Cloak of Darkness Read Free

know the name and location of the Red Lion, but he didn’t know this district. So how did he get the address? From someone who had met Renwick there? Someone who also had access to Renwick’s private number? If so, decided Renwick, that narrowed down the field: few of his contacts possessed both pieces of information, very few. In grim mood, he entered the Red Lion.
    From the outside, it didn’t look particularly inviting: it could have used some paint and polish. If that was its method of discouraging tourists in their search for quaint old London pubs, it was highly successful. It had its own clientele, some regular, some—like Renwick—occasional. And that was another point to remember: his visits here had no fixed routine, formed no pattern. Even constant surveillance—and he hadn’t seen or sensed any such thing—wouldn’t have marked the Red Lion as a special meeting place. No, that information had come from someone who had been here with Renwick. A mole in our group, a real professional sent to infiltrate? Or someone greedy for money, or open to blackmail? Or just a blabbermouth, overflown with wine and insolence?
    Renwick resisted a searching look around the long room, seemed to be paying all attention to shaking out his raincoat and the old, narrow-brimmed felt hat he kept for bad weather. As yet, the place was only half filled—it opened at five thirty— but that would soon be remedied, and the smell of tobacco smoke would be added to the smell of ale that impregnated the dark woodwork of walls and tables. Casually, he noted two groups of men standing near the bar—no high stools here, no chrome or neon lighting, either—and three more groups at the central tables. He chose a high-backed wooden booth, one of a row on the opposite side of the room from the stretch of highly polished counter, hung coat and hat on a nearby hook, and sat down to face the back of the room. It was from somewhere there that the man must come in order to pass this table on his way to the door. I’ll make sure of a good look at his face, Renwick thought as he ordered a beer and tried to look totally relaxed, but he felt a tightening in his diaphragm, an expectation of something unexpected, something over which he would have no control. Not a pleasant prospect.
    Even before his beer was brought by a pink-cheeked, red-haired barmaid, the room was beginning to fill: journalists in tweeds, conservatively clothed civil servants interspersed with exactingly dressed barristers, music students in leather jackets, and business-men in three-piece suits. Renwick smoked a cigarette, seemed normally interested in the growing crowd, wondered if his man was in the group gathered around a dartboard at the far end of the bar.
    “Sorry,” Ronald Gilman said, ridding himself of coat and umbrella, taking a seat opposite Renwick. “I’m late—this weather.” He smoothed down his hair, asked, “Seen any likely prospect?”
    “No. But he’s here.” Renwick could feel he had been observed and studied for the last few minutes. “Where did you park your car?” Gilman hadn’t walked—his raincoat was dry, his umbrella rolled.
    “I didn’t. Claudel dropped me at the door and then drove on.”
    “Oh?”
    Gilman only nodded and ordered a double whisky with water, no ice. “I’m more nervous than you are, Bob. You know, you needn’t follow this blighter out. If you have the least doubt—”
    “Here’s someone now,” Renwick warned. The man didn’t pause to light a cigarette. “False alarm,” Renwick said with a small laugh.
    “Have you managed to place his voice?”
    “I’ve heard it before. I think. I could be wrong.” But a telephone did accentuate the characteristics of a voice—its tone, its inflections.
    “Strange that he didn’t disguise it. Muffle it. He didn’t?”
    “No. He wants to be identified, I guess. Hence the double play. There was no need to meet twice, first here and then at Paddington.” Another man,