting the cords that bound his circle of friends, Dr Edgar with his little dossier was weaving them more tightly into a web of his very own.
And so, she made him an offer. Join with the Service. They would allow him in, all the way in, to the secret black heart of their web, the place where all the threads meet, the place where all the secrets were. Just think; what wouldn't he be able to achieve from there.
She was sure he wouldn't be able to refuse. And he didn't.
So, they went to the Service together, the old building not the flashy new one at Vauxhall, the one with the rickety stairs and positively ancient elevator – more like a Heath Robinson machine with its exposed chain and cogs – and down they went, into the basement and from there into the sub-basement and then down into the vault, the black hole under the very heart of the Service.
There are machines there. They are older than the Internet – great gods in heaven, some date back to the time of Babbage – but nowadays they connect to it, along with other… older lines of communication. Mostly the machines sleep, and dream machine dreams until someone wants to call up their memories and opens that vault door. They were to the Service what his dossier was to Dr Edgar: the place where all the answers were kept. The Oracle's cave; just imagine the power. He went down into that place like a man in a trance.
And the woman, the overseer, just slammed the door and locked him in.
Control, you see. The Service had total control over that vault: light, heat, power… air. Information could go into the vault, but never ever come out again. Dr Edgar could go into that room but never ever come out again. At least, with no food and very little oxygen, he could not reasonably expect to.
Three days later, the Service opened up the vault. All that remained was the dossier, sat square in the middle of the floor. The Service experts examined it, of course, but the little folder was empty: no files, no pages, no secrets.
Dr Edgar had escaped.
