The Pyramid Read Free Page B

she could get away from her desk. But she could make some excuse or other. What was more and more delightfully evident was that Evie Babbacombe wanted to meet me. Not Robert. Me!
    I strolled into the Square, and stood, hands in pockets, inspecting the sky. It was bright blue, in a cooperative sort of way. I waited, hoping she would appear and that I could follow her to whatever private place was suitable for such a meeting, but the minutes lengthened, then dragged, and still she did not come. What came at last, was Sergeant Babbacombe . He marched out from under the pillars of the Town Hall and stood at attention, facing the length of the Square to the church. He was carrying his brass handbell and wearing his Town Crier’s dress—buckled shoes, white cotton stockings , red knee breeches, red waistcoat, cotton ruffle, blue frock coat, and blue, three-cornered hat. He rang the handbell , staring belligerently over his chest at the church tower. Then he bawled.
    “Ho yay, ho yay, ho yay! Lost. In Chandler’s Lane, between the chaplofese and Chandler’s Close. Hay gold cross hand chain. With the hinitials hee bee. Hand the hinscription ‘Hamor vinshit Homniar.’ Ther finder will be rewarded.”
    He rang the bell again, lifted his three-cornered hat towards the sky and uttered the loyal shout.
    “God hsave-ther KING!”
    He put his hat on, turned right, and marched off with steps of regulation thirty inches towards the corner of Mill Lane to do it all over again. Hee bee! Evie Babbacome! I saw it all. The cross was to be found and returned to her in strictest secrecy. Not a word about woods or ponds. Probably not a word about a hop at Bumstead. I knew exactly what I was to do.
    With that capacity for long and deep calculation which has since proved so beneficial to my country I set myself to evaluate the situation. Evie wanted her gold cross. I wanted Evie. A return to that place where she had proved so accessible to Robert might solve the problem for us both. Panic-stricken and furtive, she would steal off to look herself, given the chance; and my most delicate calculation was involved with getting us both there at the same time. I knew the working arrangements of the Ewans’s practice as well as I knew anything. I knew the times that Evie could pretend she had stayed behind to clear up, or sort the files. She might even invent an emergency as cover for her own. Because if some stroller in the woods saw the cross glittering among the twigs and empty acorn cups and turned it in to Sergeant Babbacombe, Evie was due for the shiner to outshine all shiners. She might even qualify, if rumour was not entirely a lying jade, for the sergeant’s army belt with its buckle and rows of shining brass studs. When I thought of the rumoured belt and the chance I had of preserving her from it, I felt a twinge of noble sympathy amid my tenseness and excitement.
    I went through the cottage and got my bike. I rode down the High Street and very carefully over the Old Bridge, since Sergeant Babbacombe was reciting his piece again on the crest of it. I pushed my bike up the hill, then freewheeled down to the pond.
    Everything was different, and the same. The water was still. The woods were still, yet they hummed and buzzed under the sun. There was green dapple, flash of a dragonfly over the water, whirl and dance of flies. I pushed my bike up the rise from the pond and leaned it against the gigantic oak bole. I looked round, then carefully followed the shallow tracks down to the pond. I found no gold cross, but only a muddy shoe. I threw the shoe towards some clear grass in front of a flowering bush and stood, staring down at the brown water. There was nothing for it. This would have to be a proper scientific search, like quartering the desert for a crashed plane. The cross might be—probably was—in the pond. But the sensible thing to do was to look in the easy places first.
    I went back to the oak and inspected every inch of ground near